The Top 10 Book Cities in the U.S 

Are you living in one the literary capitals of the country? Most people think of books and New York but the rest of the United States is also quite literary. As it turns out, America’s smallest state: Rhode Island sports the most literary city in the country. Clever Real Estate put together this list of top Book Cities in the US and they ranked it on how much the citizens were engaged with books.

Cities were ranked on the following criteria:

Our weighted rankings evaluated various criteria including:

• 4x: The number of libraries per 100,000 residents in each metro
• 4x: The number of independent bookstores per 100,000 residents in each metro
• 3x: Google search trends in each metro for 10 selected books from Publishers Weekly’s top 25 bestselling books for 2021
• 2x: Average literacy rate scores for each metro out of 500
• 1x: Google search trends in each metro for 5 common book-related terms
• 1x: The number of coffee shops per 100,000 residents in each metro

I will say that one of the things these cities have in common that is rather important is long, terrible winters and generally less than ideal weather. This keeps folks inside their homes and tucked into all those coffee shops. It’s the best weather to read in. I was not surprised that Seattle ranked so high. We have a wonderful literary scene here in Seattle and our neighbors to the South in Portland brought up the rear. However, it’s the Northeast that dominates this list.

The top 10 book cities in the U.S are:

1. Providence, RI
2. Hartford, CT
3. Boston, MA
4. San Jose, CA
5. Seattle, WA
6. Washington, DC
7. Baltimore, MD
8. San Francisco, CA
9. Minneapolis, MN
10. Portland, OR

Providence is the best of America’s book places, with a whopping 8.6 libraries per 100,000 residents – that’s 82% more than the average city has at 4.7.

Las Vegas is the worst book city followed by Miami and Orlando. The average city in our study has 2,245% more independent bookstores per 100,000 residents than Las Vegas, with 1.0 indie bookstore per 100,000 people versus just 0.04 in Las Vegas. Honestly, given the great weather in these cities and the desire to be outdoors, who has time to sit around and read books? However, Florida could do with some breezy beach reads!

The cities with the highest literacy rates are Milwaukee, Minneapolis, and Denver. 

To see where your city ranked please visit the whole list from Clever Real Estate.