Mass-market paperbacks in Ikea Billy bookcases?

Ok, I've just got rid of my 20+ year old Sauder and similar bookcases that I've carried around through at least 3 or 4 moves, and replaced them with a room full of Ikea's Billy bookcases. Now that I've got enough space to get at least some of the paperbacks out of boxes, I'm at a loss for the best way to shelve them. I would rather avoid shelving a second row in front of the first, instead I'd like to have them all visible, so I've got two basic starting points - one is to set the shelves just larger than a paperback, and add an extra shelf per half bookcase, this leaves the 4th shelf higher for hardback and trade paperback fiction as well. The other alternative I'm thinking of is to space the shelves farther, and put down a block in the back to raise that row about half a book height, and then put a second row in front so I can see at least half of each book, but I'm thinking that'll need more space above the higher row to get them out.

Has anyone done these? What works best? Are there any ideas people have that work even better? And if you raise up the back row, what do you use to raise it?

I've got a room full of Billys. I have some pics in my member gallery, such as this one:

Because you have to leave the middle shelf in place, you can have up to 8 shelves to fit mass markets (you can see this in my photo as the first two bookcases from the left, and the rightmost one.) This will result in 2 slightly different heights of shelves, but it's not really obvious when looking at it. All of my shelves are double stacked, and you could average about 25-35 paperbacks per row (50-70 per shelf) though I average about 75 per shelf due to some warped space-time). Fewer if you stack them properly, and more if you lay them flat and use every square inch of volume.

If you use the 8 shelf per book case configuration there would be room for one row of flat books on top of the shorter rows, and 2 in the larger. Also, an inch or two in the front for trinkets.

As for raising back rows, you could use acrylic risers or kitchen cabinet risers (those are usually adjustible). You have to account for the shadows that the shelf casts which may obscure the top half of the rear book depending on your light source. It doesn't show in the picture but in the 3rd bookcase from the left, which has the standard 6 shelves, I eventually built a prototype step riser out of illustration board to lift the 5 rows of ponies in 1-inch increments. The back 2 rows are entirely obscured, even up close, by the shadow caused by my overhead light. Something to consider.

I'm not a big fan of double shelving, but have done so when I have more books of one author than fit on a shelf. Since I generally know what I have by these favourite authors, and can check in LT when in doubt, having some of them not visible isn't too dificult to deal with. Our Billys have been with us for up to three moves now. We have from 6 - 8 rows depending on the books in them. The cookbook ones also have rows of books on top.

I have Billies too. And mm pb's. :-)

I had extra shelves made at the DIY shop (which is much cheaper than buying them @ Ikea, and I have a lot of 60cm Billies, which are no longer sold). I have 8 shelves of mm pb's in a lot of Billies. I used to have double rows, but since I moved, I have enough shelves for single rows. The luxury! :-)

It's a pity IKEA discontinued their Besta line (I'm not aware that anything replaced them); they were shallower than Billys and you could space the shelves to fit mass market size perfectly from all sides.

I love the setup that macsbrains has, but I'm trying to get away from double-shelving books, and also away from the (presumably inevitable) row of books laid flat on top of a shelf of books. I've still got a lot of paperbacks in boxes, but before they make it to the shelves I need to take a hard look at them and decide which should go - I have books going back to when I was in high school, many of which I don't have any real interest in re-reading. The problem is that every time I try to do that I seem to find at least one book in a series that I remember liking, so I keep the whole series anyway... At least the 20+ year old books about specific software packages are an easy choice to dispose of.

This leads to the need to maximize the shelving density, but at the same time having each book visible when browsing. I've already added about 50% to my shelf capacity here, but I've got enough books at my parents house in boxes to fill that 2 or 3 times over.

Paperback books are similar in size to traditional DVDs. If you look for shelving systems designed for these, you may find that you have something that can store paperbacks efficiently in terms of height and depth.

James

FYI: This thread was mentioned at Smart Bitches, Trashy Books!!

http://smartbitchestrashybooks.com/2017/05/bookshelf-emergency/

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