How BISAC Codes Make Your Book Easy to Find
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Have you ever wondered how libraries always seem to know just where to put, say, biographies about business figures (BIO003000)? Or how miraculously easy it is to find children’s fiction about dogs (JUV002070) at your favourite online bookseller? Hint: today’s digital-first era needs something a bit more flexible than the Dewey Decimal System.
Online searches feel like magic but they actually rely on metadata: a series of keywords and codes embedded in an online listing that allows search engines to efficiently search and sort results. One of the key pieces of metadata for books is its BISAC codes.
BISAC — which stands for Book Industry Standards and Communications — codes are a series of industry–agreed upon identifiers that capture key aspects of a book’s genre and intended audience. These codes — comprising a 3-letter prefix and a 6-digit sequence, like the ones above — enable bookstores, libraries, and online databases to easily organize books based on topic categories. These categories make it much easier for readers to find books on the topic they’re looking for.
To better understand how they work — and how you can make them most effective for your book — let’s look at their categories, how they’re used in metadata, and the importance of refining your target audience.
Breaking Down the Categories
BISAC codes are powerful, but they aren’t limitless. You can’t just edit their descriptions or make up your own, because made-up codes won’t appear in the database — meaning they won’t actually work for the retailers and readers who need them. You need to select from the hundreds of codes that the BISAC members have painstakingly developed and curated. Established in 1976, their 2,800+ contributors across 10 countries include publishers, book manufacturers, distributors, libraries, and retailers. They work together to assess trends in publishing, thereby enabling industry-wide research on how books are reaching readers. They frequently review the available codes to ensure the list evolves as needed to reflect what is being published and sold.
Here’s the current BISAC code list. To navigate the codes, you’ll want to look for two key aspects: whether it’s fiction or nonfiction, and the age of a book’s intended readers. This separates all of the codes into these 6 non-mixable categories.
FIC comprises all fiction genres for adults;
Nonfiction codes for adults are broken down by topic, including such codes as BIO for Biography, CKB for Cooking, or HIS for History;
JUV is for juvenile fictional (commonly known as children’s books);
JNF is for juvenile nonfiction;
YAF for Young Adult fiction;
YAN is for Young Adult nonfiction.
Each of these categories include a number of codes which help to break the group into specific subgroups. For example, for a YA fantasy, there are many options, including:
YAF019010 YOUNG ADULT FICTION / Fantasy / Contemporary
YAF019030 YOUNG ADULT FICTION / Fantasy / Epic
YAF019040 YOUNG ADULT FICTION / Fantasy / Historical
Categories also include a General option in case you can’t find a specific code that explicitly describes your book.
How BISAC Codes Are Used in Metadata
Most libraries still use the Dewey Decimal System (DDS) for shelving their physical books, which also uses a by-topic organizing principle but stocks books in numerical order. DDS codes utilize a 3-digit category code (broken down into 100 sub-categories) on the left of a decimal point, and a variable sequence on the right to provide more specificity. For example: 636.70887 is for dog training; 600s are for technology, 630s are for agriculture, 636 is for animal husbandry, and so on. This means each book has only one “correct” location in the numerical sequence. As you might have guessed, you need to be an expert in library sciences to be able to decode the DDS with ease.
Enter the BISAC codes! If you flip open a recent book on your shelf, you may see a BISAC code printed on the copyright page. Some books even have multiple codes included. What you may not see is that each book’s online listing has BISAC codes saved in its metadata.
With the advent of online bookstores and online book buying, BISAC codes have become even more powerful. Now, you don’t need to navigate to the specific “cooking” section of the bookstore to find the cookbook you want, or to peruse the latest self-help releases until you find the topic you want. You can type in what you need (like “books about cats”) and the search engine pulls up the closest matches. To do this, the search engine is using metadata: a series of behind-the-scenes keywords to sort listing options. This enables up to three different BISAC codes to be stored in your book’s metadata, broadening the number of “shelves” your book can simultaneously appear on.
For example, say your book is a nonfiction for adults about practising meditation to address stress. Your primary category is likely SEL019000 (SELF-HELP / Meditations); but your book also fits in SEL024000 (SELF-HELP / Self-Management / Stress Management). And if you’re leaning into the spiritual aspect of zen meditation in your approach, it might also fit under PHI025000 (PHILOSOPHY / Zen).
Typically, a bookstore employee uses these as a guide for what section of the bookstore this book should be shelved in; books are then stocked by the author’s last name. Even librarians use BISAC in their internal digital search engines. Keep in mind that for physical stores, especially if only one code is printed in your book, you’ll want the most relevant code to be the first one listed. This ensures it will be stocked with the most similar books and therefore easiest to find.
Refining Your Target Audience
If you’re not sure which codes are the “most relevant” to you, it might be time to refine your target audience. A book cannot mix those top categories brackets we outlined above. It cannot be “kind of fiction, but also nonfiction.” And it cannot be listed in both JUV and FIC because the books intended for adults are not appropriate for young readers. This isn’t necessarily about saucy language, either — it’s about themes, reading level, and complexity.
If you have a crossover book, like a Young Adult fantasy romance, you might have a lot of adult readers, too. What do you do? Well, you have to choose your primary audience, which is YAF. Those adult readers with a penchant for reading YA will go looking for them, but the book needs to be marketed to its original intended audience first: young adult readers.
Other examples that can be tricky to navigate include novels “based on a true story” (it’s still FIC), or educational children’s books that use fictional framing to teach readers about nonfiction topics, like STEM (it depends).
Age ranges are: 0–11 for JUV and JNF, 12–18 for YAF and YAN, and 19+ for FIC and all nonfiction codes. Remember, this is for the primary intended audience, not the person buying the book. For books that are meant to be read aloud, it’s who they’re reading the book to, rather than the reader themself. When readers outside this main group also enjoy your book, it’s a bonus!
If this all seems a bit fiddly, it’s worth getting right. Since BISAC codes are one of the first ways readers find new books to read (even if they didn’t know it), you’ll want to assess your book and decide which category it belongs in. Take a look at some books that you admire, that you’d love to see your book stocked alongside, and check which BISAC codes they’re using. If you’re working with a publishing partner like FriesenPress, your project manager can suggest codes that best fit your project. You can always use the General option if you’re feeling stuck, and you can always flesh out your metadata with additional keywords. The important thing is making sure your book is easy to find — and BISAC codes will automatically slot your book onto the correct shelves.
Astra Crompton (she/they) is an eclectic writer, editor, and illustrator with over twenty-five years of publishing experience. Her work has been published in anthologies, table-top RPG books, magazines, and in several novels. They have also successfully completed NaNoWriMo six times and counting. Astra is currently the Editing & Illustrations Coordinator at FriesenPress, where they manage, coordinate, and vet FriesenPress’s industry-leading editing and illustrations teams.
