What is Fantasy Book Directory?
Fantasy Book Directory is a database of fantasy books. Each fantasy book has been tagged with a variety of information to help readers find exactly what they’re in the mood for.
If you want to find a book where enemies become lovers, you can click on the purple search button on the top right, and then click on Tropes to select “Enemies to Lovers”. All of the books that don’t have enemies to lovers in them will disappear, leaving only those books with that trope for you to see on the page.
You can click on any book remaining to read more about that book, or you can continue to refine your search by selecting other tropes or book details to remove books that don’t have them from the page as well.
Perhaps you want to read an enemies to lovers book that takes place on a fantasy world? Or perhaps you only want to read a book that has enemies to lovers as a trope if the love interest is a magic-user?
It’s completely up to you. 🙂
How to search for fantasy books on Fantasy Book Directory?
On the home page, click on the purple button in the top right of the screen to open the search bar.
Then click on any tabs that seem interesting to explore what you can search by. Just select checkboxes that match the type of book you want to read. Some search options also let you type in what you want.
For example, typing “fae” into the love interest species search bar finds books with “fae love interest”
As you add options, books that don’t match your search disappear.
Scroll to the top of the search bar to remove previous selections. Scroll to the bottom to reset all your selections for a particular tab. It’s as simple as that.
Is there another way to find fantasy books on Fantasy Book Directory?
Yes. For your convenience, I also added a quick search bar at the top in the middle of your screen when you’re on any page except the home page.
Just click on it and type something simple to see which books in the database are tagged with your search term.
For example, typing “mermaid” will find all books that have mermaid in the title, have mermaid in the story description, have a mermaid main character, a mermaid love interest, or simply have mermaids in the story.
The search isn’t as fine-grained or refined as the main search bar you get when you click on the top right purple button. For example, if you use quick search to search “mermaids”, you could find a book that has mermaids as a part of the setting, but it’s actually centered around a vampire and werewolf falling in love by the ocean.
Quick search is very fast though. And sometimes all you need is a quick list of books with mermaids where you can choose based on the description of the book which is right for you.
How can I support Fantasy Book Directory?
For now, just be kind. 🙂 I’m only one person and this is a passion project I work on for fun when I have free time.
As I read more books and study storycrafting, I find more nuanced ways to analyze books and discover useful new concepts that can make current classifications even more helpful. As I learn more, I’ll update the classifications and you’ll see the site change, either with new criteria you can search by or with updated classifications.
This means that FBD is always growing, not just in terms of the number of books, but also in terms of how these books are tagged, sorted, and analyzed.
In particular, each book is tagged with more information than is currently visible. As I get more settled into the classification system I want to use, more of this information will become visible over time, and users will have even more options to search by.
Can other people add books to FBD?
Not yet. If there’s enough interest in the future, I may let a small group of people add books to FBD alongside me, perhaps after watching a video to see how I classify them. We’ll see. 🙂
There are many places on the internet to find large databases of books. This is just a fun side project of mine, and my goal for FBD is making the classifications detailed, useful, and consistent. If lots of people add books, but each person classifies the books differently, the classification stops being very useful.
For example, if everyone only adds the ‘forbidden love’ classification to books that involve forbidden love as an important part of the story structure, readers looking for that type of story can find it easily.
However, if one person starts adding ‘forbidden love’ to every book that has even the tiniest hints of forbidden love (like books where the story isn’t about forbidden love at all, but just has brief moments where it’s mentioned as set dressing), then suddenly all of the results for “forbidden” love become meaningless (because readers won’t know which results will actually give them a story about forbidden love).
So my goal is to ensure that anyone who adds to FBD learns to classify them the same way I am. If you think you might be interested, feel free to contact me here. If I decide to let others join me, I’ll let you know. 🙂
Then use your mouse/finger to select whether you want a lot (higher number) or a smaller amount (lower number) of a particular characteristic.
For example, a 4 in romance = romance is a main plot, while a 1 in romance = minimal romance
Or just click on the tabs that seem interesting and select checkboxes that match the type of book you want to read. Some search options let you type in what you want.
If you want more choices, click on Advanced Search at the bottom of the search bar to go to a page where additional search options are available.