Books are classified into genres or types depending on what its theme is. The word genre is a French term used to denote kinds of any particular thing. A book genre is actually a broad logical way to categorize books, contributing to a sense of community or class. Today books are available across a multitude of genres and people choose their books depending on the criteria of genre. With the advent of online sales, book stores too began to separate their books based on genres, so that it would be easy for prospective buyers to look for them, on their browsers.
Today it has become a common practice for books to be grouped based on genre, right from libraries to institutions and homes. The genre of a book is often indicated on the front flap of the book to make it convenient for the readers to know the theme it belongs to.
The two broadest genres are fiction and nonfiction, which are very fundamental. The genres are classified further into sub genres, each of which has several categories. For instance fiction can be classified into several sub genres like mystery, science fiction, literary fiction, suspense etc. Children’s fiction is classified by many as a separate sub genre too.
The categories can be divided to further sub-categories which could then be classified further. As these distinctions go further, the level of sophistication and specialization is increased. For instance cooking books could be categorized to cooking books on non-vegetarian dishes, which could further be classified as books on cooking chicken dishes etc.
Book genre is an important criterion in book buying decisions, for many people. Someone who loves mystery novels would not be interested in romance literary fiction. Just like fiction, non-fiction too includes several genres, which can be further classified into sub genres, categories and sub categories.
An interesting aspect of genre is the concept of multi genre, which means that the theme of the book fits into more than one genre. For instance when the content of a book easily qualifies to be a science fiction or romance or mystery, the book is of a multi genre type.