The Hamilton Review of Books' Independently Published Bestsellers List: January 2023
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
Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century by Kim Fu, Coach House Books
Moon of the Crusted Snow by Waubgeshig Rice, ECW
Hotline by Dimitri Nasrallah, Véhicule Press
Some Hellish by Nicholas Herring, Goose Lane Editions
Queer Little Nightmares: An Anthology of Monstrous Fiction and Poetry, edited by David Ly and Daniel Zomparelli, Arsenal Pulp Press
The Russian Daughter by Sarah Klassen, CommonWord
Mad Honey by Katie Welch, Wolsak and Wynn
Saha by Cho Nam-Joo, translated Jamie Chang, House of Anansi
Nonfiction
Gentrification is Inevitable and Other Lies by Leslie Kern, BTL
Mushrooming: The Joy of the Quiet Hunt – An Illustrated Guide to the Fascinating, the Delicious, the Deadly and the Strange by Diane Borsato, illustrated by Kelsey Oseid, Douglas & McIntyre
The Power of Story: On Truth, the Trickster, and New Fictions for a New Era by Harold Johnson, Biblioasis
A Conspiracy of Chickens: A Memoir by David Waltner-Toews, Wolsak and Wynn
Laughing with the Trickster: On Sex, Death, and Accordions by Tomson Highway, House of Anansi
The Future is Disabled: Prophecies, Love Notes and Mourning Songs by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, Arsenal Pulp Press
Where to From Here: A Path to Canadian Prosperity by Bill Morneau and John Lawrence Reynolds, ECW
nēhiyawētān kīkināhk? / Speaking Cree in the Home: A Beginner’s Guide for Families by Andrea Custer and Belinda Daniels, University of Regina
The 2023 Prairie Garden: Climate Aware Gardening by The Prairie Garden Committee, TPG Publications
Shop Class Hall Pass: Facing the Buried Trauma of Sexual Assault by Karin Martel, Signature Editions
Kids
Still This Love Goes On by Buffy Sainte-Marie, illustrated by Julie Flett, Greystone Kids
Beautiful You, Beautiful Me by Tash Spillett-Sumner, illustrated by Salini Perera, Owlkids
Suck it in and Smile by Laurence Beaudoin-Masse, translated by Shelley Tanaka, Groundwood Books
A Stranger at Home: A True Story by Christy Jordan-Fenton and Margaret Pokiak-Fenton, illustrated by Liz Amini-Holmes, Annick Press
The Possible Lives of WH, Sailor by Bushra Junaid, Running the Goat Books & Broadsides
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 still seeing the impact of the awards and of Canada Reads, but there are new titles creeping 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