Books: Just the Facts

Around five decades ago, Canadian bookshelves were filled with foreign books. Due to the economic realities of that time, the small number of existing Canadian publishers focused on distributing books from the United States, Great Britain and France.

These days, the Canada Book Fund provides approximately $39.5 million in annual funding to Canadian-owned book publishers and industry organizations and there are approximately three times as many Canadian-owned publishers as there were 25 years ago and four times as many books published every year by Canadian firms. There are also around five times as many Canadian writers. What was the last Canadian book you read?

Some quick facts:

  • Book publishers in Canada generate over $2 billion in revenues each year and directly employ around 9,000 people.
  • There are over 300 Canadian book-publishing firms located in at least 80 cities across Canada, more than a third of which publish French-language books.
  • Canadian-owned publishing firms publish almost 80 percent of new Canadian-authored books.
  • There are more than 24,000 writers in Canada.
  • Readers have access to 10,000 new Canadian-authored titles every year.
  • Despite the increasing popularity of the Internet and online entertainment, there has been no marked decline in book reading by Canadians.
  • Books published in Canada are exported to 100 markets internationally.
  • Canadian authors have won some of the world's most prestigious literary awards, including the Man Booker Prize, Prix Goncourt, Pulitzer Prize, Prix Femina and the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award.
  • 2012 marks the 100th anniversary of Northrop Frye's birth.
  • Margaret Atwood's novel Oryx and Crake was number one on Maclean's Top 10 Canadian Books of the Decade.
  • Anne of Green Gables was an immediate success when it was first published in 1908 and has since been translated into more than 30 languages.

The Government of Canada contributes to the vitality of the book publishing industry through the Canada Book Fund. Learn more about it in our Program Guide.

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