The Hamilton Review of Books' Independently Published Bestsellers List: October
Take a look at which independently published books Canadians are purchasing from independent bookstores.
Fiction
Glorious Frazzled Beings. by Angélique Lalonde, House of Anansi
The Son of the House by Cheluchi Onyemelukwe-Onuobia, Dundurn Press
A Dream of a Woman by Casey Plett, Arsenal Pulp Press
Everything Turns Away by Michelle Berry, Wolsak & Wynn
The Break by Katherena Vermette, House of Anansi
Moon of the Crusted Snow by Waubgeshig Rice, ECW
This Place: 150 Years Retold by Kateri Akiwenzie-Damm, Sonny Assu, et al., Highwater Press
Make the World New: The Poetry of Lillian Allen by Lillian Allen and Ronald Cummings, Wilfrid Laurier University Press
Electric Vice by Kyle Simmers and Ryan Danny Owen, Renegade Arts Entertainment
Danger Flower by Jaclyn Desforges, Palimpsest Press
Non-fiction
21 Things You Might Not Know about the Indian Act by Bob Joseph, Page 2 Publishing
Seven Fallen Feathers by Tanya Talaga, House of Anansi
Richard Wagamese Selected: What Comes From Spirit by Richard Wagamese and Drew Hayden Taylor, Douglas & MacIntyre
Embers: One Ojibwe’s Meditations by Richard Wagamese, Douglas & MacIntryre
I Thought He Was Dead: A Spiritual Memoir by Ralph Benmergui, Wolsak and Wynn
Field Study: Mediations on a Year at the Herbarium by Helen Humphreys, ECW
Yes We Did: Leading in Turbulent Times by Gary Filmon, HEART
Indigenous Toronto: Stories that Carry This Place, ed. by Denise Bolduc, Mnawaate Gordon-Corbiere and Rebeka Tabobondung, Coach House Books
Made-Up: A True Story of Beauty Culture Under Late Capitalism by Daphne B. and Alex Manley, Coach House Books
Reclaiming Hamilton: Essays from the New Ambitious City, ed. by Paul Weinberg, Wolsak & Wynn
Kids
Music for Tigers by Michelle Kadarusman, Pajama Pres
When We Are Alone by David A. Robertson and Julie Flett, Highwater Press
The Case of the Singing Ocean by Eric Hogan and Tara Hungerford, Firefly Press
The Boy in the Bindi by Vivek Shraya and Rajni Perera, Arsenal Pulp Press
I Sang You Down from the Stars by Tasha Spillett-Sumner (Author), Michaela Goade (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 October sales of Another Story Bookshop in Toronto, The City and the City Books in Hamilton, Epic Books in Hamilton, Hunter Street Books in Peterborough, McNally Robinson Booksellers (both the Grant Park and the Forks locations in Winnipeg), 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.
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 non-fiction 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, two poetry books have made it onto the list.
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. I’m looking forward to seeing the data for our November list, as the fall books continue to fill our bookstore shelves and we move closer to the holiday season. 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