What’s trending for cozy books?

We’re headed straight into fall and we wanted to know how categories with “Cozy” BISAC codes have been doing as Canadian readers gear up with warm lattes and their favourite books!

In this blog post, we look at how the performance for these categories have varied over the last five years, and we compare performance in 2026 so far to the same time frame in 2025, and we look at the lead up to fall in 2026 in comparison to the same period in the last year. And we pull the top three sold and borrowed titles with cozy BISAC codes in the lead up to fall this year.

The data in this post includes sales and borrowing data for the following BISAC categories:

• Fiction / Cozy
• Fiction / Fantasy / Cozy
• Fiction / Mystery & Detective / Cozy

Cozy genres over the last five years

September 22 marks the beginning of fall, and so we wanted to see how cozy titles have been selling during the timeframe of January 1 to September 13 for each year from 2022 to 2026. As shown in the graph below, and as you may have noticed making the rounds on social media, these categories had been steadily gaining attention until 2026, where sales seem to be dropping off slightly. While sales increased by 57% between 2022 and 2025, sales decreased by 22% in 2026 when compared to 2025.

In Canadian libraries, however, the upward trend for cozy titles has remained consistent over this past year. Overall, loans for these titles have grown by 115% between 2022 and 2026, and by 11% between 2025 and 2026.

Cozy genres over the last years

How have sales for this category been over this past year? Has the interest in these titles picked up as we near fall?

As shown below, trends in sales for both years, start off similarly before the differences in sales between becomes rather drastic in April. Although both years see two sales peaks in April and July, both spikes were significantly larger in 2025. Year-over-year, sales were down by 45% and 23% in April and July of 2026 respectively, in comparison to the same periods in 2025.

The sales for subcategories that increased the most compared to the last year were:

• Fiction / Mystery & Detective / Cozy / Books, Bookstores & Libraries –– up by 93%
• Fiction / Mystery & Detective / Cozy / Holidays & Vacation –– up by 15%
• Fiction / Mystery & Detective / Cozy / Paranormal –– up by 5%

Just as we noticed in the previous section, trends amongst Canadian borrowers look a little different. In fact, compared to the last year, loans have seen a slight increase throughout 2026. Much like sales, there was a major spike in loans in April. For loans however, in comparison to last year, we see an increase of 50% during April of 2026 compared to 2025. During the second peak in July, loans in 2026 grew by 3% from 2025.

The loans for subcategories that increased the most compared to the last year were:

• Fiction / Fantasy / Cozy loans –– up by 55%
• Fiction / Mystery & Detective / Cozy / Books, Bookstores & Libraries loans –– up by 37%
• Fiction / Mystery & Detective / Cozy / Paranormal –– up by 32%

Cozy genres over the last six weeks

To get a slightly more granular look, the following graph shows sales over the last six weeks, which after hitting a low during week three (Aug. 23, 2026), seems to end on a bit of an upward trend as we head into the sixth week (Sept. 3, 2026). Compared to the last year, sales during week six are up by 12%.

Loans, on the other hand, peaked during week three before dropping sharply over the next two weeks of 2026. Week six (Sept. 3, 2026) looks more or less identical over both years, remaining fairly consistent to the trends we saw last year.

Reading cozy books

During the six weeks between August 9, 2026 and September 13, 2026, the following titles were the most sold and borrowed:

Looking for more data about what Canadians are reading, buying, and borrowing? Visit our research page to look at our most recent reports or sign up to our weekly newsletter, eNews, for up-to-date information!