Genre
By organizing your books by genre, you have a methodical system which means every book has its home. It means that if you need to assess all your fantasy books, they are all in one place. Here are some photos of my shelves which are organized by genre.
A general overview of my shelves. The top two shelves are organized very strictly by genre, but after that it was like playing a game of tetris.
Pros: Everything has its place and easy to find books.
Cons: If an author writes in more than one genre, their books will be split up.
Alphabetically
This time last year, my books where organized completely by surname. Regardless of genre. I had it like this for about a year, but soon found it was hard to see which books went where. I still have them organized by surname, but within the genre category.
Pros: Regardless of genre, the authors books will be kept together and it is very logical (it is a good method for people who like libraries).
Cons: Can look quite messy and books are hard to find.
Height
I once watched a YouTube video about organization methods and they organized their books by height. It looked very satisfying to see the books gradually get smaller and it had some logic to it.
Pros: Very nice to look at and good for shelves that have been mounted to the wall (i.e not your traditional bookshelf).
Cons: In the UK new paperbacks are taller than when the book goes into reprint, meaning that if you join a series half way through, that series will be separated due to different heights.
Rainbow
I know that this is a lot of peoples preferred method of organizing books, but personally, it isn't for me. Like the title suggests, the books are organized by the colours of the rainbow and if done with lots of different coloured books, can look truly beautiful. If I have a selection of odd books that don't fit into a certain genre, I may include a rainbow shelf next time I organize my books.
Pros: Exceptionally pretty to look and good for people who can visualize colours.
Cons: Series get separated and can be quite time-consuming for people to organize.
Those are all the methods I know for organizing books, if there are any that I have missed out, then please let me know.
Carenza x
