How to organise your audiobooks: the folder structure that finally worked

If you have searched for how to organize an audiobook library, you probably have what I had: books named in a dozen different styles, two copies of the same book under different names, and a player that can't tell which book in a series comes next. This is the folder structure I settled on, and the rules that keep it tidy. It is only folders, so it works with any player that reads them: Audiobookshelf, Smart AudioBook Player, Plex, or a plain file browser on your phone.

Why bother? Because the shelf is the thing. When every series sits in order under its author, picking the next listen takes ten seconds, a new book has an obvious home, and a second copy of a book stands out instead of hiding. I put off the big clean-up for years; it took one long weekend and I have not had to think about it since.

The structure

Five levels at most, and most books use four:

Genre
└ Author
  └ Universe (only where one exists)
    └ Series (or the book itself, if it is a standalone)
      └ 01 - Title

So The Way of Kings lives at Epic Fantasy \ Brandon Sanderson \ The Cosmere \ The Stormlight Archive \ 01 - The Way of Kings, and Elantris, a standalone, sits straight under the author: Epic Fantasy \ Brandon Sanderson \ Elantris. Each level does one job.

Genre

Top-level folders are broad genres, numbered so they sort the way I think: 01. Epic Fantasy, 02. Light Fantasy, 03. Epic Sci Fi, 05. Military Scifi, 07. LitRPG and so on. Keep the list short. The genre is for browsing by mood, not for cataloguing; a dozen folders is plenty.

Author

One folder per author, named the way the cover prints it. Two authors who always write together share one folder, Bryce O'Connor & Luke Chmilenko. A book's genre goes by its author: all of Sanderson sits in Epic Fantasy, including the children's books and the sci-fi, because that is where I look for Sanderson. An author who writes across genres gets one home in the genre that holds most of their books.

Universe

This level only appears where a universe exists. The Riftwar Cycle is a universe, and each of its sagas is a series inside it; the Cosmere is a universe holding Mistborn, The Stormlight Archive and the standalones. Most authors have no universe, and then the series sits straight under the author.

Series, or the standalone

A series gets a folder named as the publisher names it (The Stormlight Archive, not Stormlight). A standalone needs no series folder; its own folder goes straight under the author.

The book: number and title

A series book's folder is 01 - The Way of Kings: two digits so the books sort, a space, a dash, a space, the title. A novella between books is 03.5 - Dawnshard; an omnibus is 01-02 - Magician. The folders above already say the author and the series, so the book folder does not repeat them. This is the shape Audiobookshelf documents too (Author › Series › 1 - Title), which is a good sign it will keep working.

Editions and parts

Two problems came up again and again once I started, and both have a tidy answer.

Two editions of a series. Some series come in two editions, the original narration and a full-cast adaptation. Each edition gets its own folder inside the series, named like the books: Alcatraz \ Graphic Audio \ 01 - Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians beside Alcatraz \ Original \ 01 - .... Two narrations of one book go inside that book's folder: 01 - Hounded \ Narrated by Luke Daniels and 01 - Hounded \ Narrated by Christopher Ragland. A folder that only names a format (mp3, Audiobooks) earns no folder of its own.

Books that come in parts. Some long books are split into Part 1 and Part 2, or into a file per disc. Keep the parts inside one book folder, 01 - Fourth Wing \ Part 1 and \ Part 2, so the player reads them as one book. The mistake to avoid is numbering the parts as if they were separate books.

Trust the tags, not the folder names

Before renaming anything, read the tags inside the audio files (the album, artist, series and track fields; a free tool like Mp3tag or ffprobe shows them). They are far more reliable than the folder name a book came with. Watch for the narrator sitting in the artist field, and for a folder named after the wrong author entirely. If a book has no author anywhere, open its cover image: the cover knows.

New books

Give yourself one landing folder, 21. To Sort, and leave a new book there under whatever name it came with until you file it. File in batches, once a week or so, when you have ten minutes and the tags in front of you. Never file in a hurry: a book filed under the wrong series is harder to find than one still in the landing folder.

The safety rules

I lost a book once to a clean-up script, so these are not optional.

• Count the audio files before and after every batch of moves or renames. Moves never change the count; if it changes, stop.
• Never delete. Rename a duplicate or an empty folder with a DELETE_ME - prefix and review those by hand later, in one place.
• Dry run first for anything touching more than a few folders: list every source and destination, read it, then run it.
• Stop on a collision. If a destination already exists, do not skip it and carry on; two things are pointing at the same place and the plan is wrong.
• Keep a log of what moved where, so any run can be undone.

I'm building a tool for this: it reads the tags, suggests where each new book goes under these rules, moves it when you say so, and can undo the lot. I'll say more here when it is ready.