Maximize your book’s discoverability with the right BISAC codes. Learn how to categorize, market, and position your book effectively to reach ideal readers!

Like most industries, book publishing has its own lingo and acronyms. For example, an uncorrected Advance Reading Copy of your book may be called an “ARC,” a “galley,” or even a “DARC,” if digital.

One of the publishing acronyms that’s often undervalued by authors is the BISAC. But it’s an essential tool. 

BISAC stands for Book Industry Standards and Communications. They are numerical and descriptive codes that represent specific subject categories—including drilled-down subcategories of broader topics. 

BISAC codes guide the categorization, marketing, and discovery process of a book in physical spaces, digital databases, and online search. They’re valuable data affecting the actions of distributors, retailers, libraries, search engines, algorithms, and consumers. Find the current master list of BISAC codes here.  

What do they do? 

• Shelving: BISAC codes tell a brick-and-mortar business where to physically place a print book in a store (or a library) for stocking the book and for promoting it with comparable products. 
• Search: They help an online bookseller’s search results to deliver a book’s buy page to the appropriate consumers. They impact the algorithm that drives user activity on sites like Amazon, BN.com, Bookshop.org, and IndieBound.org. They also inform the search results of databases at wholesalers and distributors: If your distributor needs to pull a list of their forthcoming women’s fiction novels, these codes will help them find the right books.
• Consistency: BISAC codes help maintain a standard throughout the supply chain so that everyone (publisher, distributor, reseller) has consistent metadata guiding the marketing of a book. Metadata in publishing refers to all the bibliographic information about a book, including author name, title/subtitle, ISBN, price, keywords, description, and BISAC codes.
• Amazon: The sales ranking categories you see on a book’s buy page are Amazon’s own categories. If your book is fed to Amazon from elsewhere, Amazon takes the BISAC codes assigned to a book and extrapolates their own subject categories from them (keywords also help Amazon determine a book’s categorization.) If your book is an Amazon KDP project, you can also self-select Amazon’s own categories directly through your portal. 

Why is this important? 

The positioning of your book is the key to reaching its target readers. And if you aren’t reaching the right readers for your book, it won’t do well. No book is truly for all readers. Knowing who your readers are (and there may be multiple readerships) is the foundation of any successful book marketing campaign. Before you finalize a title, a cover design, or even a publisher or publishing route, you should know who is most likely to want to read your book and for whom you have primarily written it.

Best practices for selecting BISAC codes:

• Choose no more than three BISAC codes for a title. (Only choose fewer than three if one or two codes comprehensively describe the book and all its readers.)
• Never choose a broad category when an appropriate, more specific subcategory exists. Do not choose umbrella categories like “SELF-HELP/General” and don’t choose general subcategories when a more specific one exists (If your book helps readers become more successful, then SELF-HELP/Personal Growth/Success is a better BISAC than SELF-HELP/ Personal Growth/General)
• List your BISAC codes in descending order of primary reader and secondary/tertiary audiences. Let’s say you have a coloring book that also serves to teach basic art concepts by way of flower illustrations. First choose the BISAC that will physically and digitally shelve your book with coloring books (GAMES & ACTIVITIES/Coloring Books). Next, choose codes that will help your book more specifically reach people who like flowers (NATURE/Plants/Flowers) or who want to learn art composition skills (ART/Techniques/Composition). 

This combination of three different subject categories (activities, nature and art) plus specific subcategories combine to reach those most likely interested in this book while clearly prioritizing the primary audience, adults who buy coloring books. 

The Book Industry Study Group’s FAQ, found here, has additional tips for choosing the most advantageous subject headings for your book.

Be Open to Change

BISAC codes aren’t written in stone; they can be revised if needed. Publishers (and self-published authors) typically have online portal access to the distribution systems that list their book. 

If your initial idea of an ideal reader has evolved, tweak the BISACs to reflect that. Maybe your self-help book is resonating with work and career podcasts, or your book is not appearing in the search results where you think it belongs. Review your BISAC code choices and adjust. Sometimes reversing the order and changing the primary is enough to reorient the algorithm; other times selecting new and more suitable codes is the ticket. 

Also, the BISAC list is updated annually; some codes are retired or renamed and new ones are created, so consider them fluid.  

BISAC Selection Can Help or Hurt Your Book

Many books have more than one interest area and cross genres. But a miscategorized book can disappoint readers. If your first BISAC code puts your book with mysteries but it’s primarily science fiction, mystery readers may be disappointed. Reviews, and sales, could suffer when reality doesn’t meet expectations.

If your primary BISAC places your book in YA but the ideal audience is older than that, the right readers may not even discover it, not in search results nor on bookstore shelves. 

Not reaching the right reader, or reaching the wrong one, are both problems that can be mitigated by carefully choosing the right BISAC codes for your book. 

For more guidance on metadata decisions like these and best practices for marketing your book effectively, consider a partner like PR by the Book. Start planning your comprehensive marketing strategy today and contact us to guide you through the process for lasting results. 

Looking for more guidance on publishing? Check out these blog posts:

• 5 Essential Strategies for Running a Successful Price Promotion
• The 7 Key Steps to Successful Publishing
• Making the Most of Your Goodreads Author Profile