Alexandria, Virginia, tops Amazon’s 20 most well-read US cities

Amazon has revealed the latest incarnation of its ‘most well-read US cities’ list. The ranking was determined through compiling data of all book, magazine and newspaper sales in both print and Kindle since June 1, 2011.

As with last year’s list, which was topped by Cambridge Massachusetts, the 2012 data was based on a ‘per capita’ basis, and constitutes cities with more than 100,000 residents. So…how did each of the cities do?

Well, Cambridge was knocked down a peg by Alexandria in Virginia (which was second last year), a city populated chiefly by professionals working in the federal civil service, the military or private companies contracted to the federal government. Alexandria topped the Romance book category too.

The Top 20 Most Well-Read Cities are:

1. Alexandria, Va.; 2. Cambridge, Mass.; 3. Berkeley, Calif.; 4. Ann Arbor, Mich.; 5. Boulder, Colo.; 6. Miami, Fla.; 7. Arlington, Va.;  8. Gainesville, Fla.; 9. Washington, D.C.; 10. Salt Lake City; 11. Pittsburgh; 12. Knoxville, Tenn.; 13. Seattle; 14. Orlando, Fla.; 15. Columbia, S.C.; 16. Bellevue, Wash.; 17. Cincinnati; 18. St. Louis; 19. Atlanta; 20. Richmond, Va.

More specifically, Amazon also found that Berkeley ordered the most Travel books, Boulder topped the list of cities that are most into Health, Fitness & Dieting, and Cambridge residents ordered the most books in the Business & Investing category. That’s perhaps not surprising given that both Harvard and MIT call the Greater Boston city home.