Book genres simply indicate which categories or subcategories a book belongs to. If you read books regularly, you probably already know about some of the genres of books that you have read or that you enjoy reading.
This post will learn about the two main types of books and their subcategories, which we commonly refer to as book genres or book genres.
All books are classified as fiction either fiction or nonfiction. In these two types of books, you will find dozens of more specific types of genres.
What is Book Publishing?
Publishing books, however, is time-consuming and quite expensive for publishers who have little or no knowledge of book publishing. On the contrary, if you publish your own book, it will bring you satisfaction and a sense of accomplishment in your work. It will also show how hardworking you are and how inclined you are to be successful in the publishing world.
If you want to publish a great book, you can create a book for different people. You need to seek help from various professionals in the book industry. Printing and publishing books is a lucrative business that can generate large profits if you clearly understand what makes people attracted to ideas. Your book should be attractive, both content and perspective. For example, you want attractive colors on the cover of a book you are about to publish, although the color of the book depends on the color of the paper and the subject of the book. You can use three to four different colors on the cover. Usually, the colors make the book a little more expensive than usual.
As for the paperweight, type and color, this is also a very important characteristic. When the weight of the paper is high, the quality becomes good, and this is how the paper system is classified. Some companies use recycled paper for printing because we know it is light paper, and the quality is very low compared to heavy paper. However, the cost of producing books is definitely not high.
Types of Books and Genres with Names and Images
We all read, but many of us are looking for something different. Here is the latest list of all types of books that you should know about.
1. Action and Adventure
Action and adventure books keep you excited as your favorite protagonist is constantly in high-stakes situations. The main character pursues an ultimate goal and always finds themselves in risky and often dangerous situations. This genre usually overlaps with others, such as detective stories, crime, science fiction, and fantasy.
2. Activity Book
The Activity books are interactive in nature and consist of games like code breakers, connecting dots, puzzles, word power, and sudoku. Some activity books have coloring pages.
3. Alternate History
Alternate history or alternative history (in English Commonwealth), sometimes abbreviated as AH, is a genre of speculative fiction, consisting of stories in which one or more historical events occur in different ways.
4. Anthology
An anthological work that, as the name suggests, specializes in a particular genre of fiction. As with your standard anthology, there are no regular characters between stories (at best, you will have multiple recurring actors), with the possible exception of a presenter or narrator who introduces/closes/comments on each story.
The most common genres covered in these compilations are horror and speculative fiction. The autonomous nature of each story allows for a concise exploration of more experimental ideas and concepts without worrying about the need for continuity, allowing creators to place characters in situations that cannot be won or killed.
5. Art/Architecture
This book genre includes several different types of books. However, they all require the same thing: focusing on something related to art.
Genre art is the visual representation of scenes or events of daily life in any media such as markets, home decor, interiors, parties, hotel scenes, and street scenes. Such performances (also called genre works, genre scenes, or genre performances) can be realistic, fictional, or romanticized by the artist. Some variants of the term “genre art” define the medium or type of visual work, for example, genre painting, genre prints, genre photography, etc.
6. Audio Book
An audiobook is a recording of text for various purposes. There are many audiobooks designed to teach different languages ​​by improving listening skills, while other audiobooks contain humorous content for relaxation.
7. Autobiography
In particular, autobiography as a literary genre means a retrospective narrative that tries to tell about the author’s own life or a significant part of it, seeking (at least in its classic version) to reconstruct his/her personal development within the historical, social and cultural framework.
8. Biography
A biography or simply a bio is a detailed description of a person’s life. It includes not only basic facts such as education, work, relationships, and death; it describes a person’s experience of these life events. Unlike a profile or resume, a biography is a life story of a subject, highlighting various aspects of his or her life, including intimate details of the experience, and may include an analysis of the subject’s personality.
Biographical works are usually non-fiction, but fiction can also be used to portray a person’s life. An in-depth form of biographical review is called inheritance writing. Works in various media, from literature to cinema, form the genre of biography.
9. Business/Economics
Business writing differs in many ways from other written genres. It is short and focuses more on precision than creative writing styles. Business writing target a specific audience, so it’s important to focus on the work world. Business writing can range from rather informal emails to highly professional contracts. Most of the work written in the business world falls somewhere in between. If a person who works for a particular company writes something on their behalf, it is important to differentiate between the use of “I” to reflect personal opinion and “we” to reflect the opinion of the company.
10. Chick Lit
Chick lit or chick literature is genre fiction that “consists of stories aimed at the heroine, with a focus on the trials and tests of their individual characters.” The genre often addresses issues of modern femininity – from romantic relationships to female friendships to workplace issues – with humor and frivolity. In the beginning, the main characters of Chick Lit were “unmarried, white, heterosexual, British and American women between the ages of twenty and thirty, living in metropolitan areas.”
The genre became popular in the late 1990s when books about chick-lit worlds topped bestseller lists and prints all about chick lits. Critics of Chick-lit critics generally agree that British writer Catherine Alliot’s film The Old Girl Network (1994) was the start of the Chick-lit genre and the inspiration for Helen Fielding’s Bridget Jones’s Diary (1996), which was hugely popular. Popular and is the “ur-text” of the chick-lit.
11. Children’s
Children’s fiction is often referred to as children’s literature or youth fiction. Books in this genre are written for readers under the age of 12. Types of children’s books include picture books and chapter books.
12. Classic
You can think of these books as reading throwbacks from your English lessons. (Looking at you, Charles Dickens.) The classics have been around for decades and were often groundbreaking stories at the time of their publication, but continue to influence many generations, serving as the basis for many of the famous works we read today.
13. Coloring Book
The coloring book can be for both kids and adults. The coloring book contains a line to be filled in by adding colors of your choice. Some coloring books also include the use of stickers.
14. Comic Book
A comic book or comic magazine presents the story in strips. Such books contain the art of describing individual scenes of the story progression. Comics usually come out monthly or biweekly.
15. Coming-Of-Age
In genre exploration, the story of coming-of-age is a genre of literature, film, and video that focuses on the development of the protagonist from adolescence to adulthood (“coming of age”). Coming-of-age stories tend to emphasize dialogue or the inner monologue of the action and often take place in the past.
16. Contemporary
This genre of the book is one of the most popular, although most writers are not sure which category it is.
The contemporary genre of books is simply books written in the current time period, with much of the novel revolving around common problems in the lives of the characters.
But in reality, this genre is actually more of the absence of a genre. You may have heard how this genre is combined with others, such as Contemporary Fantasy or Contemporary Romance.
This term is used to inform readers that this book is being published today, although it may cover other genres as well.
17. Cookbook
Cookbooks are books that contain recipes and directions for making the dishes correctly. What’s more, many cookbooks contain stories about why this dish was created and what inspired it.
Average word count for this genre of book: Cookbooks vary considerably and depend on the number of recipes, not the total word count.
18. Crafts/Hobbies
A craft or trade is a pastime or a profession that requires certain skills and knowledge for qualified work. Historically, especially in the Middle Ages and earlier, this term was usually applied to people who were engaged in small-scale production of goods or their service, for example, by tinkers.
19. Crime
As the name suggests, the genre of the book is about crime, criminal motives, investigation, and disclosure of crimes and criminals.
20. Detective
The plot always revolves around some kind of crime, which the main characters must solve or foiled. Mysteries and their solutions have always been used in science fiction, but detective stories as a recognizable genre first appeared in the middle of the nineteenth century. While detective fiction is emerging as one of the most famous literary genres of the twentieth century, the debate over when a revelatory story becomes detective continues.
The detective is titled “Crime” at a local bookstore; it Includes tales of great detectives such as Holmes and Dupin, of police investigators, of private eyes, and little old ladies with the sixth sense. But detectives can also be found, disguised in respectable jackets, in the Classical Literature section under Dickens and Voltaire’s names. In the detective literature itself, there are many varieties of detectives and detection methods; In its short history, the genre has proven to be a useful barometer of cultural conditions.
21. Development
The development book genre is growing rapidly as the world focuses on improvement in general.
If you write in this genre, you are likely to write about specific difficulties associated with the character and personal problems and overcome these obstacles.
22. Diary
Diary, a form of autobiographical writing, regularly recording diary activities and reflections. Written primarily for writers, the diary has a frankness different from that written for publication.
23. Dictionary
A dictionary is a list of words in one or more specific languages, often in alphabetical order (or by radical and stroke for ideographic languages), which may include information about definitions, usage, etymology, pronunciation, translation, etc., or a book of words in one language with their equivalents in another, sometimes called a lexicon. It is a lexicographical reference that shows the relationship between data.
A broad distinction is made between general and specialized dictionaries. Specialized dictionaries include words from specialist fields rather than the complete set of words in a language. Lexical units that describe concepts in specific areas are usually called terms rather than words, although there is no consensus on whether lexicology and terminology are two different fields of study.
In theory, general dictionaries should be semi-physiological, reflecting the word in the definition, while specialized dictionaries should be onomasiological, first defining concepts and then establishing the terms used to denote them. In practice, for both types, two approaches are used. There are other types of dictionaries that do not fit the above distinction, such as bilingual dictionaries, thesaurus dictionaries, and rhyming dictionaries. The word dictionary (unqualified) is usually understood to refer to a general-purpose monolingual dictionary.
24. Drama
Dramas are stories composed in verse or prose, usually for theatrical performance, where conflicts and emotions are expressed through dialogue and action.
25. Dystopian
Dystopian and fantasy can be genres in their own right, but if you have a dystopian story related to magic, your book will have two genres.
This is also important to keep in mind when there are subplots in the novel that may be of a specific genre.
You’ll see this more often with romance stories in broader genres like fantasy or science fiction.
26. E-book
An e-book or electronic book is a digital publication containing text, images, or both. You can carry these books anywhere on your portable devices. It can be any e-book; almost every modern book has an e-book version.
27. Encyclopedia
Encyclopedias belong to a large group of information genres, and the collection includes all types of reference materials, that is, sources that are consulted to discover specific facts or information.
Encyclopedias are divided into articles or entries, which are often arranged alphabetically by article title, and sometimes by thematic category. Encyclopedic entries are longer and more detailed than most dictionaries.
Generally speaking, unlike dictionary entries, which focus on linguistic information about words, such as their etymology, meaning, pronunciation, usage, and grammatical forms, encyclopedia entries focus on factual information on the topic mentioned in the title of the article.
28. Essay
An essay is usually a written work that presents the author’s own arguments, but the definition is vague, overlapping with definitions in a paper, article, brochure, or story. Essays are traditionally divided into formal and informal. Formal essays are characterized by “serious purpose, dignity, logical organization, length,” while informal essays are characterized by the personal element (self-revelation, individual tastes, and experiences, confidential manner), humor, graceful style, itinerant structure, non-standard or novelty topic “etc.
29. Fable
Fables are fictional stories in prose or verse that usually feature personalized animals, mythical and legendary creatures, plants, etc., as the main characters. The heroes of the fable have human qualities, for example, the ability to speak a human language. These legendary tales demonstrate useful truth and are intended to teach a moral lesson.
30. Fairy Tale
A fairy tale is a fictional story that may include folk characters (such as gnomes, dragons, elves, fairies, giants, gnomes, goblins, griffins, mermaids, talking animals, trolls, unicorns or witches, and usually magic) and magic—often involving a fictional sequence of events.
In most cultures, there is no clear line between myth and folktale or fairy tale; all this together constitutes the literature of preliterate societies. Fairy tales can be distinguished from other folk tales such as legends (which are usually associated with belief in the authenticity of the events described) and overt moral tales, including beast fables.
31. Families & Relationships
You can write a book on how to build a stronger family foundation or a book on how to improve your relationship. In any case, these books would fall into this category.
Often, books in this genre also fall under smaller and more specific genres, such as family ties or romance, or even the promotion of friendship.
The relationship genre should not be confused with the fantasy novel genre.
32. Fan-fiction
As the name suggests, fiction is fiction written by fans of a particular book or series of books. The characters and plot of fan fiction are usually taken from the original work, but the plot is different.
33. Fantasy
Fantasy fiction can be described as containing unrealistic rudiments such as magical powers, talking animals, etc. The genre is often characterized by deviations from the generally accepted rules by which people perceive the world around them; it represents what is impossible (inexplicable) and goes beyond the parameters of our known reality. Make-believe is the essence of this genre.
Another description of a fantasy novel is any book that contains unrealistic settings or magic, is often placed in a medieval universe, or possibly includes mythical creatures or supernatural forms as the main plot, theme, or setting element. Something magical is almost always part of the fantasy, and magic can be seen in the setting or in the plot.
34. Graphic Novel
These books are based on a series of hand-painted pictures. The story is usually told visually with very few words, and these words are usually placed either in panels at the top or bottom of photographs or as speech bubbles.
35. Guide/How-To
There are so many guides and how-tos that it is fairly easy to determine if your book is suitable for this genre.
To find out if your book belongs to this genre, you need to think about the main goal. Is your book written to show someone how to do something specific?
The biggest giveaway is in the title of the book. If your title says “how to…” then it’s in that genre!
36. Health/Fitness
The genre of the book on health is vast and covers a variety of topics.
Your book will fall into this broad genre if it includes something related to health. These can range from fitness, holistic treatments to more complex medical topics and comprehensive coverage of various health conditions.
37. Historical Fiction
This genre of the book is exactly what it sounds like: a fictional story set in the past.
Historical literature usually focuses on certain events or problems that occur long before the present.
38. History
Any book devoted to historical facts of any kind falls into this category. And since this is nonfiction, they must all be accurate.
Many history textbooks are very different from what you might have read in school. In fact, there are several books out there that simply cover different events in the story and are more engaging than the factional play-by-play textbook.
39. Young Adult
Young adult fiction (YA) is a category of fiction written for readers aged 12 to 18 years. Although the genre is aimed at teenagers, roughly half of YA’s readers are adults. YA’s themes and genres are appropriate with the protagonist’s age and background.
40. Horror
Horror is a genre intended or capable of generating feelings of fear, disgust, dread, or horror in readers. In other words, it creates a frightening and terrifying atmosphere.
Horror is often supernatural, although it can be non-supernatural. Often the central threat of a feature horror film can be interpreted as a metaphor for the great fears of a society.
41. Humor
Humor fiction is usually full of fun, fantasy, and excitement. It is meant to be entertained and sometimes deliberately laughed at by the readers.
42. Illustrated Novel
Illustrated book text format is usually standard. The text of such books is supplemented with pictures on the same or a separate page to represent the story.
43. Journal
Forms of Discourse and Culture is a triannual publication devoted to the study of codes, conventions, and the histories of generic forms in the context of their cultural manifestations and effects. It publishes articles on genre issues in both literary and non-literary forms, offering a wide range of disciplinary and interdisciplinary approaches to the genre or touching on theoretical, institutional, or political aspects of discourse.
44. Legend
It is a story, sometimes about a national or folk hero, who is considered factual and includes fictional material. Stories in this genre can demonstrate human values and have certain qualities that give readers a reason to believe in a story.
45. Literary Fiction
While fiction can be seen as a broad genre that encompasses many others, it belongs to the style of fictional writing adopted by the author. Their prose aims to awaken deep thought through stories that offer personal or social commentary on a specific topic.
46. Magical Realism
It is a genre book in which magical or unreal elements play a natural role in a realistic environment. Magical realism, basically a Latin American narrative strategy characterized by the actual incorporation of fantasy or mythical elements into seemingly realistic fiction.
47. Math
Mathematical fiction is a genre of creative fiction in which mathematicians and mathematicians play an important role. The form and environment of the work are not important. A genre can include poetry, short story, novel, or play, comics, movies, videos, or audio recordings. One of the earliest and most widely studied works of this genre is the 1884 satirical novella Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions, an 1884 satirical novella by English teacher Edwin Abbott Abbott. Mathematical fiction may have existed since ancient times, but recently it has been rediscovered as a genre of literature; Since then, the amount of literature in this genre has been growing, and this genre is attracting more and more readers. For example, Abbott’s Flatland spawned a sequel into the 21st century: Ian Stewart’s novel, Flatterland, published in 2001.
48. Memoir
As a kind of autobiography, memoirs are more flexible because they usually do not contain a detailed chronological description of the writer’s life. Instead, they focus on key points and scenes that convey a specific message or lesson about the reader about the author.
49. Motivational
This book genre has grown significantly in recent years. If you write in this genre, your book will focus on empowering people to do what they struggle with.
Basically, motivational books focus on problems that can prevent people from achieving their goals and dreams and solve them.
More often than not, motivational books can be combined with other book genres such as health, fitness, business, and self-help.
50. Mystery
We’ve all heard about the genres of mystery books. It’s a hugely popular genre, and for a good reason.
This genre of the book is defined by a plot focusing on solving a mystery, most often because the mystery affects the protagonist to the point that they are busy solving it.
There may be mysteries in many other genres (in fact, most of them), but the peculiarity of the book in this genre is that the mystery is the main plot and point of the book.
51. Mythology
These books include legends or traditional narratives, often based in part on historical events, that reveal human behavior and natural phenomena through their symbolism and often refer to the actions of the gods.
52. Narrative Nonfiction
Nonfiction (also known as literary nonfiction or creative nonfiction) is a genre of books that uses literary styles and techniques to create authentic narratives in a storytelling format.
53. Paranormal
Books on the paranormal are characterized by the inclusion of paranormal activities such as ghosts, clairvoyance, mediums, demons, vampires, and more.
The difference between science fiction and the paranormal lies in the elements within. The paranormal usually lacks magic, like witches, or fantastic creatures like unicorns, mermaids, and others.
But the paranormal book genre includes current or real-world settings and is not often found in the other world, as fantasy sometimes can be.
However, keep in mind that you might have a fantasy novel about paranormal activity if your book covers both types of unusual events.
54. Periodicals
Periodicals, as the name suggests, are published periodically at regular intervals. Newspapers, Journals, magazines are some examples.
55. Philosophy
Books in the genre of philosophy of nonfiction genre tell about the fundamental nature of knowledge, reality, and existence as an academic discipline. Books in this genre also explore fundamental truths about yourself, the world, and their relationships.
56. Picture Book
The picture book combines visual and verbal narratives in a book format, most often intended for young children. A story told mainly through text differs from comics, in which it is done mainly in sequential images. Images in picture albums are usually created using a variety of media such as oil paints, acrylics, watercolors, and pencils, among others.
57. Poetry
Poetry is one of the most important genres of books in which feelings and ideas are intensely expressed through the use of a distinctive style and rhythm. Poems based on poetry can be of different types depending on the style in which they are written.
Poetry can belong to both Fiction and Nonfiction categories. If poetry is based on facts, it will be nonfiction, and if it is not based on facts, it will be fiction.
58. Political Thriller
A political thriller is a thriller set against the backdrop of a political struggle for power. They are usually associated with various extra-legal plots to give someone political power while opponents try to stop him.
59. Prayer
Prayer is a call or action aimed at activating a connection with an object of worship through intentional communication. In a narrow sense, this term refers to an act of supplication or intercession directed at a deity (god) or a deified ancestor. More generally, prayer can be aimed at both gratitude and praise, and in comparative religion, it is closely associated with more abstract forms of meditation, as well as charms or incantations.
Prayer can take many forms: it can be part of a specific liturgy or ritual, and it can be performed individually or in groups. Prayer can be in the form of a hymn, an incantation, an official offer, a formal creedal statement, or a spontaneous utterance in the praying person.
60. Realistic Fiction
Realistic fiction has a story that is true and seems real, but not entirely real. The stories of this genre of books often take place in our time, and their characters look like real people.
61. Reference Books
These are the books we refer to when we need specific information. Examples of books in this genre are dictionary, encyclopedia, atlas, etc.
62. Religion
The religious, inspirational, and spiritual genre includes a diverse collection of materials that includes both fiction and nonfiction literature, covering a wide range of religions, from Christianity to Buddhism to Wiccan.
63. Review
As a genre of writing, a review is based on opinion/argument related to evidence, but it is also the reviewer’s responsibility to evaluate the work from multiple perspectives, communicating the strengths and weaknesses of the reader.
64. Romance
Oh romance, how can we resist you? The genre, which makes the heart warm and diffuse, focuses on the love stories of the main characters. This world of fiction in itself is extremely wide, as it has many subgenres, including modern romance, historical, paranormal, and more subtle erotica.
65. Satire
Satire is a genre of a book that entertains making fun at vices, nonsense, flaws, etc., to individuals, corporations, government, or society through sarcasm and irony. This is often done with the goal of making people feel better.
Although satire is usually humorous in nature, humor often reveals the dark truth of society and is intended for constructive social criticism.
66. Science
Books in the science nonfiction genre are devoted to the systematization and organization of knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe. Books of this genre study the structure and behavior of the physical and natural worlds through observations and experiments (i.e., Scientific experiments). These are books about how things work and react together and against each other in a chemical and physical way.
67. Science Fiction (Sci-Fi)
Science fiction usually deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, time travel, extraterrestrial life, and more. The stories are often set in the future or on other planets.
You can add another genre to another, such as Sci-Fi Fantasy, which will include a futuristic world with advanced technology and fantastic creatures or magic.
68. Self Help
Self-help books contain information intended to help readers solve their personal problems and make their life better.
Whether it’s about emotional well-being, finance, or spirituality, self-help books are aimed at promoting personal development and confidence in various aspects of your life.
69. Short Stories
Although they cover many of the genres described here, the stories are brief prose that is significantly shorter than the novels. Writers strictly tell their stories through a specific theme and a series of short scenes, although many authors collect these stories in extensive collections.
70. Women’s Fiction
Another genre that includes many others, female fiction, is written specifically to appeal to female readers, often reflecting a woman’s overall experience in society and the protagonist’s personal growth.
71. Speech
A speech genre can be defined as a relatively stable expression corresponding to a specific situation. Speech genres are comprised of everyday communication activities such as greetings, conversations, military commands, and more.
72. Leisure
Leisure time is often defined as a quality of experience or as free time. Leisure time is time spent away from business, work, job hunting, housework, school, and essential activities such as eating and sleeping. The Situationist International assumes that leisure should not develop out of leisure and that leisure is an illusory concept that is rarely completely “free”; economic and social forces take the individual’s free time and sell it back as a commodity known as “free time.”
Of course, most people’s leisure time is not a completely free choice and may be limited by social pressures; for example, people may be forced to spend time in the garden due to the need to follow the standards of neighboring gardens or go to a party due to social pressure.
73. Suspense
This genre of the book is characterized and defined by the moods it evokes in readers, causing them to experience heightened feelings of suspense, excitement, thrill, surprise, anticipation, and anxiety. This genre makes extensive use of literary devices such as plot twists and scales.
74. Textbook
The textbook is a study guide for each area of study. It contains an authoritative and detailed factual description of the topic. Textbooks are made according to the requirements of educational institutions. Textbooks in mathematics, science, and history that are taught in schools are some of the prime examples.
75. Thriller
Thrillers are suspenseful stories that turn a crime thriller into a crime-focused book while keeping readers on their edge. The main characters often fight for justice. John Grisham is a renowned crime thriller writer.
76. Travel
The genre of travel literature includes outdoor literature, guides, nature writing, and travel memoirs. One of the earliest traveling memoirs in Western literature was Pausanias, a Greek geographer of the second century AD.
77. True Crime
Like their favorite TV counterparts, true crime books chronicle and explore in-depth, real-life crimes and events, many of which focus on scandalous murders, kidnappings, and exploits of serial killers.
78. Western
Western is an art genre created mainly in the second half of the 19th century in the western states, which is framed as the “Old West.” Its stories usually focus on the life of a nomadic cowboy or gunfighter, armed with a revolver and a rifle, riding a horse.
79. LGBTQ+
Any fiction with an authentic LGBTQ+ presentation falls into this genre of book. It is important to note that although the strange characters in your book should be present in the main plot, the central part of your plot should not be romantic. In fact, there is no need for romance at all! This means that your fantasy, thriller or historical novel can fall under the LGBTQ + umbrella.