Most Literate Cities

New York, with the highest concentration of large book publishing houses, ranks way down at #29 on the just-released list of the most literate U.S. cities, below Lexington-Fayette, KY (#15) and New Orleans (#17).

This is the fifth year of the study. Seattle has been #1 for three of those years. It lost out to Minneapolis in 2007 and tied with that city last year.

The rankings are based on the following per capita factors:

  • Number of booksellers
  • Education level
  • Number of internet book orders and visitors to the city’s newspaper Web site
  • Number of libraries, volumes held, circs and library professional staff
  • Newspaper circulation
  • Number of magazine publishers

The top five cities in terms of libraries are:

  1. Cleveland, OH
  2. St. Louis, MO
  3. Pittsburgh, PA
  4. Seattle, Wa
  5. Cincinnati, OH

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