WRITERS CO-OP: A WRITER COMMUNITY FOR YOU.

GD Deckard

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28 comments on Name This!

Name This!

Cool LukeWhat we have here is failure to communicate. The word “Review” communicates negative reactions to many authors. Not the least of which is the certainty that all reviews cannot be good reviews. True, that. So, after listening to the gnawback, it’s obvious that we need a better name for our new section than, “Peer Reviews.”

We need a name that says here are books well received by the authors’ peers. The purpose of the new section is to have a place for recommendations by other authors, editors, publishers and professional members of the writing community at large.

The following names have been suggested, but please use the comments section to add more names.

Books We Like
I Like This Book
I Love This Book
Insider Picks
Peers’ Picks
Recommended Reading

What’s your suggestion?

Posted by:

GD Deckard

Severely beaten as a child by a WWII hero and combat-induced-PTSD stepfather, the author, as a teen, faced the old man down with a shotgun and earned his blessing to join the military at the time Americans were learning about a country called Vietnam. The “lazy, no good son-of-a-bitch” opted out of combat and hard labor by becoming an Air Force medic, stamping out suffering and misery on Freedom’s Frontier at Clark Airbase in S.E. Asia and earning some kind of medal pinned on him personally by then Secretary of the Air Force, Harold Brown, for “Saving lives, etc.” There followed a summer in Europe ending in the first of happy marriages. Then graduation with University Honors, kids worth dying for and a career in business. Life is good. Author, The Phoenix Diary, Penguin, 2015. https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-phoenix-diary-g-d-deckard/1122175645 Founding Member, Writers Co-op. https://WritersCo-op.com Co-Editor, The Rabbit Hole anthologies. https://www.amazon.com/Rabbit-Hole-Weird-Stories/dp/1691225355/ref=sr_1_1 Founder, SciFi Lampoon Magazine. http://scifilampoon.com/ Contributing Editor, A Celebration of Storytelling https://www.amazon.com/Celebration-Storytelling-GD-Deckard/dp/1951716167 Current WIP: Code Blue and Little Deaths, stories from Clark during the Vietnam War. Recipient of the Psi Young award for Creative Biography.

28 responses to “Name This!”

  1. Kris Avatar
    Kris

    I vote ‘Recommended Reading’.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply
    1. GD Deckard Avatar
      GD Deckard

      So, a book cover or ad may say, “Recommended reading on Writers Co-op.” Nice 🙂

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply
      1. Kris Avatar
        Kris

        LOL – I wonder if I’ll be seeing promos for blog ads on FB now…

        Liked by 1 person

        Reply
  2. Michael DiMatteo Avatar
    Michael DiMatteo

    I happen to like “Peers Picks”. Just my two cents.

    Sent from Mail for Windows 10

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply
    1. GD Deckard Avatar
      GD Deckard

      I like it too. Think it’s OKAY to shorten it to “Peer Picks,” or change to “Peer Choice?”

      Like

      Reply
  3. tahenryauthoress Avatar
    tahenryauthoress

    What about Author Picks? I think it conveys the idea – these are authors recommending books they like.

    Liked by 2 people

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    1. GD Deckard Avatar
      GD Deckard

      🙂 And, other people, editors, publishers and professional members of the writing community at large.

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply
      1. tahenryauthoress Avatar
        tahenryauthoress

        Oh boy. That’s getting quite long. LOL
        A.E.P.MofWC. Picks. LOL

        Liked by 1 person

        Reply
        1. GD Deckard Avatar
          GD Deckard

          Now *that* sounds impressive 🙂

          Liked by 1 person

          Reply
  4. mimispeike Avatar
    mimispeike

    I still say (something like) – We Love This: Recommended Reading from Writers Co-op.

    It’s the enthusiasm that makes me stop and pay attention. We Love This, I Love This, I stole the line from Salon or Book Beast or somewhere.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply
  5. Mike Van Horn Avatar
    Mike Van Horn

    I also like Author Picks. Follow with a tagline: “Books and stories recommended by your peers”

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply
  6. twkirchner Avatar
    twkirchner

    “Books We Like” is pretty much to the point.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply
    1. Mike Van Horn Avatar
      Mike Van Horn

      Who’s “we?” Are these the picks of the editors? Or the readers?

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply
      1. GD Deckard Avatar
        GD Deckard

        To quote the blog (see above 🙂 )
        “The purpose of the new section is to have a place for recommendations by other authors, editors, publishers and professional members of the writing community at large.”

        Like

        Reply
  7. robakers Avatar
    robakers

    Maybe something like…”Books and Stories We Love”

    Mimi is right. enthusiasm is contagious. Strong words mean strong feelings. Love is a word that we use to describe our spouses, kids and even pizza. It works in every situation because it means more than like, or recommend, or picks.

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply
    1. GD Deckard Avatar
      GD Deckard

      I know what you and Mimi mean, enthusiasm, not cutesy or dull.
      We’re on the right track here 🙂

      Like

      Reply
  8. Mellow Curmudgeon Avatar
    Mellow Curmudgeon

    Being a sucker for alliteration, I like [Recommended Reading] or [Recommended Reads] (to be shorter and catchier).  Have seen (and used) [read] as a noun a few times, with no obvious ill effects.

    Liked by 1 person

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  9. robakers Avatar
    robakers

    One more thing…we should consider a checklist for the book reviewed…big things like was it edited, by who (professional/friend who is a 3rd grade teacher), developmental edit, proof readers, word count, what genera is it, what do we compare it to,

    Those types of things will help potential readers sort titles and find good books to read.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply
    1. mimispeike Avatar
      mimispeike

      Some of this is edging back toward the stuff that would turn me off. I want to hear the emotional reasons why someone recommends a a book, not who has edited it. I think (ha! I hope) we can take for granted that a book is well written and well edited. What, beyond that, does it have going for it?

      Liked by 2 people

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      1. robakers Avatar
        robakers

        I thought that too but I was recently listening to a podcast about self-published authors. The speaker (I dont remember the name of the speaker but he was a bubba at Smashwords and I dont remember the exact statistics but I want to say like 95%) stated that the overwhelming, vast majority of self published books are not professionally edited and what separates successful and unsuccessful authors in terms of sales is number one the lack of editing, two the lack of a professional cover and third the lack of pre-sales.
        I think the standard should either be that everything we review has been professionally edited so that it is a given or it needs to be stated for the reader.
        Then we can get to the emotion and the love of the story.
        Sorry if I seem a little edgy, I should eat. Ha ha.

        Liked by 2 people

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  10. mimispeike Avatar
    mimispeike

    It’s not up to me to say (thank god). I bow to the majority opinion.

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply
  11. DocTom Avatar
    DocTom

    A note of caution – “Community Powered, Community Approved” didn’t do much for Bookkus.

    Just a title, “Writers Co-op Peer Reviews” really can’t stand alone. There will need to be a short introduction, explaining our goal: to help authors receive recognition. But at the same time it might mention that only well written (and edited) books will be reviewed. That would just be our promise to readers, and maybe some rules for the road to potential reviewers.
    BTW, professional editing just removes typos and glaring grammatical errors. I’ve read books posted on-line where the poor sucker paid for professional editing, but all that resulted was a technically well written poorly thought out and plotted story.
    Maybe we could offer a reviewer’s pledge? To present only honest reviews of well written books? Truthfully, if you give a good review to a book that’s crap, you’re going to lose readers very quickly.
    Oh well, I’m meandering. Just some thoughts.

    Liked by 2 people

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    1. mimispeike Avatar
      mimispeike

      DocTom, I agree with everything you’ve said.

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply
  12. atthysgage Avatar
    atthysgage

    Regarding professional editing, I’m not sure I like that standard. It’s a good start, but just as plenty of novels (as DocTom noted) can be poorly plotted and unimaginatively written despite having a professional editor, plenty of novels can be well-written AND well-edited without the input of a professional. I would hope that any book put up for review would meet a basic level of competence, but I suppose we have no way of knowing.

    Since I have already put myself forward as willing to give the reviews a once over to make sure they pass muster, I could do the same with the books in question — nip over to Amazon and peruse the free sample chapter. Usually, it doesn’t take more than a page or two to spot a book that is really falling short on the editorial basics. I’m willing to give it a try, anyway, at least until this thing becomes unwieldly, assuming it ever does.

    Question remains: how to respond if something seems substandard. I could 1) query the writer of the review and ask what they were thinking, 2) remove the review, with or without a note as to why, 3) leave the review up but apend an editorial note suggesting that readers might want to caveat their emptors about this title, and why.

    Or some combination of all of the above. I’m not guessing it’ll come up all that often, but it’s worth thinking about ahead of time, maybe.

    Liked by 1 person

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    1. DocTom Avatar
      DocTom

      Atthys’ concerns are well founded. The biggest problem is the “you give me a good review and I’ll give you one” situation. That would be easy to spot here, and the perpetrators could both be banned from posting again.

      Atthys deserves a lot of credit for taking on this task, but we can’t expect him to read every book for which a review is posted. I’m guessing that our best bet will just be to have a comments section after each review. A review that doesn’t well represent a book should get lots of negative comments (an emojis?) which will serve as a red flag.

      Liked by 2 people

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      1. atthysgage Avatar
        atthysgage

        Tom is right. A comment section is a must. Some of this will take care of itself just by virtue of dilligence on all of our parts. And no, I’m not planning on reading every book, just a short sample to make sure the basic editing isn’t grieviously bad.

        Liked by 1 person

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  13. Linda M. Judd Avatar
    Linda M. Judd

    Favored Books

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply
  14. Linda M. Judd Avatar
    Linda M. Judd

    Well Read Books, another title

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

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