If you’ve been around for a while, you know I’m an avid reader. I love reading in all modalities: hard copy, audiobook, and ebook.
Keeping all of these books organized is a feat, and while I don’t have systems yet for organizing my physical books (that are spread throughout my house) and my audiobooks (that are spread over several different apps), I have tackled the organization of my ebooks.
I’ve been collecting ebooks for a while now and last year I decided to start organizing them into categories that would make it easier for me to choose books if I was mood reading.
Here are the current categories I’m using on my Kindle:
- 23 for 2023 (this is a list of 30+ books that I’ve been wanting to read for a while and I’m prioritizing them for this year — so far I’ve read 6 off this list)
- 200pp or less (books that are less than 200 pages long and I’ve only included nonfiction in this category)
- 201–300pp or less (again, I’ve only included nonfiction in this category)
- 300+ pp (again, I’ve only included nonfiction in this category)
- Antiracism and Diversity
- Ben (this is a category I created for books that I think my partner will like since we share a Kindle library as part of our Prime membership)
- Change Management (since I have a credential, I like to read books on this topic)
- Coaching (see above re: having a credential)
- Comics (I don’t have much in this category since there are separate comic apps that are better readings experiences than Kindle)
- Feel Good (this is a completely subjective category of books that I deem to be palette cleansers with light and positively-oriented plots)
- Fiction (all the fiction books in all the other categories are also put in this category)
- Health (a combination of books focused on physical, mental, and emotional health)
- Historical Fiction
- Holiday (these are focused on the December holiday season with representations of mostly Christmas and Jewish observances)
- Leadership
- Library (these are books on lend from my local library)
- Lit Fiction (includes books that have some kind of critical acclaim like they have been nominated for or won a literary award)
- Memoir
- Mysteries (one of my biggest categories with over 500 ebooks)
- Netgalley (an online service where I can get advanced readers copies of books and then offer reviews)
- Nonfiction (all the nonfiction books in all the other categories are put in this category)
- Personal Development (this category could probably also be called “self help” and includes books related to my personal growth or evolution)
- Poetry
- Prime Reading (these are books that I can access and borrow for free as an Amazon Prime member)
- Read (ebooks that I have finished are moved to this category — I recently passed the 300 books read mark!)
- Reading / Up Next (this is where I put all the books that I’m currently reading or that I plan to read in the next month or so)
- Romance
- SciFi / Fantasy
- Spanish Practice (books in Spanish)
- Spiritual
- Spooky (mostly horror or Halloween-themed books)
- Travel (often in the form of memoir)
- Unlimited (these are books I borrow from the Kindle Unlimited program)
- Work & Higher Ed (books related to running a small business or to topics that are directly connected to my day job)
- YA (Young Adult) & Children’s Lit
- Yoga & Meditation
As you can imagine, ebooks can fall into multiple categories.
Once I created my own set of categories, the Kindle app automatically creates an “uncategorized” section when new books are added that haven’t been categorized yet.
When I acquire new ebooks, I sort them into their appropriate categories so that they are organized according to the system that makes the most sense for me.
Do you organize your books? What categories or systems do you use?