Why booktribes?

Everyone knows the best way of discovering new books is through word of mouth.

Trouble is that it’s booksellers and publishers who seem to have the loudest voices in deciding what we should read.

It’s no secret that publishers pay big book chains to give prominence to titles they want to push. Online booksellers have their own agendas too.

Things aren’t much better when it comes to radio and television bookclubs where they tell you what your next book is to be. Sorry, but how weird is that?

Isn’t it time there was a place where reader can speak to reader? A place where you can find people with shared – or wildly different – tastes. Where you can see who loves what and who’s reading what, right now in real time. Where you can click your favourites, badmouth duds, rate, review and tag over two million titles. Where groups decide what they are going to read. Where you can keep quiet … or start or join debates and message other members with top tips or whatever you damn well like, frankly. A place, above all, of honest opinions – not marketing spin.

This place is Booktribes.

Booktribes is new. It's dedicated to the joy of reading. And it's entirely independent. We're not tied to any bookseller, publisher, internet search engine or anything. We're not trying to sell you books; only to make it easier for you to savour them. Our main aim is to put our users in charge of what they read and what they think about what they read. To cut out the hype and get to the real deal.

The site is a work in progress. If you're not happy with the way we're doing things, we'll do them differently. That's a promise, so be brutal with your comments. You don't need to spare our feelings.

Our other main aims are:

A - to help you find great new ideas about what to read in a way that's never been possible before - the biggest personal recommendation network anywhere. Our search engine is not perfect, but it's already pretty cool and pretty clever. For starters, we have a database of 2.5m books and rapidly growing numbers of reader recommendations. It will get better the more people join;

B - to give you your own personal book space where you can rate books, write about what you like and don't like, and share your comments with other readers

C - to put you in touch with those who share your reading tastes - or maybe don't .

Please feel free to browse around. Register, and you get immediate access to every function we can offer. Tell your friends - every title on the site can generate a “Recommend This Book to a Friend” email - and we might even begin to think we’re doing something right.