This month was kicked off with Canadians celebrating Canada day and we, at BookNet Canada, wondered how that Canadian pride has been showing up in the book world. So, we took a look at the buying and borrowing numbers for Canadian titles to see how that has evolved over the last five years.
To start, we want to clarify that for the purposes of this blog post, a title is considered to be Canadian if there is a Canadian contributor attached to it. A Canadian Contributor is an author, illustrator, translator, or editor (in the case of an edited collection of material) who is a Canadian citizen or a permanent resident of Canada.
Interest in Canadian titles over the last five years
Given the continued interest in Canadian books, with initiatives like the #BuyCanadian movement, we started by looking at how often Canadians actively seek out Canadian titles.
BookNet’s own surveying found that Canadian book buyers searched for books by Canadian authors/illustrators more in 2025 than the previous year — 38% in 2025, up from 32% in 2024. (This stat and more in the free report, Canadian Book Consumer Study 2025.)
But if we zoom out even beyond just book buyers, we can see a steadily growing number of searches for Canadian books over the last five years using Google trends. We then wanted to know how this interest in Canadian titles might have translated into book buying and borrowing.
How have Canadian books been selling?
Over the first half of the last five years, some categories saw growth in their Canadian titles. Fiction titles observed the highest growth, a 62% increase from 2022 to 2026, while Canadian Juvenile titles saw an 18% increase over the same period.
While all subjects overall have seen a percent change of 15% when sales are compared from 2022 to 2026, Non-Fiction and Young Adult titles have seen a 45% and 38% decrease respectively.
Top selling categories and subcategories for Canadian titles
The top five highest performing categories for Canadian titles in the first half of the year between 2022 and 2026 are as follows:
Fiction / Romance / LGBTQ+ / Gay
Juvenile / Juvenile Nonfiction / Language Arts / General
Juvenile / Juvenile Fiction / Humorous Stories
Fiction / Romance / Contemporary
Fiction / Romance / New Adult
Let’s narrow this top five list down even further to the three categories that had the highest growth over the last five years for Canadian titles.
Fiction / Romance / LGBTQ+ / Gay
Of all the top-selling categories, this one saw the largest growth in sales for Canadian titles, with an increase of 128,251%. As shown in the graph below, the biggest jump was between 2025 and 2026, when sales shot up 10,409%. This is largely due to the buzz around the Heated Rivalry series and the continuously growing selection of titles that are being published in this category.
Fiction / Romance / New Adult
This is the second category with the highest growth in sales, with a 495% increase from the first half of 2022 to the first half of 2026. As shown in the graph below, unlike the previous category, New Adult titles have seen a steady increase in sales numbers between 2022 and 2026. In the last year, this subject category has seen an increase of 63%.
Fiction / Romance / Contemporary
Sales for titles in this category increased by 351% between 2022 and 2026. Sales have been on a steady incline apart from the last year, where they decreased by 35%.
How have Canadian titles been performing in libraries?
Much like sales, over the first half of the last five years, some categories saw growth in the loans of Canadian titles. When comparing 2022 to 2026, all subjects combined have seen a percent increase of 95%. Juvenile titles observed the highest growth, a 109% change from 2022 to 2026, Fiction titles increased by 89%, Non-Fiction by 82%, and Young Adult titles by 67%.
Top borrowed categories and subcategories for Canadian titles
The top five categories performing well in libraries across Canada for the first half of the last five years have been:
Juvenile / Juvenile Fiction / Humorous Stories
Fiction / Thrillers / Suspense
Fiction / Literary
Juvenile / Juvenile Fiction / Comics & Graphic Novels / Humorous
Non-Fiction / Biography & Autobiography / Memoirs
Of these five categories, the three to see the highest increases are as follows.
Juvenile / Juvenile Fiction / Comics & Graphic Novels / Humorous
Canadian titles in this category saw an increase of 535% in loans between the first half of 2022 and the first half of 2026. As shown in the graph below, they’ve been increasing steadily, with a 48% increase in loans between 2025 and 2026.
The renewals picture is similar: they increased by 716% from 2022 to 2026, and we see a similar steady growth as for loans with an increase of 67% over the first half of last year.
Fiction / Thrillers / Suspense
Loans for Canadian titles in the Thrillers / Suspense category increased by 244%, seeing its biggest jump between 2022 and 2023, before settling into a steady incline. Over the last year, loans saw an increase of 32%.
Renewals increased by 356% between 2022 and 2026. The graph below shows a similar upward trend for renewals as it did for loans, with an increase of 43% between 2025 and 2026.
Juvenile / Juvenile Fiction / Humorous Stories
This last category increased by 151% from 2022 to 2026. This category has been steadily growing and between 2025 and 2026, there was a 30% increase.
Similarly, renewals increased by 234%, following a similar trend as that of loans and seeing an increase of a notable 50% over the last year.
Overall, Canadian titles have see significant growth in buying and borrowing amidst Canadian readers, reflecting an increase in popularity and awareness of Canadian books! To learn more about readers' interest in Canadian titles, read our blog post on the Buy Canadian movement.
Looking for more data on what Canadians are reading, buying and borrowing? Visit our research page to look at our most recent reports or read our Subject Spotlight blog series to read about how specific subjects are doing in the Canadian book market.
Sneak a peek at buying and borrowing numbers for Canadian titles to see how that has evolved over the last five years.