Tracking banned books in Canada

.@BookNet_Canada shares insights into the Canadian sales and library circulation of banned books.
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Banned books have been making headlines these past few years, but what impact has that had on Canadian sales and library circulation?

We’re going to find out in this blog mini-series where we explore the Canadian sales and library circulation of banned books. First things first, are Canadians and Canadian publishers interested in banned books?

Canadians and banned books

If Google Trends are anything to go by, Canadians are interested in banned books. The graph below shows the number of Canadians who searched the term “banned books” from July 2020 to June 2023.

This graph shows the biggest surges of interest in “banned books” from:

• February 28 to March 6, 2021;

• January 30 to February 5, 2022;

• August 21 to August 27, 2022; and

• an elevated interest from January 25 to May 27, 2023.

The next graph shows the number of Canadians who searched “book ban” between July 2020 and June 2023.

This graphs has a more sustained interest in book bans, with consistent spikes and the biggest peaks in searches from:

• April 4 to April 10, 2021;

• January 23 to January 29, 2023;

• May 1 to May 7, 2022;

• June 26 to July 2, 2022;

• March 19 to 25, 2023; and

• May 21 to May 27, 2023.

Searches for the terms “book banned” or “banned book” from July 2020 to June 2023 also show an increased interest, seen in the graph below.

This graph has both an elevated interest in banned books, as well as big surges in interest from:

• January 30 to February 5, 2022; and

• April 23 to April 29, 2023.

Banned books in the Canadian book market

Publishers seem to be picking up on this interest in banned books and are making sure their books surface in these searches. According to BiblioShare, BookNet Canada’s quality-controlled data aggregation and distribution system, almost 2,000 ISBNs circulating in the Canadian book market have metadata that includes keywords that identify it as a banned or challenged book.

These ISBNs were published between 1923 and 2023 — 23% of them were published since 2020. A total of 96 ISBNs, 5% of all ISBNs published in 2023, had a keyword in their metadata that identify them as a banned or challenged book. The same is true for:

• 93 ISBNs, 5% of all ISBNs published in 2022;

• 134 ISBNs, 7% of all ISBNs published in 2021;

• 133 ISBNs, 7% of all ISBNs published in 2020;

• 841 ISBNs, 43% of all ISBNs published from 2010 to 2019;

• 497 ISBNs, 25% of all ISBNs published from 2000 to 2009;

• 106 ISBNs, 5% of all ISBNs published from 1990 to 1999;

• 32 ISBNs, 2% of all ISBNs published from 1980 to 1989;

• 13 ISBNs, 1% of all ISBNs published from 1970 to 1979;

• 8 ISBNs, 0% of all ISBNs published from from 1960 to 1969;

• 6 ISBNs, 0% of all ISBNs published from 1950 to 1959; and

• 1 ISBN, 0% of all ISBNs published pre-1950.

These nearly 2,000 ISBNs correspond to 614 unique titles or book series

• The smallest number of ISBNs related to a title is one ISBN.

• The largest number of ISBNs related to a title is 47 ISBNs.

• While each title had three related ISBNs on average, the median number of ISBNs was two.

The top 10 series titles with the most ISBNs are:

1. House of Night series by P. C. Cast and Kristin Cast

2. The Sandman series by Neil Gaiman

3. A Wrinkle in Time series by Madeleine L'Engle

4. Jasmine Toguchi series by Debbi Michiko Florence

5. Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark series by Alvin Schwartz

6. Cilla Lee-Jenkins series by Susan Tan

7. Aristotle and Dante series by Benjamin Alire Saenz

8. The Chronicles of Narnia series by C. S. Lewis

9. Maus series by Art Spiegelman

10. The Luck Uglies series by Paul Durham

The top 10 individual titles with the most ISBNs are:

1. Lady Chatterley's Lover by D. H. Lawrence

2. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

3. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

4. Ulysses by James Joyce

5. A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway

6. The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood 🍁

7. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

8. For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway

9. Animal Farm by George Orwell

10. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou

Both Canadians and Canadian publishers are aware of banned books, but does this translate into book sales and library circulation?

Stay tuned for the next part of this mini-series on banned books — and sign up for the research newsletter to be the first to know about all our upcoming research!