Discussion for original M/M works, both professionally published and free online.
Input requested! Tagging, formatting, regular features, etc.
Hi all! Thank you for joining the community!
I just have a few points to address for this budding young comm. (In no particular order, I'm adding them as I think of them.)
A.
What formatting makes the most sense for book discussions? Should recommendations/book discussions always link back to either a purchase/download link where applicable? Link to the Goodreads entry for the work? Forget links entirely, make only text posts?
What would you like to see?
B.
What kinds of tags would you like? It seems that there are only 50 available tag slots at this time, which puts a damper on my original idea of tagging authors. I'll ask Imzy about the limit.
I've set up some genre tags for now. I desperately also want kink/content tags, but with only fifty slots that might also not work out unless we go extremely broad (genre: kink???).
... In that vein, should we differentiating between "paranormal" and "urban fantasy"? I tend to lump them together but I know some people might want them to be distinct. And what counts as paranormal vs. fantasy vs. urban fantasy?
C.
Are any of you interested in being a co-mod?
D.
If any of you are graphics masters and would like to make an icon/banner for the comm, I would be very grateful. I might get around to it on the weekend but it's been over 10 years since I've really made graphics.
I made graphics! If they are making your eyes bleed, consider donating something better. :P
E.
Are there any sorts of regular features you'd like to see? "Author of the month" type of things? We could have monthly themes or bi-weekly book discussions?
F.
Are there any rules we should add? Is there something that's confusing?
G.
If, at some point, we receive community "tips," how would you all feel about setting up a raffle and using that money to buy ebook prizes?
Go forth and enjoy all the m/m works!




Hi and thanks for creating this comm :)
A. I'm not too fond of links tbh, unless the book is free domain, in which case it's nice being able to click and directly access the book. It could also be used to distinguish between free vs. $$$ books, but IDK.
We could have links within the post, something like this:
Title by Author - Amazon || GR
B. As you mentioned, it would be impossible to tag every author and I suspect the list of kinks could get quite long too. How about tagging for genre and eventually major warnings (rape, violence/abuse and death)? And maybe making a post with a list of the books (just title + author, maybe genre), pinning it so it's easily accessible? It's not as straightforward as tags, but it should be easy to CTRL+F.
I would broadly define paranormal as ghosts and werewolves, fantasy as elves and trolls and urban fantasy as fantasy set in our days, although it's a slippery slope and many books belong to more than a category. Let's hear what other people have to say about this.
C. Sorry, nope.
D. Definitely not me, sorry.
E. I like the idea of themes!
F. Hm, I can't think of anything right now.
Thank you for joining! <3
A. With links, I think the good thing would be to allow members to easily buy a work if they're interested. But I also don't like the idea of pushing one storefront over another, and I'd be really uncomfortable if somebody used affiliate links on the comm. I suppose the another option would be to link to the author's website (they tend to have multiple buy links) but even that's not a perfect solution. And goodreads is... well, it's goodreads. I use it but I also don't think it's the be-all end-all of book review platforms.
I'll make another book post that's just text and see.
B. I could definitely make a list of works discussed! As long as we aren't TOO active of a comm, lol. I do wonder what to do in the (far future, off chance) case that the same book is discussed multiple times.
In terms of content warning tags... I'm toying with it, but it also feels like a waste of tags (and a bit unfair). I would definitely want the actual post itself to have content notes, but I'm not sure I want, for example, "underage" to be more findable than, say, "friends to lovers."
I did talk to imzy and they're discussing expanding the tag limit, at least.
Linking to the author's website seems like a sensible idea to me! That way we could take a look at what they have written other than the book in question and I like it better than linking to Amazon anyway.
Yeah, fandom is a bit intense about CWs right now. I was thinking that they could be easy to filter out thanks to the tags, but having to limit tags to a small number makes it tricky to decide which ones to use. Decisions, decisions...
A. I'm a big fan of links, especially to online stores. It gives me a chance to learn more and to buy a book right away without jumping through hoops. Amazon is my go-to place to buy books. It should be pretty easy to slip in hyperlinks in a low-key way.
B. In terms of tags, the only ones that I think would be absolutely necessary would be broad topic type tags: review, recommendation, discussion, etc. The big CW warning tags, rape and gore, that kind of thing can be handled at the top of the post, but personally I would like them to be tagged so that they may someday be able to be blacklisted if we ever get that functionality. I think as long as you cover the big triggers, you should be fine.
WRT to paranormal romance vs urban fantasy, I wouldn't worry about it too much.
C. Sorry, but no. Trust me, you don't want me. I'm not very reliable and tend to disappear off the Internet for months at a time.
E. I like broad themes over more specific themes. I might not have read the same authors as the other readers, but I might be able to contribute when discussing a specific sub-genre or trope. I love recs and discussions by tropes. Especially tropes that don't always make it into the cover copy and can be hard to find without recs.
G. Wow! You're way more generous than I am! I say take the money and run! But if you're willing enough to put in the work to do a raffle, then I think that's a cool idea.
A. Yeah, my main issue with links is the idea of promoting one particular bookseller over another. Maybe if we link to the author's website for the book, that's a good compromise? Authors usually have multiple links to sellers so you can choose where to spend your money. I also don't like the idea of affiliate links, where people would be earning money to promote books.
B. For content warning tags -- I didn't realize we could exclude certain tags! That does change things a bit, although for me it still seems "unfair" that someone could use the "noncon" tag to find noncon, but somebody looking for "office romance" wouldn't have it as easy. (And I say this as somebody who would definitely be looking up the noncon tag.)
E. Oh yeah, I love recs by tropes! But I worry that one month might be too long? Maybe just two weeks for a trope, and we'll see how that goes. We could also have like, author of the month alongside biweekly themes?
... Yes, I overthink things.
A. Linking to GR or the author site is cool. I'm just generally resisting having a hard-and-fast rule here because some authors, especially self-pubs have no/crappy websites, so there's not much choice but to link to booksellers. I think this might be one of those things that needs to go on a case-by-case basis depending on the situation.
B. I don't think we can screen content yet, but if history is any guide, something like that will probably be developed by somebody before long (i.e. tumblr savior, or dw blocker). I do know that they have(?) developed a way to search a community that allows user to include some tags, while excluding others. I don't think that you're necessarily stealing a tag from something else to warn for non con and maybe graphic body horror/mutilation/torture type stuff. A lot of people are into those kinds of stories, but the people who aren't into them tend to really not like them, and would probably appreciate having the ability to exclude them from search results.
E. I think biweekly is reasonable for tropes. I do like an author of the month, especially if we can find people who have some freebies out there.