4 Tips for and 3 Benefits of Organizing Your Books by Genre

Many of the tips will also overlap plenty with the tips for other organization methods. The explanations and reasonings for each tip, though, will differ based on how you're organizing your books.

This specific post will get into a bit of detail of overlapping two organization methods, mainly because, in my opinion, that's the best way to organize by genre.

Let's get started with the tips and benefits of organizing your books by genre!

Tip 1: Decide on how you want to organize your books.

You've decided on organizing by genre. But, as I said above, I think it's best to organize by genre alongside another organization method. You can overlap this organization method with any other (although color may be a bit difficult to overlap with genre). You can overlap genre organization with alphabetical, chronology, or height (to be published on the 28th). Let's say you decide to organize based on genre and the alphabet.

Tip 2: Completely clear off your bookshelf and any space that has books on it.

This way, you're not shuffling books around on your bookshelf. You'll also have plenty of room on your shelf to get your books fully organized.

Tip 3: Set your books into piles based on the color.

Put all of your books into piles of each genre. If you have the sci-fi, contemporary, YA, historical fiction, and fantasy genres, then put your books into those piles. As with this tip in all the other posts, if you need 2+ piles for one genre, keep them close together. You also don't have to organize by author's last name just yet. Do that once you're in Tip 4.

Tip 4: Once you have your piles set up, start organizing the books on the shelves.

I would recommend organizing on 3 levels. First, go alphabetically. Adding to Tip 1 and Tip 3, alphabetize your genres. If you have the genres sci-fi, contemporary, YA, historical fiction, and fantasy. Alphabetize them as contemporary, fantasy, historical fiction, sci-fi, and YA. Then, within each genre, organize by the author's last name.

Benefit 1: You know where each book is based on genre, especially if you read from quite a few genres.

It can be easy to look at your shelves, looking for a specific book, and say "Okay, my fantasy books are here, so X book will be somewhere in here."

Benefit 2: You can keep authors and series together.

Most authors will write in the same genre, and a series will also be one genre.

Benefit 3: You don't necessarily need to see a fantasy book next to a contemporary book.

If it's one of your pet peeves to see two starkly different books next to each other because they're different genres, organization this way can help diffuse this a bit.