The Hamilton Review of Books' Independently Published Bestsellers List: October 2022
Take a look at which independently published books Canadians are purchasing from independent bookstores.
Fiction
Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands by Kate Beaton, Drawn & Quarterly
Sleeping Car Porter by Suzette Mayr, Coach House Books
Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century by Kim Fu, Coach House Books
Queer Little Nightmares: An Anthology of Monstrous Fiction and Poetry edited by David Ly and Daniel Zomparelli, Arsenal Pulp Press
Finding Edward by Sheila Murray, Cormorant Books
Estates Large and Small by Ray Robertson, Biblioasis
Pine Bugs and .303s by Ernie Louttit, Latitude 46
In the Key of Dale by Benjamin Lefebvre, Arsenal Pulp Press
When the Sky Comes Looking for You by Chadwick Ginther, Turnstone Press
River, Diverted by Jamie Tennant, Palimpsest Press
Nonfiction
Laughing with the Trickster: On Sex, Death, and Accordions by Tomson Highway, House of Anansi
The Power of Story: On Truth, the Trickster, and New Fictions for a New Era by Harold R. Johnson, Biblioasis
The Future is Disabled: Prophecies, Love Notes and Mourning Songs by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, Arsenal Pulp Press
More than a Footnote: Canadian Women You Should Know by Karin Wells, Second Story Press
Ordinary Wonder Tales by Emily Urquhart, Biblioasis
On Browsing by Jason Guriel, Biblioasis
Mushrooming: The Joy of the Quiet Hunt: An Illustrated Guide to the Fascinating, the Delicious, the Deadly and the Strange by Diane Borsato (author), Kelsey Oseid (illustrator), Douglas & McIntyre
Shopomania: Our Obsession with Possession by Paul Berton, Douglas & McIntyre
The Battle Cry of the Siamese Kitten: Even More Tales from the Accidental Veterinarian by Philipp Schott, ECW Press
The Things I Came Here With: A Memoir by Chris MacDonald, ECW Press
Kids
Revenge of the Raccoons by Vivek Shraya (author), Juliana Neufeld (illustrator), Owlkids
Still This Love Goes On by Buffy Sainte-Marie (author), Julie Flett (illustrator) Greystone Kids
The Secret of the Jade Bangle by Linda Trinh (author), Clayton Nguyen (illustrator), Annick Press
Kindness is a Golden Heart by Jessica Kluthe (author), Charlene Chua (illustrator), Orca Book Publishers
Beautiful You, Beautiful Me by Tasha Spillett-Sumner (author), Salini Perera (illustrator), Owlkids
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 we’re seeing more of the fall titles finding their ways onto the lists with a particularly strong group of nonfiction titles.
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