FAQs

Absolutely. Concepts are designed to allow idea-first exploration as described in a previous entry.

They may evolve, but only with caution and continuity. We take a lot of pains to ensure consistency on Unsans.

Topics and concepts help readers (or browsers) decide on how their search is structured. For instance, they can take a top-down approach by using topics and zeroing in on the specific book in that topic. Concepts, on the other hand, are more of a bottoms-up approach that lets the user explore ideas and thus find books that talk about it.

We try to cover as many concepts as we can, ensuring that every concept should adequately describe the book’s conceptual substance without diluting meaning. A book may have only a single concept; on the other hand, a few may have a couple dozen of them. Usually, most books may have between five and fifteen of them.

Concepts capture specific ideas, concepts, or modes of thinking introduced or clarified by a book. A book can have multiple concepts associated with it, and a concept may apply to multiple books.

Topics are broad intellectual lenses such as philosophy, psychology, or decision-making; they describe the overarching classification or category of the book. A book can be in multiple topics; however, on Unsans we take pains to identify the singular and most definitive topic that the book should reside in. Ever so often, we may decide that the book is best described not in one but in two (or more, incredibly rarely) topics. But this is the rare case and not the norm on Unsans.

Unsans seeks to be factual and its copy represents that ethos. Words like “inspiring” and “life-changing” are (in our opinion) marketing buzzwords and may or may not be true, and even if they are they may have different impacts on different readers. Unsans operates not in the realm of feelings, but ideas.