I attended an online discussion yesterday in regards to the question: Why Buy Canadian. The panel put forth several interesting points about how people outside of Canada view the country as a whole. One statement that intrigued me, was how we are perceived as a country - in other words what is our cultural identity? Other countries seem to imagine the old 'colonial' identity, rather than the modern day contemporary reality.

So, the question is how do we identify ourselves as a Canadian author, writing about Canadian based narratives, without aliening readers from other countries?

We need to write to genre and reflect the expectations of the readers of those genres using Canadian locations, settings and cultural norms. The trick is to have the narrative's characters and plot relatable to a wide audience, regardless of the location.

The other stumbling block is market share, or lack thereof, is that books by Canadians made up only 12% of print book sales in Canada in 2024. This was a combination of sales of Juvenile and Young Adult subjects, which accounted for the majority of the market share at 39%. Followed by Non-Fiction at 30%, and Fiction at 29%. In the French-Canadian market, Juvenile & YA also had the biggest portion of sales throughout 2024, accounting for 44% of the trade market.

My suggestions are- we can put Proudly Canadian, or a Canadian flag logo on our website, and utilize the locations within our books to garner interest in them not only within the story, but also as places to visit and explore. Another avenue is to utilize Canadian Book Day (23rd April) to challenge ourselves, and readers in general to find and read Canadian authors. Ask for Canadian authors within bookstores, and libraries etc. to ensure they are acknowledged. In turn, this could have these businesses, or institutions bring in more 'local' authors onto their shelves. We need to celebrate Canadian literature.

Do you have any ideas for increasing Canada's book market share?

Comment below.