Skip to footer

Amazon ranks the best-read cities for 2014

The city of Alexandria, Va. took the top spot again on Amazon's list, while Miami, Fla. came in at second place.

|
Cliff Owen/AP
Pedestrians walk in Alexandria, Va.
  • By Molly Driscoll Staff Writer

Amazon has released its annual list of the best-read cities in America.

The online giant bases its data on the sales information from each city (counting books ordered as well as newspapers and magazines), so it should be noted that the rankings reflect only Amazon sales and not any titles that city residents would have bought from local stores or other companies like Barnes & Noble or borrowed from libraries.

For the list, the company looks at sales on a per capita basis in areas of over 100,000 residents. Sales data from April 2013 to April 2014 was examined for this list.

On Amazon’s list, the city of Alexandra, Va. again took the top spot for this year. Alexandria has been listed as number 1 on the company’s rankings since 2012. In 2011, Cambridge, Mass. was number one, but it fell to number two in 2012 and is now all the way down at number eight.

For the 2014 rankings, Miami, Fla. came in at number two, jumping one spot from its third-place finish in 2013. Knoxville, Tenn. placed at number three for 2014, falling one place from its second-place finish in 2013. Seattle, Wash. came in at number four for 2014, jumping up all the way from number 13 in last year’s list. 2014’s fifth-place finisher is Orlando, Fla., the same rank it occupied on the list last year.

Ann Arbor, Mich. and Berkeley, Calif. also placed the same as they did last year, taking the sixth and seventh spots, respectively.

Check out the full list here.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to Amazon ranks the best-read cities for 2014
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Books/chapter-and-verse/2014/0522/Amazon-ranks-the-best-read-cities-for-2014
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe