Know Your Shelf (Part 1): How Book Genres are Determined in North America

It goes without saying that I love to visit bookstores, even if it’s just to browse the new arrivals, admire the covers, and add books to my Goodreads “Want to Read” shelf. The Barnes & Noble near me is strategically organized to encourage this browsing behavior, with numerous tables labeled with signs coyly entreating you to come closer and peer at their books. 

When Emmily and I were visiting a few months ago, we were drawn in by the sign that promised speculative fiction. She and I thought of speculative fiction as a genre that explores hypothetical questions in the real world as they apply to an individual or small group of people: What if a portal to another world opened under your kitchen sink, but only animals could go through? What if you were trapped in your car as Germany entered an ice age? We expected short stories to be on the table—an ideal format for our definition of speculative fiction.

When we got to the table, though, we quickly realized that Barnes and Noble’s definition of speculative fiction was not the same as ours. Atop the table, among other titles that didn’t seem to belong, were A Game of Thrones, The Name of the Wind, and Jade City—all books I would consider to be epic fantasy. They take place in fictional worlds and rely heavily on world building and plot development rather than character development to drive the story. It seemed to me that if these were speculative fiction, then pretty much all fiction could be considered “speculative.”

What Barnes & Noble’s “speculative fiction” table highlighted was the ambiguity of book genres. Because books are art and art is subjective, opinions of what certain genres and subgenres can and should include can vary wildly from person to person.

Standardization in the publishing industry often leaves much to be desired, and assigning book genres is no exception. Although there is a system in place called Thema that is designed to be the international standard for book categorization, worldwide adoption has been slow since its 2013 launch. North America primarily uses BISAC subject codes to categorize books.

BISAC Codes Defined

Created by the Book Industry Study Group (BISG), Book Industry Standards and Communications subject codes (or just BISAC codes) indicate the best approximation of the genre of the book. BISAC codes are assigned to books by their publishers (or authors, if self-published).

Assigning the most appropriate genres to books ensures that they get physically and digitally shelved based on the content of the books, and readers will then be able to find the content that they want. Without labeling books with genres, booksellers would have to shelve books some other way—perhaps by size, by color, or by title, which would make discovering books that you like much more difficult. Therefore, a book’s BISAC codes can and should get very specific.

Let’s pretend you are an author who is looking to self-publish your book, and the platform on which you are publishing is asking you for BISAC codes. You know that your book fits under the YA fantasy umbrella, but there are many subjects and subgenres under that umbrella. How can you highlight your book’s unique characteristics for prospective readers?

You would start with this list, which states the fifty-three subject headings under which all books fall. Notably, most of them are nonfiction headings, which makes your life a lot easier. You find “Young Adult Fiction” near the bottom and click that.

Now you encounter a long list of codes that combine the letters “YAF” with a series of numbers. Each code is accompanied with a tree of headings and subheadings. You notice that the trees are in alphabetical order, know your book is a YA fantasy, so you scroll down to the F’s. There it is: YAF019060. This code’s tree, Young Adult Fiction / Fantasy / Romance, perfectly describes your book. With this designation, readers who will like your book will be able to find it.

BISG recommends you don’t exceed three BISAC codes for each book but that you should include more than one if your main code doesn’t fully encompass the key details of your book. After thinking about it, you realize that you want to highlight the quest that is at the center of your book’s plot. You choose the two codes that best highlight this: YAF001000 (for Action & Adventure / General) and YAF019030 (for Fantasy / Epic). Now you’ve got three specific codes that will help booksellers and readers find your book.

A Game of Thrones, The Name of the Wind, and Jade City
BISAC Codes

Finding BISAC codes for your hypothetical book was pretty easy, but it’s not always as cut-and-dried. What if you consider your book to be speculative fiction?

Interestingly, speculative fiction is not a genre or subgenre that is covered by BISAC codes. Even more interestingly, Thema codes do cover speculative fiction. By Barnes & Noble’s definition, speculative fiction is “the perfect mash-up of your supernatural, fantastical, magical, and futuristic dreams.” By Thema’s definition, speculative fiction works “speculate about different realities from the actual recognisable world, or other worlds or universes, using elements of science, supernatural, paranormal, futuristic or other imaginative elements that are not part of everyday reality as a major theme of the story.” 

I suppose I should cut Barnes & Noble some slack; by Thema’s definition, I can see how fantasy novels could be considered speculative fiction, especially if there isn’t a standardized definition for speculative fiction in the region. 

As you can see, book genres can be subjective and hard to define. Despite their ambiguity, they are extremely important for everyone, from the publishers to the booksellers to the readers. BISAC codes allow books to be properly categorized and shelved in North America, which can help readers zero in on the books they want to read.

And in case you were curious, here are the BISAC codes for the three books I named above. (I don’t know how to access a book’s Thema codes—someone, please enlighten me if you know.)

• A Game of Thrones’s BISAC codes: 

• Fiction / Fantasy / Epic 

• Fiction / Action & Adventure

• Fiction / Science Fiction / Action & Adventure

• The Name of the Wind’s codes: 

• Fiction / Fantasy / Epic 

• Fiction / Fantasy / Paranormal

• Fiction / Literary

• Jade City’s codes: 

• Fiction / Fantasy / Action & Adventure

• Fiction / Fantasy / Epic

• Fiction / Fantasy / Historical

• Fiction / Fantasy / Urban ✿