A short instructional YouTube video by Julie Broad explaining BISAC codes (book category metadata) and how self-published authors should select them. Julie covers why BISAC codes matter for retailers and search engines, recommends choosing up to three codes (first one specific and primary), aligning codes across formats, and notes differences in Amazon’s category mapping.
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BICEP codes are an important part of getting your book set up for success as a self publishing author. But maybe you don't know what the heck they are or how you figure it out. Well, good news then. This video is for you. Hey there, I'm Julie the Book Broad, an award winning author and founder of a fabulous self publishing services company called Book Launchers. We help you write, publish and sell a high quality nonfiction book that will help you grow your business, build your brand, and become the name people know in your industry. At Book Launchers, we have a lot of superpowers, but our biggest one is that we care about our authors more than anybody else. We care about your book being the absolute best it can be, and we care about getting it into the hands of readers. That means we have to spend time getting every detail right. And one of those details is the BISEC Code. What am I talking about? Might not even be pronouncing it right, but it's B, I, S, A, C, the BISEC code. And it's essentially the code that tells the retailers, sellers, buyers, search engines, libraries, etc. What what genre your book falls into. It's a way to categorize your book so you can see why that's pretty important, right? Let's say you're Mark Magna and you wrote this incredibly inspiring book, Dream Big, Never Quit. You are totally fine with being number one in football biographies, which he was Nice work Mark, but you don't want to end up in sports fiction or with personal finance books. The people looking for those books aren't interested in your inspirational football story. Bisect codes are are part of the metadata for your book, which I'm sure you've heard about before. So how do you select the right code? First, you should know that when you upload to a system like IngramSpark or KDP print, only one bisect code is required, but you're better off to select three. It's unlikely your book is only about one thing, and you can definitely appeal to people in more than one category. But the first one you put in should be the most accurate and ideally the most specific. The latest BISEC codes can be found here. I'll link to it in the description below. You would go to this list and start with what your book is most closely associated with. For a book like Rob Berger's Retire before mom and dad, you'd go to Business and Economics. Then you would look for what is most closely the next category. While it could fall under Finance and Wealth Management or a few others the first and most important category is going to be personal finance. So scroll on down and voila. Here is personal finance. Which one is next? Well, this is about retiring before mom and dad, so if you it would be retirement planning. Now you're going to repeat that process, starting at the top and working your way down for the next two closest categories. A quick note about Amazon Amazon's category list doesn't match with any industry standard categorization because why would they do that? And if you're using Amazon ca or Amazon.uk, these are different than Amazon.com the BISEC codes are still important because Amazon accepts the first two bisect codes you set and uses them to determine the most closely matching Amazon categories. Additionally, they also use the keywords you set to put your book into the most accurate browse category. So if you ever wonder why your book landed in some funky way off category, then you need to look back at these areas to see why Amazon maybe thought your book was a fit. Here's a couple of tips though. Select categories that apply to your book as a whole, not just a chapter. Try not to ever, ever ever use the general category as its, well, general. Be consistent with your bisect codes across different formats so the bisect code for your print book is the same as your ebook is the same as your audiobook. Make sure your readers can find you and the retailers know where to put you by choosing the best bicep codes for your book. Do you want to talk about bisect codes? I mean, who wouldn't share that in the comments below? I always respond to every comment, but especially active on the day a video is posted and when you comment the day a video is released, you'll be entered to win some sweet hashtag no boring book swag like this tip. Smash that thumbs up button. Go ahead, try it. It feels so good and makes me happy too. And make sure you subscribe to the channel and turn those notifications on so we can hang out every Tuesday and Friday when new videos come out. I've had such a good time hanging out with you today and I really don't want our time to end. So why don't you head on over to this fantastic brand new video so we can keep hanging out. Or maybe you should check out this video right here that YouTube thinks you are really gonna love. So go ahead, click on one of these videos and I will see you there. I can't wait.
