About authors with pen names — does this look right?

I've done some works combining in the past, but only for very simple, obvious cases. I've never done anything with author combining/aliasing/splitting, so I'm turning to the experts here for advice.

There are three authors combined into one for Stacey Abrams, as shown here: https://www.librarything.com/author/montgomeryselena/names. The Stacey Abrams designated as the "main author" does not include any books actually written under that name. Rather, as the URL indicates, these were all written under her pen name, Selena Montgomery.

There is a second Stacey Abrams author page that includes the books she wrote under her own name, both the nonfiction books and her latest novel, a political thriller called While Justice Sleeps.

A third author page showing as combined with those two is the Selena Montgomery page, which has no books assigned to it.

Surely this can't be correct? Shouldn't there be one Stacey Abrams sub-page containing all the book written under that name, and a second sub-page called Selena Montgomery for the books published under that name? I'm not at all questioning having the pages combined — it really is just one person and I think they should be all together. It's just the fact that the Selena books are under a (separate) Stacey Abrams author sub-page instead of the sub-page for her actual pseudonym that I don't understand.

There may be some blindingly obvious reason I can't see why it is the way it is, so please feel free to set me straight and help me learn more about the intricacies of author combining.

As far as I know, there is no such thing as a "sub-page".

Basically, back when "Selena Montgomery" and "Stacey Abrams" were combined, Selena had more copies in the system than Stacey and so Selena "won" the URL and became the "main author" (but then a canonical name was added to change Selena to Stacey). But now Stacey has more copies than Selena so it looks weird.

Maybe if the two authors were separated and then recombined, Stacey would win and things would look better?

As you see from your URL, the main page here is Serena Montgomery. It has a long history of having a canonical name put in and taken out. Right now, taking the canonical name out is not reverting the page to SM, which is what I would expect.

>3 norabelle414: >4 MarthaJeanne: Thanks for the explanations. It makes sense that the Selena page would have "won" because of number of copies, given that many of the books written under Abrams' real name are more recent. I don't feel comfortable trying to split and recombine because I don't have any experience working on author pages, but I feel like something needs to be done because it's just wrong the way it is.

>5 rosalita: It's definitely a problem I've noticed before but this is a much more high-profile example than most and is probably worth actually figuring out how to fix it. I would do it myself but I'm on my phone at the moment. I can try later tonight if no one else has done it by then.

>6 norabelle414: Thank you! Will the books currently assigned to "main author" Stacey have to be moved to the Selena alias manually before recombining? Or does that happen by using Canonical Name somehow?

>7 rosalita: Currently all of the books are in the right place - Selena books under montgomeryselena, Stacey books under abramsstacey. It shouldn't need any other finessing.

OK I separated and recombined and it (mostly) worked. All of the works are together but the URL is now https://www.librarything.com/author/abramsstacey, and "Stacey Abrams" is now the "main author" on the names page (https://www.librarything.com/author/abramsstacey/names)

As I suspected, all of the links and CK are stranded on the Selena Montgomery page so I'll have to move them over. I took screenshots of absolutely everything before separating the authors so I should get it looking exactly the same shortly.

CK done, easy.

Links are still stranded. The note here: https://www.librarything.com/author/montgomeryselena&norefer=2 says "Edit these links to move them to the combined author." which I would think means I can just open each link to edit, then save and it will be moved to the main author. But no. I think I have to add each link by hand to the new main author page. (Unless someone with more experience than me knows a better way)

Weird: Previously two users had "Stacey Abrams" as a favorite author. After the separation/combination, they were gone. But, I went to each user page and clicked on "Stacey Abrams" in their list of favorite authors and now the users are back on the author page.

>10 norabelle414: Yep - you need to remove the link from the old page and add to the new one. Same thing that had to be done for CK basically :)

All done.

On the names page, /author/montgomeryselena still shows up as "Stacey Abrams" and I don't know why. Not a single copy of any Selena Montgomery book has "Stacey Abrams" as the author. While the two authors were separated I made sure to recalculate the author name for Selena Montgomery, but apparently that didn't matter. Ah well, at least /author/abramsstacey is the main author now.

>12 norabelle414: Old CK that lingers on author names even after being removed (last set one wins). You need to either recalculate the author name or set it to the name you want (and remove it) before combining under the author that used to carry the CK before you put it under the one that carries it now.

I just uncombined, recalculated (I know you did before but sometimes it takes more than once) and then combined them again and now all looks ok.

>13 AnnieMod: Weird, I did recalculate while they were separated specifically because I was worried about that happening. Glad it's all good now.

>14 norabelle414: I was just updating above. Sometimes you need to recalculate more than once - and even then occasionally it lingers - so I usually let it settle for a few minutes, recalculate again and then combine. :)

LibraryThing is 99.9% logical computer stuff and 0.1% magic

Thanks you so much, norabelle414 and AnnieMod, for getting this all straightened out. It looks ever so much better now. I'm in awe at all of you who have figured out all the steps — and magic — needed to make LT look and act the way it should.