What is a BISAC subject and how do I choose the right BISACs?

Modified on Wed, 29 Jan at 5:05 PM

BISAC subjects are the official Book Industry Study Group’s genre codes.

BISAC are the industry standard codes used to identify and "shelve" your listings with each book store. To proceed with publishing, at least one BISAC must be selected.

BISAC best practices:

Be as specific as possible. Consider the CONTENT of your book, not the language it’s written in, the format, or even your audience. You need to choose a BISAC that informs people about what’s inside. Do not use the non-classifiable BISAC. If you have words inside your book (also known as content), it’s classifiable.
Assign your BISAC in order of importance. Some retailers will accept two, three, or even more codes, but many will only accept the first one listed. Your first Subject Code is your most important!
Don’t cross the streams. Do not mix FICTION and NON-FICTION BISACs. Do not add Juvenile BISACs on the same book with Adult BISACs. Do not mix Young Adult with Adult Fiction BISACs.
Be consistent. If you have print, audiobooks, ebooks, traditional mass-market, whatever— make sure your BISACs are the same for the same book.

Another common consistency error is classifying books in series differently. Say you have a vampire romance. Book 1 is classified as Fiction/Romance/Paranomal. For Book 2, an author might be tempted to stick the book in Fiction/Science Fiction/Paranormal just to see which BISAC has the best return. That sounds like smart market testing, but in reality it makes your books difficult to find. Buyers would have to be looking on two different virtual shelves to find the two different books. Put all books in a series under the SAME BISACs. If you want to test a new main BISAC, change them all to match.

How Do I select a BISAC on Draft2Digital?

To select a BISAC using the BISAC tool in your Shared Metadata when you set up your book:

(Optional) You can type a term into the "Filter BISACs" field to narrow the listed Subjects if you have a topic or category in mind
From the Subject List, click a Primary Category. This will open up the subcategories found in that category
Scroll through the list on the left until you see something that fits your book. Click on it. If the item you clicked on has a plus sign (+) next to it, this means that further subcategories will open below it
Once you click on an item that has no more subcategories to select from, you should see the final selection added automatically to the "Prioritized BISACs" box found to the right of the Subject List

You can Select up to five BISACs using this method, though not all vendors utilize all five BISACs, so be sure to keep your most relevant BISAC at the top of your list of Prioritized BISACs. When you have multiple BISACs in the Prioritized BISAC box, you can click and drag them to re-order them in the order of their relevance and importance.

EXAMPLE OF THE DRAFT2DIGITAL BISAC SELECTOR