If you’re a book lover, chances are you have a lot of hard copy books to store. Here are 6 ideas on how to organize your bookshelves, along with some additional tips.
Simple Organization Techniques
1. By Title
The most simple organization system is alphabetically, by title. This makes finding a book easy as long as you know the title, but it’s not the best for someone who is browsing your shelves to organically find new books to try.
2. By Genre
You could organize your bookshelves by genre, which does allow for better browsing. It can be difficult, though, to decide what book belongs in which genre, so this will require a lot of personal preference.
3. By Author
This method is doubly useful because most authors write in the same genre, so organizing by author also provides some genre organization. It also makes it easy to find and read other books by authors you love.
4. Chronologically
You could organize your books based on the time period they cover or are set in.
5. By Size and/or Color
Some people just want their books to look pretty, so organizing by size and color my work best for them. I personally find this method unhelpful for book browsing, and since book browsing and reading is my main goal, I don’t organize my books this way. But if you’re not one to reread books and you like the visual appeal, this method may work for you.
6. By Read and Unread
If you have a lot of unread books, this could be a good way to track them. It will require a frequent shuffling of books, though, assuming you’re making your way through the unread bookcase.
A Combination of Techniques
Combining techniques can result in the perfect system. You could organize by author, followed by alphabetically by title. Or you can do what most bookstores do, which is to organize by genre, then author, then title. You could also organize by author, and then by color, and so on.
The method that will work best for you depends on your browsing and reading habits. I personally put my fiction and nonfiction into separate bookshelves. My nonfiction I organize by subject matter, since when I read nonfiction, I want to learn more about a particular topic; author and titles are less important to me. For my fiction, I organize first by author name, since I identify books I like by the author. After organizing by author, I organize by series order, since that’s how I read, and it makes grabbing the next book easy. Even if the author’s books aren’t in a series, they are often placed in the same world and can be organized chronologically. If the books aren’t related to each other at all, I admit I then organize them according to height.
Additional Tips
Buy Nice-Sized Bookcases
I’ve seen a lot of those half-sized bookcases out there, and they just don’t fit many books. You’ll want full-sized, sturdy bookcases. And if you can afford to get more than one at a time, you can be sure that your bookcases will match. If not, make sure to note the color and where you bought it from so it’s easy to order a similar one in the future (seriously, there are so many colors of wood out there, making a note is a good idea).
Leave Some Room
If you tend to buy book series in pieces like I do, or you know an author you like has more books coming out that you intend to eventually buy, leave a bit of room for these books on your shelves. Until you buy the books, you can fill the space with cool bookends. Then when you get the books, you don’t have to reorganize all your bookcases.
How do you organize your bookshelves? We'd love to hear in the comments below!
Happy reading.
What no comments?
My main bookshelf is organized by author and my Fantasy/Science fiction collection is organized by genre, author, and then chronologically by when they were published. Lastly my non-fiction texts are organized by topic (history, environment, health, ETC.)
Since I’m a re-reader, my very favorite books have shelves of their own. Then I’m a genre organizer-sort of. If you consider fiction with romance, mystery and suspense lumped in one, Christian fiction and reference in another, and science fiction in the third, then I’m a genre person. Since I’m also an author of Christian fiction, my published books have their own shelf, and writing reference has a huge desk drawer while resources for research has a cabinet built into my desk. Three bookshelves stay fairly full.
Any ideas about what to do with read books you don’t want to save? My librarian-mother-in-law groans when I bring a box in. Too many.
You could try swapping unwanted books with friends, or donating them to a school, or donating them to a prison, or selling them to a used bookstore, or selling them at a yard sale...There are a lot of options. I think I'll do more research and write a blog post on it!
I put all my books that are in the same series together and books by the same author tend to be near each other, but other than that I really just put them on the shelf wherever they’ll fit...
I have bookcases for read and unread. Then on my read shelf it is by genre, author, by series, and finally publication date. After much debate on what to do with Stephen, King it was decided that publication date made the most sense when it wasn’t a series. So Dark Tower series is all together based on first publication date; then the next published book goes up.
This has allowed us to see what are older or newer works by authors with many books. It also allows me to see “publication order” to read which is generally my preference (unless author indicates otherwise).
It’s such an interesting topic to hear about what others do for their organization!!
I do a combination. My books are first organized by author, then I have them in chronological order of when the book came first came out. This also has the added benefit of the series that I have are in the order they are supposed to be in.
We are in the process of doing this now. I think we will organize by author and then by size of books. Debating on whether to keep paperbacks, usually do just until I find the hardback.