Amazon.com Names America’s Most Well-Read Cities

Cambridge, Massachusetts, home to Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, topped Amazon.com’s recent listing of the Top 20 Most Well-Read Cities in America.

Cambridge residents ordered the most in book, magazine and newspaper sales, in print and Kindle formats, since Jan. 1, 2011 on a per capita basis for cities with more than 100,000 residents. Cambridge residents also ordered the highest number of nonfiction books.

The Amazon.com top 20 list:

1. Cambridge, Massachusetts
2. Alexandria, Virginia
3. Berkeley, California
4. Ann Arbor, Michigan
5. Boulder, Colorado
6. Miami, Florida
7. Salt Lake City, Utah
8. Gainesville, Florida
9. Seattle, Washington
10. Arlington, Virginia
11. Knoxville, Tennessee
12. Orlando, Florida
13. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
14. Washington, D.C.
15. Bellevue, Washington
16. Columbia, South Carolina
17. St. Louis, Missouri
18. Cincinnati, Ohio
19. Portland, Oregon
20. Atlanta, Georgia

Echoing results from Sisters in Crime’s recent Mystery Book Buyer Study, nearly half of the cities on the Amazon.com list are located below the Mason-Dixon line.

The Washington, D.C. area includes three of the top 20 cities – Alexandria, Va. (#2), Arlington, Va. (#10) and Washington itself (#14). Alexandria residents also topped the list of buyers of children’s books.

The sunshine state, Florida, has three cities in the top 20 – Miami (#6), Gainesville (#8) and Orlando (#12).

“We hope book lovers across the country enjoy this fun look at where the most voracious readers reside,” said Mari Malcolm, managing editor of Books at Amazon.com.

Bestseller and SinC member Dana Stabenow, author of Though Not Dead (Minotaur, 2011), called the report “a useful aid for authors.”

“If that’s where people are reading the most books, maybe that’s where authors ought to go to sign ‘em,” she said.