The What should I read next? FAQ
What's new at WSIRN?WSIRN relaunched in February 2010. The major new feature is the ability to look up books by ISBN. We've also improved the efficiency of the database, and improved looking up titles not already in it. And we have lots of plans for new features coming soon, which will include an API!
How does WSIRN work?
WSIRN produces recommendations based purely on collective taste: when books are entered into the same favourites list, they become associated with each other. The more often particular items appear on different lists, the stronger that association becomes. Purely and simply, WSIRN represents mass opinion about books. Over time the recommendations should get better and better as the database grows. (Note that books by authors you have entered won't appear in the results - we've assumed that you've thought of reading those!)
How should I use it?
If you simply want a quick recommendation, you only need to enter one book; confirm that we've got the right one on the next page, and then you can click the WSIRN button to get some recommendations. The best thing to do, though, is enter a list of favourites. This will give you more focused recommendations, as well as helping to build the database and share your taste with other users of the site. If you enter your email address, your list of favourites will be remembered next time you visit, so you can then add new titles and get even more appropriate recommendations.
What if I can't find the book I'm looking for?
Most of the time the database will identify your book by title/author straight away (you will see a list of close matches, with the most likely one at the top). Now and again it may not come up with what you're looking for immediately. If so, try checking you've spelt them correctly - also, try just entering the author's surname and a keyword from the book title. If that still doesn't work, the best thing is to go back and enter the ISBN number from the book's bar code. We can then look that up elsewhere. If you're really stuck, get in touch with us via the Thoughtplay link below and we'll try to help you out as soon as we can.
Who's behind it?
WSIRN is the brainchild of Andrew Chapman and Paul Lenz at Thoughtplay Ltd. We're the people behind the big success of the UK 2005 general election and US 2008 Presidential election, Who should you vote for?. We love creating interesting online projects that get real people involved - look out for more sites on their way. You can contact us via the Thoughtplay site if you have any feedback or ideas - we'd love to hear from you.
Doesn't Amazon do all this with its recommendations?
Amazon certainly offers a useful recommendation system, but it is based on your past buying patterns and those of other users - but you don't always buy items for yourself. Our system has no commercial agenda at all (though you can buy the recommended items through Amazon, of course), and is purely based on items that real people actually like. We're not trying to urge you to buy particular bestsellers or anything like that - we simply want to help people share their favourite items with each other.
What happened to the music and films in my list?
Only a small number of people were using the sister site, ThisOneNext.com, so we decided to focus on what the vast majority of people use the site for: books. If you had a long list of music/films that you don't want to lose, do get in touch and we can email it to you.
Are you making money from this?
The only money we make is if people buy items through Amazon - we get a very small percentage. This will help to cover our site hosting and programming costs, but is certainly not going to be something we can live off!
What happens if I enter my email address? Will I be spammed?
Entering your email, as explained above, simply means you can come back and add new favourites to your previous list.We may send you the occasional message to let you know about updates to the site or new projects we're launching, but these would be infrequent, and we absolutely do NOT share email addresses with any third party.