We're back with the next instalment of our regional bestsellers analysis! Last week, we looked at sales in four provinces, so there's still the rest of Canada (that's a lot of ground!) to cover.
This week, we're comparing and contrasting Sports & Recreation books sales in Manitoba and Prince Edward Island, and Biography & Autobiography sales in Yukon and Saskatchewan, both limited just to Canadian authors. Are you ready? What will the differences be? Well, let's jump right in and find out!
A quick explanation of our methodology: data was gathered from BNC SalesData, the national sales tracking service for the English-language print trade market. The top 10 Canadian-authored titles were identified according to total units sold over the last four weeks in each subject category.
Bestselling Sports & Recreation books in Manitoba and Prince Edward Island
Manitoba
Prince Edward Island
Canadians really do like their hockey books – 75% of the 20 titles across both lists are about specific hockey players, hockey clubs, or hockey-related sports psychology. Yet, only two of those titles – Theo Fleury's Playing with Fire and Marty Klinkenberg's The McDavid Effect – are found on both lists; Canadians in both provinces may share a love of reading about hockey, but they don't necessarily buy the same books.
Hometown hockey pride runs strong in Manitoba, as 100 Things Jets Fans Should Know and Do Before They Die and The Hot Line are both about their local NHL team, the Winnipeg Jets. Although book buyers in Prince Edward Island can't purport to have a local NHL team, their hockey tastes seem to skew towards Central and Eastern Canada rather than Western, as they buy more titles about former Montreal Canadien Chris Chelios, junior ice hockey team the Peterborough Petes, and Nova Scotian native Sidney Crosby.
And then there are the canoe books. Don Starkell, author of Paddle to the Amazon, was a Canadian adventurer from Manitoba who was inducted into the Manitoba Sports Hall of Fame in 2006. While his book is about a canoe journey from Canada to the Amazon, Ted Moores' Canoecraft takes the reader on a boat-building journey, offering two very different perspectives on the canoe world.
Bestselling Biography & Autobiography books in Yukon and Saskatchewan
Yukon
Saskatchewan
Regional differences among Biography & Autobiography titles in Yukon and Saskatchewan are not nearly as neatly packaged up as the Sports & Recreation category in Manitoba and PEI. Half of the titles on the two lists overlap, and each was written by a figure with a prominent career in the public eye: astronaut Chris Hadfield; hockey player Jordin Tootoo; comedian Mike Myers; journalist Amanda Lindhout; and musician, broadcaster, and politician Wab Kinew.
Regional representation runs strong on both lists: Laura Beatrice Berton's I Married the Klondike documents her experience in 1907 moving from Toronto, Ontario to Dawson City, Yukon, where she would reside for the next 25 years of her life, while former model Cea Sunrise Person's Nearly Normal, sequel to North of Normal, elaborates on her upbringing in Alberta, British Columbia, and the Yukon.
Meanwhile, not only is Joseph Auguste Merasty's The Education of Augie Merasty about his experience attending a residential school in Sturgeon Landing, Saskatchewan, but Merasty actually wrote the manuscript for this book while living on the streets in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan. The title was chosen by the Saskatchewan Library Association for their inaugural One Book, One Province reading initiative, which ran March 2017. Damian Asher and Omar Mouallem's Inside the Inferno touches on a topic close to home for those in Western Canada, as it recounts the firefighting experience during the Fort McMurray wildfire disaster of May 2016.
Want more information on the bestselling books in Canada's provinces and territories? Well, we have just the blog post to satisfy your curiosity.
