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      13-Marketing Principles

      Book Categories – why authors should care

      • Posted by authorhub.info
      • Categories 13-Marketing Principles
      book classification systems

      Dewey Decimal System

      Anyone who has been in a UK library will have seen Dewy in action – this is the classification system used to put every book on the right shelf and is the number on the little label on a book’s spine. While it’s good to know about, it’s not the most important one for anyone in the business of selling books. It doesn’t have the commercial importance of the following three classification systems.

      Thema Categories

      Thema is a categorisation system that makes books discoverable by communicating accurate and detailed subject information to publishers, retailers and the book trade. If you are looking for inspiration for a book to write, or where your book might fit in with others, this is an excellent place to start. It’s also the classification system used by the book trade in the UK, and is being adopted as the global standard for book classification, so digging around these categories will help when it comes to classifying your book for international buyers too.

      If you need the clincher – this is the system that Amazon is also embracing, complementing their own, custom classification system.

      A word of warning – everyone wants to write something ‘different’, but if it won’t fit into at least one of these classifications you make the book much harder to find.

      The Arts
      Language and Linguistics
      Biography, Literature and Literary studies
      Fiction and Related items
      Reference, Information and Interdisciplinary subjects
      Society and Social Sciences
      Economics, Finance, Business and Management
      Law
      Medicine and Nursing
      History and Archaeology
      Mathematics and Science
      Philosophy and Religion
      Earth Sciences, Geography, Environment, Planning
      Sports and Active outdoor recreation
      Technology, Engineering, Agriculture, Industrial processes
      Computing and Information Technology
      Health, Relationships and Personal development
      Lifestyle, Hobbies and Leisure
      Graphic novels, Comic books, Cartoons
      Children’s, Teenage and Educational
      Place qualifiers
      Language qualifiers
      Time period qualifiers
      Educational purpose qualifiers
      Interest qualifiers
      Style qualifiers

      BIC Categories

      BIC is the standard classification scheme for the UK book trade. BIC allows users to classify their titles precisely and assign multiple categories for books which cover multiple topics. Thema is being adopted by more and more users and will eventually replace BIC so as of February 2017 there are no new BIC categories in development.

      It’s not hard to see that Thema is based on BIC by the similarity of many classification codes.

      The arts…
      Biography and True Stories…
      Language…
      Literature and literary studies…
      English language teaching (ELT)…
      Fiction and related items…
      Reference, information and interdisciplinary subjects…
      Humanities…
      Society and social sciences…
      Economics, finance, business and management…
      Law…
      Medicine…
      Mathematics and science…
      Earth sciences, geography, environment, planning…
      Technology, engineering, agriculture…
      Computing and information technology…
      Health and personal development…
      Lifestyle, sport and leisure…
      Children’s, teenage and educational…

      BISAC Categories

      BISAC stands for Book Industry Standards and Communications and is used in North America. BISAC subject headings can determine where a book is put in a brick and mortar book store and the genres under which it can be searched for in an internal database. There are fifty-four major sections and each section has sub-topics to allow for precise categorisation.

      ANTIQUES & COLLECTIBLES
      ARCHITECTURE
      ART
      BIBLES
      BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY
      BODY, MIND & SPIRIT
      BUSINESS & ECONOMICS
      COMICS & GRAPHIC NOVELS
      COMPUTERS
      COOKING
      CRAFTS & HOBBIES
      DESIGN
      DRAMA
      EDUCATION
      FAMILY & RELATIONSHIPS
      FICTION
      FOREIGN LANGUAGE STUDY
      GAMES & ACTIVITIES
      GARDENING 
      HEALTH & FITNESS
      HISTORY
      HOUSE & HOME
      HUMOR
      JUVENILE FICTION
      JUVENILE NONFICTION
      LANGUAGE ARTS & DISCIPLINES
      LAW
      LITERARY COLLECTIONS
      LITERARY CRITICISM
      MATHEMATICS
      MEDICAL
      MUSIC
      NATURE
      PERFORMING ARTS
      PETS
      PHILOSOPHY 
      PHOTOGRAPHY
      POETRY
      POLITICAL SCIENCE
      PSYCHOLOGY
      REFERENCE
      RELIGION
      SCIENCE
      SELF-HELP
      SOCIAL SCIENCE
      SPORTS & RECREATION
      STUDY AIDS
      TECHNOLOGY & ENGINEERING
      TRANSPORTATION
      TRAVEL
      TRUE CRIME
      YOUNG ADULT FICTION
      YOUNG ADULT NONFICTION

      Other Systems

      Every country in the world deals with classifying books in a way that makes sense. Thema is set to replace many of them, and as each country joins the system, it will add its own codes that have special relevance. For those of us selling books, they are largely irrelevant – that is unless we are selling in that country. Under those circumstances, it’s very useful to explore the local categorisation system to list it with the most opportunity to be discovered.

      Sources:

      • https://www.bic.org.uk/86/THEMA/
      • https://www.bic.org.uk/7/BIC-Standard-Subject-Categories/
      • https://bisg.org/page/BISACSubjectCodes

      Tag:bic, classification, dewey, discovery, thema

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