The Hamilton Review of Books' Independently Published Bestsellers List: August 2022
Take a look at which independently published books Canadians are purchasing from independent bookstores.
Fiction
Her First Palestinian by Saeed Teebi, House of Anansi Press
Good Girl by Anna Fitzpatrick, Flying Books
Scarborough by Catherine Hernandez, Arsenal Pulp Press
Estates Large and Small by Ray Robertson, Biblioasis
The Pump by Sydney Hegele, Invisible Publishing
Going to Beautiful by Anthony Bidulka, Stonehouse Originals
The Gunsmith’s Daughter by Margaret Sweatman, Goose Lane Editions
An Orchid Astronomy by Tasnuva Hayden, University of Calgary Press
Butter Honey Pig Bread by Francesca Ekwuyasi, Arsenal Pulp Press
The Full Catastrophe by Meira Cook, House of Anansi Press
Nonfiction
Our Voice of Fire: A Memoir of a Warrior Rising by Brandi Morin, House of Anansi Press
21 Things You Might Not Know About the Indian Act by Bob Joseph, Indigenous Relations Press
Gentrification Is Inevitable and Other Lies by Leslie Kern, Between the Lines
A Garden for the Rusty-Patched Bumblebee: Creating Habitat for Native Pollinators by Sheila Colla, Lorraine Johnson and Ann Sanderson, Douglas & McIntyre
White Benevolence: Racism and Colonial Violence in the Helping Professions by Amanda Gebhard, Sheelah McLean, Verna St. Denis, Fernwood Publishing
Winter of Our Pandemic by David Collier, Spare Parts Press
Only in Saskatchewan: Recipes and Stories from the Province’s Best-Loved Eateries by Naomi Hansen, Garrett Kendal, TouchWood Editions
The Castleton Massacre: Survivors’ Stories of the Killins Femicide by Sharon Anne Cook and Margaret Carson, Dundurn Press
My Privilege, My Responsibility: A Memoir by Sheila North, Great Plains Publishing
The Fire That Time: Transnational Black Radicalism and the Sir George Williams Occupation edited by Ronald Cummings and Nalini Mohabir, Black Rose Books
Kids
Little Book: Story Reader for a Free Ukraine by Mykola Matwijczuk and Lorene Shyba, UpRoute
Little You by Richard Van Camp, Orca Book Publishers
Tokyo Digs a Garden by Jon-Erik Lappano, Groundwood Books
Birdspell by Valerie Sherrard, DCB
I’m the Boss by Elise Gravel and Charles Simard, Orca Book Publishers
How I Built This List:
I am very grateful for all the bookstores who generously shared their sales data with me. The information used to create this list was drawn from the sales of Another Story Bookshop in Toronto, Biblioasis Bookshop in Windsor, The City and the City Books in Hamilton, Epic Books in Hamilton, McNally Robinson Booksellers (both the Grant Park and the Forks Locations in Winnipeg), McNally Robinson Saskatoon, Shelf Life Books in Calgary and Wordsworth Books in Waterloo. We’re covering a fair amount of Canada, but I hope to add more stores over time to the process and create a more wide-ranging list. If you are a bookstore who would like to contribute to the list please get in touch with us, we’d love to have more information.
Many of the authors on this list will be new to readers, but what I’ve done here is create a bestseller list drawn only from those books published by Canadian-owned independent presses. Most of the books in the top half of both the fiction and the nonfiction bestseller lists sold well in several of the stores on the list and many of the other titles are books that sold well in only one or two stores who shared information. Sometimes these were strongly regional titles. This month I was delighted to see books by presses that hadn’t appeared on the list before.
I acknowledge that this list is not at all perfect. It is only a small sampling of the data out there, but it is a fascinating look at what independently published books Canadians are purchasing from independent bookstores across a reasonable amount of Canada.
My deep thanks to the Hamilton Review of Books for publishing this Independent Bestseller List. Please, if you’re looking for something wonderful to read this fall, visit your nearest independent bookstore and ask them what they suggest. The people who work in these stores know an amazing amount about books and will find you your next best possible read.
Noelle Allen