Amazon.com Announces the Most Well-Read Cities in America

SEATTLE–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Jun. 2, 2015– (NASDAQ: AMZN)—Amazon.com today announced its fifth annual list of the Most Well-Read Cities in America – just in time for summer reading season. The ranking was determined by compiling sales data of all book, magazine and newspaper sales in both print and Kindle format from April 2014 to April 2015, on a per capita basis in cities with more than 500,000 residents.

The Top 20 Most Well-Read Cities are:

1. Seattle, Wash. 11. Charlotte, N.C.
2. Portland, Ore. 12. Baltimore, Md.
3. Las Vegas, Nev. 13. San Diego, Calif.
4. Tucson, Ariz. 14. Houston, Texas
5. Washington, D.C. 15. Indianapolis, Ind.
6. Austin, Texas 16. San Jose, Calif.
7. San Francisco, Calif. 17. Jacksonville, Fla.
8. Albuquerque, N.M. 18. San Antonio, Texas
9. Denver, Colo. 19. Nashville, Tenn.
10. Louisville, Ky. 20. Chicago, Ill.

Amazon also took a closer look at the data and uncovered some interesting trends across the cities:

  • Seattle, Wash., the home of Amazon headquarters, not only purchased the most books overall but also purchased the most Kindle books, magazines, and newspapers.
  • Washington, D.C. residents, ranked #5 overall on the list, prefer the print book, outranking Seattle as the city with the most purchases of print books.
  • California is for readers with three cities making the top 20 list this year: San Francisco, San Diego, and San Jose.
  • Las Vegas is for lovers—their residents purchased the most romance titles.
  • Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn was the top-selling title in seven of the top 20 cities: Houston, Texas; Austin, Texas; Charlotte, N.C.; Tucson, Ariz., Louisville, Ky.; Albuquerque, N.M.; Baltimore, Md.