The Hamilton Review of Books' Independently Published Bestsellers List: August 2023
Take a look at which independently published books Canadians are purchasing from independent bookstores.
September 19, 2023
Fiction
The Librarianist by Patrick De Witt, House of Anansi
The Marigold by Andrew F. Sullivan, ECW Press
Lump by Nathan Whitlock, Dundurn Press
Breaking and Entering by Don Gillmor, Biblioasis
Leaving Wisdom by Sharon Butala, Thistledown Press
The Clarion by Nina Dunic, Invisible Publishing
Middlemen by Scott Thornley, Spiderline (House of Anansi)
A Safe Girl to Love by Casey Plett, Arsenal Pulp Press
The All + Flesh by Brandi Bird, House of Anansi
Away from the Dead by David Bergen, Goose Lane Editions
Nonfiction
The Tenant Class by Ricardo Tranjan, Between the Lines
Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands by Kate Beaton, Drawn & Quarterly
Age of Insecurity: Coming Together as Things Fall Apart by Astra Taylor, House of Anansi
Field Guide to the Trees of Ontario by James E. Eckenwalder (Author), Deborah A. Metsger (Author), Timothy A. Dickinson (Author), Sarah H. Hodges (Author), ROM
Park Cruising: What Happens When We Wander Off the Path by Marcus McCann, House of Anansi
A Garden for the Rusty-Patched Bumblebee: Creating Habitat for Native Pollinators: Ontario and Great Lakes Edition by Lorraine Johnson, Sheila Colla, et al., Douglas & McIntyre
The Definition of Beautiful: A Memoir by Charlotte Bellows, Freehand Books
1934: The Chatham Coloured All-Stars' Barrier-Breaking Year by Heidi LM Jacobs, Biblioasis
I Hope We Choose Love: A Trans Girl’s Notes from the End of the World by Kai Cheng Thom, Arsenal Pulp Press
Unsettled: Lord Selkirk’s Scottish Colonists and the Battle for Canada’s West, 1813–1816 by Robert Lower, ECW Press
Kids
A Potato on a Bike by Elise Gravel, Orca Books
Gordie’s Skate by Bill Waiser (Author), Leanne Franson (Illustrator), Thistledown Press
Harvey Takes the Lead by Colleen Nelson (Author), Tara Anderson (Illustrator), Pajama Press
From the Stars in the Sky to the Fish in the Sea by Kai Cheng Thom (Contributor), Kai Yun Ching (Illustrator), Wai-Yant Li (Illustrator), Arsenal Pulp Press
They Say Blue by Jillian Tamaki (Author, Illustrator), Groundwood Books
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 start of the fall titles, while some beloved older titles creep back in.
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, 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