Omar El Akkad’s first book of nonfiction, the National Book Award–winning and Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize shortlisted One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This – published in February this year by McClelland & Stewart – in which he writes about his reckoning with the failures of the West in light of the invasion of Gaza, is the top-selling Canadian-authored book sold through Canadian independent booksellers in 2025. El Akkad’s book was also the top seller when Q&Q looked at sales numbers for the first half of the year.

For the second year in a row, Waubgeshig Rice’s 2018 dystopian novel Moon of the Crusted Snow (ECW Press) is indie booksellers’ top-selling title published by a Canadian press. (In the list of Canadian-authored titles from all publishers the novel ranks at #8.)

Bookmanager tracks sales from 265 independent bookstores across Canada and the following bestseller lists reflect 11 months of sales – from Jan. 1 to Dec. 1. For the bestselling 25 titles of 2025, Bookmanager provided Q&Q with sales data for all Canadian-authored titles and for the top-selling titles published by Canadian-owned companies.

Download bestseller lists.

Louise Penny’s latest Chief Inspector Gamache blockbuster, The Black Wolf, which published at the end of October, sits in second place among Canadian-authored titles, in exactly the same position as The Grey Wolf, the previous title in the series, appeared in the 2024 end-of-year list. Prime Minister Mark Carney’s 2022 book about economics and society, Values: Building a Better World for All (McClelland & Stewart), was given a boost by his entry into the leadership race of the Liberal Party of Canada in the spring and ends the year at #3. Carley Fortune comes in at the #4 spot again this year with her 2025 title One Golden Summer (Viking).

Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale (#7) returned to the top-10 bestseller lists this year. Initially, it seems surprising that her much-anticipated memoir Book of Lives: A Memoir of Sorts (McClelland & Stewart) only appears at #23 in the Canadian authors list – even if it was published only a month ago. However, the signed edition of the book, which has a separate ISBN, appears in the list at #45. The combined totals of the two versions would position Book of Lives at #5. 

Unsurprisingly, four of the five 2025 Canada Reads titles appear on the top-25 lists, with runner- up Dandelion by Jamie Chai Yun Liew (Arsenal Pulp Press) sitting at #10 on the Canadian authors list and #2 on the list of books from Canadian publishers. Canada Reads winner, Ma-Nee Chacaby’s A Two-Spirit Journey: The Autobiography of a Lesbian Ojibwa-Cree Elder is #5 * on the Canadian publishers list. 

Giller winner Pick a Colour by Souvankham Thammavongsa (Knopf Canada), which was also the top pick for CIBA’s inaugural The Booksellers’ List, comes in at #12. The other shortlisted Giller titles to appear in the top 25 are Emma Knight’s debut The Life Cycle of the Common Octopus (Viking) at #5 and Emma Donoghue’s The Paris Express (Harper Perennial) at #18. Hilary Weston Writer’s Trust Prize for Nonfiction–winning Theory of Water: Nishnaabe Maps to the Times Ahead (Alchemy by Knopf Canada) by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson sits at #11.

The Canadian authors list is dominated again by imprints of Penguin Random House Canada and recent titles, with 60 per cent of the books (15 of the 25) published in 2025. 

The top-selling indie publisher list is spread a bit more evenly among publishers and includes more young readers titles (from Cherie Dimaline’s The Marrow Thieves (DCB Young Readers) at #3 to Kung Jaadee and Carla Joseph’s I am Connected (Medicine Wheel Publishing) at #21, with four positions filled with Robert Munsch backlist) but includes only nine titles published this year.

Iona Whishaw scores a hat trick for TouchWood Editions, including two new titles The Cost of a Hostage, the 12th Lane Winslow Mystery at #4 – one of two 2025 titles to crack the top 10; the other is the paperback edition of Kate Beaton’s Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands – and the Lane Winslow prequel A Season for Spies at #12. 

Douglas & McIntyre takes three spots with books by Richard Wagamese, including his first children’s book, 2024’s posthumously published The Animal People Choose a Leader, illustrated by Bridget George, at #11. Page Two Books also has three titles on the list with Bob Joseph’s new book, 21 Things You Need to Know About Indigenous Self-Government: A Conversation About Dismantling the Indian Act coming in at #13, joining 21 Things You May Not Know About the Indian Act (#9), which has been on several of Q&Q/Bookmanager’s top-selling lists, along with another 2025 title, Rose LeMay’s Ally Is a Verb: A Guide to Reconciliation with Indigenous Peoples.

If you have been following the weekly bestseller lists, most titles will not be a surprise. The bottom half of the top 25 tends to show the most changes between the biannual lists. In the indie publishers list, 2025 nonfiction titles from Coach House Books appear at #16 – Toronto Book Award winner Encampment: Resistance, Grace, and an Unhoused Community by Maggie Helwig – and at #23, the anthology Messy Cities: Why We Can’t Plan Everything. Lesley Crewe regularly appears on the bestseller lists but always with different titles – this time the 2020 novel The Spoon Stealer (Vagrant Press) pops up at #24. The revised edition of the 1961 Pacific Northwest adventure memoir The Curve of Time by M. Wylie Blanchet (Harbour Publishing) closes out the list at #25.

In the Canadian authors list, Internet comedian Stewart “Brittlestar” Reynold’s Lessons from Cats for Surviving Fascism (Grand Central Publishing) is at #17 after showing up on bestseller lists on publication; Amanda Peters’s 2023 novel The Berry Pickers (Harper Perennial), which fluctuates in and out of the top-10 fiction lists, is at #18; YA author Susin Nielsen’s Snap (HarperCollins) – her comic first novel for adults – comes in at #19; and Linda Bailey and Kass Reich’s 2020 picture book Carson Crosses Canada (Tundra Books) sits at # 21.

* The 2026 Polestar Family Calendar was #5 on the Canadian publishers list, but for the purposes of this bestseller list was disqualified as it is an agenda and not a book.