Combine two duplicate author profiles — Shawn MacNab > Likes and Comments

Hi librarians — I'm the author.

There are two "Shawn MacNab" author profiles, and I'd like them combined into my claimed one.

Full links:
Keep (my claimed profile, has my photo — holds the two Mara Voss books):
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show...

Combine into the above (duplicate, unclaimed — currently holds You Already Said Yes):
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show...

Please combine the duplicate into my claimed profile so all my titles appear under one author.

If combining author profiles needs to go through a different process on your end, I'd be grateful if you could point me to it.

Thank you for the help.

Shawn wrote: "Hi librarians — I'm the author.

There are two "Shawn MacNab" author profiles, and I'd like them combined into my claimed one.

Full links:
Keep (my claimed profile, has my photo — holds the two ..."

Hello, I moved your book to your profile page, are the other books here also yours? https://www.goodreads.com/author/list...

Thank you,
Tami, that's perfect, I can see all three of my suspense titles on my profile now.

Yes, those four other books:
The Passage: Facing What We Hide;
The Weight You Can't See;
THE REFLECTION: Understanding the Voice Within;
The Weight of Not Being Enough

are also mine, but they were written under a separate pen name, Nathan Vesper, for a different audience (middle-grade / personal development).

They were originally published with "Shawn MacNab" in the metadata by mistake.

Rather than adding them to my Shawn MacNab profile, would it be possible to reassign those four books to a Nathan Vesper author record (creating one if it doesn't exist), so the two pen names stay separate?

I'd like to keep Shawn MacNab for the suspense/literary titles only, and Nathan Vesper for these four.

So no need to combine the profiles after all — the cleaner fix is to move those four to Nathan Vesper.

Thank you so much for your help with this.

Shawn wrote: "Thank you,
Tami, that's perfect, I can see all three of my suspense titles on my profile now.

Yes, those four other books:
The Passage: Facing What We Hide;
The Weight You Can't See;
THE REFLECTION: Understanding the Voice Within;
The Weight of Not Being Enough

are also mine, but they were written under a separate pen name, Nathan Vesper, for a different audience (middle-grade / personal development).

They were originally published with "Shawn MacNab" in the metadata by mistake.

Rather than adding them to my Shawn MacNab profile, would it be possible to reassign those four books to a Nathan Vesper author record (creating one if it doesn't exist), so the two pen names stay separate?

I'd like to keep Shawn MacNab for the suspense/literary titles only, and Nathan Vesper for these four.

So no need to combine the profiles after all — the cleaner fix is to move those four to Nathan Vesper.

Thank you so much for your help with this."

Hello,

I was waiting to hear back from Goodreads Staff before replying, which is why I hadn't responded sooner.

Staff has now merged the profiles and removed the extra space from your author name. This should ensure that future bot imports are matched directly to your author profile instead of creating additional profiles.

As for the other four books, Goodreads catalogs books based on authorship and the name that appears on the published cover. The editions currently in the database all show Shawn MacNab on the cover, so they cannot be reassigned to a different name that does not appear on those editions.

I was also unable to find any editions in the database published under the name Nathan Vesper. The covers that are currently on Amazon all have Shawn MacNab on the cover.

If future editions are published with Nathan Vesper on the cover, those editions can be added to Goodreads and combined with the existing work. If the same ISBN is reused, an alternate cover edition can be created. However, that would not remove the existing Shawn MacNab editions or the Shawn MacNab credit from the editions that were published under that name.

Goodreads is a cataloging database rather than a bookstore. Because of that, we preserve older and out-of-print editions so readers can mark and review the exact edition they read. Editions that were available at any point with Shawn MacNab on the cover remain part of the database and remain credited to Shawn MacNab.

Since you are the author of these books and the published editions show Shawn MacNab on the cover, those editions will remain attached to your author profile.

Hi Tami,

Thank you, and thanks for going to staff on this. Merging the profiles and fixing the name spacing solves the duplicate-record problem I was running into, so I really appreciate you sorting that out.

That all makes sense on the four other titles. I understand Goodreads catalogs by the name printed on the published edition, and since those covers show Shawn MacNab, that's where they stay. No problem at all, I'll handle the pen-name separation properly on my end by republishing those four under Nathan Vesper when I revisit that line, and I'll come back here to get the new editions added and combined once the covers actually carry his name.

Thanks again for the clear explanation and the help.

Shawn