# What is a BISAC code?

BISAC subject codes are the US book trade's standard list of topics, maintained by the Book Industry Study Group (BISG). A code tells stores and databases what a book is about: three letters and six digits, each with a heading such as “BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Aviation & Nautical”.

Last reviewed 30 October 2026. Web page: https://chapbook.ink/glossary/bisac/

## What it means in practice

The subject heading can decide where a store shelves a book and which genres it can be found under in a database. BISG updates the list every year, so a heading can change.

Choose the most specific heading that is true of the book, and keep to three at most. If you publish only on KDP, you work with KDP's own categories rather than choosing codes from this list.

## How Chapbook uses it

Chapbook doesn't assign BISAC codes. The launch kit suggests 3 store categories, written like "Business › Sales › Pricing". In [the KDP listing](/manual/launch-and-export/#copy-the-kdp-listing) you find the closest match for each one in KDP's own picker.

## Made with Chapbook: Slow Money

Slow Money: What a family bakery taught me about pricing, patience and staying small, by Rosa Almeida. Nonfiction book, 9,273 words, 37 pages. A sample generated from one brief and exported unedited; it is not a customer's book. Read every page: https://chapbook.ink/examples/bakery/

The brief:

> Twenty years of running a two-shop family bakery: the decisions about price, growth and hours that kept it small and solvent. Promise: A clear-eyed account of how a small business stays small on purpose, with the numbers and rules of thumb that made it work. Reader: A small-business owner weighing a second location, a price rise, or a loan. Voice: First person, narrative chapters that each end with what the author would tell a friend; a fictional family, bakery and town; no invented statistics beyond the bakery's own illustrative numbers.

The outline the planner proposed:

1. Prologue: The Second Oven (585 words)
2. The First Price Rise (1,250 words)
3. The Loan We Did Not Take (1,101 words)
4. The Second Shop, and Why Not a Third (1,186 words)
5. Hours, and the Cost of Being Open (1,085 words)
6. The Wholesale Account We Let Go (1,142 words)
7. Hiring Family and Paying Them Properly (1,216 words)
8. What the Numbers Said Each January (1,179 words)
9. Epilogue: Small on Purpose (478 words)

## Questions

### How many BISAC codes should a book have?

BISG's best practice, in its BISAC FAQ as checked on 30 October 2026, is to select no more than three for any title.

### Do I need a BISAC code to publish on KDP?

KDP has you pick up to 3 categories from its own list. Its KDP Categories help page, checked on 30 October 2026, does not mention BISAC.

## Sources

- [Book Industry Study Group, “BISAC Subject Codes”](https://www.bisg.org/BISAC-Subject-Codes-main)
- [Book Industry Study Group, “BISAC FAQ”](https://www.bisg.org/BISAC-FAQ)
- [Amazon KDP, “KDP Categories”](https://kdp.amazon.com/en_US/help/topic/G200652170)