The Hamilton Review of Books' Independently Published Bestsellers List: November 2022
Take a look at which independently published books Canadians are purchasing from independent bookstores.
Fiction
Sleeping Car Porter by Suzette Mayr, Coach House Books
Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands by Kate Beaton, Drawn & Quarterly
The Dead and the Countess: A Ghost Story for Christmas by Gertrude Atherton, Biblioasis
A Visit: A Ghost Story for Christmas by Shirley Jackson, Biblioasis
The Corner Shop: A Ghost Story for Christmas by Lady Cynthia Asquith, Biblioasis
Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century by Kim Fu, Coach House Books
The 2022 Short Story Advent Calendar by Hingston and Olsen
Some Hellish by Nicholas Herring, Goose Lane
As Little as Nothing by Pamela Mulloy, ECW Press
The Essential Eugene McNamara by Eugene McNamara and Phil Hall, The Porcupine’s Quill
Nonfiction
Ordinary Wonder Tales by Emily Urquhart, Biblioasis
Laughing with the Trickster by Tomson Highway, House of Anansi
The Power of Story: On Truth, the Trickster, and New Fictions for a New Era by Harold Johnson, Biblioasis
21 Things You May Not Know About the Indian Act by Bob Joseph, Indigenous Relations Press
Black Women Under State: Surveillance, Poverty, & the Violence of Social Assistance by Idil Abdillahi, ARP Books
The Future is Disabled: Prophecies, Love Notes and Mourning Songs by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, Arsenal Pulp Press
A Conspiracy of Chickens: A Memoir by David Waltner-Toews, Wolsak and Wynn
Displacement City: Fighting for Health and Homes in a Pandemic by Greg Cook and Cathy Crowe, Editors, Aveo/UTP
The Battle Cry of the Siamese Kitten: Even More Tales from the Accidental Veterinarian by Philipp Schott, ECW Press
Opimōtēwina wīna kapagamawāt Wītigōwa / Journeys of The One to Strike the Wetigo by Ken Carriere, University of Regina Press
Kids
Still This Love Goes On by Buffy Sainte-Marie (author), Julie Flett (illustrator), Greystone Kids
Revenge of the Raccoons by Vivek Shraya (author), Juliana Neufeld (illustrator), Owlkids
I Hope by Monique Gray Smith (author), Gabrielle Grimard (illustrator), Orca Book Publishers
Beautiful You, Beautiful Me by Tasha Spillett-Sumner (author), Salini Perera (illustrator) Owlkids
Berani by Michelle Kadarusman, Pajama Press
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 the impact of the awards and of gift-buying on the list with a lot of Christmas ghost stories!
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 holiday season, 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