
The world's cities with the most bookstores and libraries per capita - ghosh
http://qz.com/741099/the-worlds-cities-with-the-most-bookstores-and-libraries-per-capita/
======
pklausler
Not all bookstores are equivalent; one Powell's should not be counted as equal
to a small specialty shop. A better metric might be local retail book
purchases per capita (in units, not currency).

~~~
josu
>A better metric

Metric of what? As far as I can tell "bookstores per capita" is a pretty good
metric to measure bookstores per capita. If this is a good proxy for something
else, that I don't know, but it's certainly interesting.

~~~
jrapdx3
I think what was meant is that a giant bookstore like Powell's sells many
times the number of books compared to small "hole in the wall" shops.

I happen to live in Portland not far from Powell's main store, which is _huge_
and _busy_ all the time. Portland also has numerous smaller shops which serve
different niches and out of the way locations. I think the best metric would
be number of city-wide annual book sales per capita. (r =
total_annual_book_sales/population)

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throwaway2016a
Does this include university libraries? If so, I would love to see a college
city like Boston or Cambridge, MA, USA report their numbers.

The title is very misleading. It's "The most bookstores and libraries in a
self-selected small sample of cities"

Seems this could be done automatically and globally with other resources.

Edit: quick very non-scientific google maps search... looks like Boston has
about 9.5 libraries per 100,000 people if you include universities.

~~~
minikites
Regular citizens may not have borrowing ability at a university library, it
varies greatly.

~~~
santaclaus
In the US, at least, don't most states mandate library access at public
universities for taxpayers of that state?

~~~
mindcrime
At least here in NC, there's no statewide mandate, to the best of my
knowledge, regarding public access (in terms of checking books out) to
university libraries. But, at the same time, most - if not all - of them do
allow members of the public to purchase a library card and to checkout books.
Even some private universities do so. Duke[1] for example, has a program where
unaffiliated visitors can get borrowing privileges. It does cost a minimum of
$100.00 though. :-(

OTOH, to the best of my knowledge, most of the public university libraries
(and perhaps even some of the private ones) will let anyone walk in and
view/read books in the library itself, for no fee. I know at least last time I
was at the big new library at NC State, anybody could walk in and browse with
no problem.

[1]:
[https://library.duke.edu/services/visitors](https://library.duke.edu/services/visitors)

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11thEarlOfMar
It's sad in a way, but I drove past a Barnes & Noble while traveling through
Lincoln, Nebraska and thought, "oh, I haven't seen one of those in a while. I
thought they were out of business."

Then thinking a little further, "Yeah, just like vinyl records. Oh. And CDs.
And VHS tapes. And DVDs. Shit. The hazards of living in the future."

~~~
cdubzzz
I went in a Barnes & Noble recently and found they had a surprising amount of
vinyl. Decent stuff for a good price, too. Also DVDs. I have a bluray player
and do get them when they are in $5 bins, but otherwise DVDs are fine for me
and super cheap now. Can't complain.

I also recently ordered 12 books in a series from the Barnes and Noble website
because they were about 5% cheaper overall than on Amazon.

~~~
ethbro
> books, vinyl, DVDs, bluray

Wow, we covered a _lot_ of technological development rather quickly there.

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metaphorical
Funny how 1 data point can be extrapolated to make such a bold claim (best
cities for X). Hong Kong is a terrible place for book lovers.

\- I think almost all the bookstores are not profitable, many of them closing
down (especially the independent "second-floor" ones", ie not street-level
stores). The book choices in mainstream bookstores are rubbish. (PageOne and
Eslite slightly better.)

\- 99% of the HK publishing houses are controlled by Chinese government by
proxy. This imposes editorial censorship and determines which books will get
promoted in the stores.

\- If you publish or sell books that offend the CPC, you may be arrested in
China with some false charges

\- Generally speaking, most people in HK are not book lovers. If you visit
Eslite (a Taiwanese chain), you'll see a large area of their store is devoted
to lifestyle goods, not books.

Go to Taipei, go to Charing Cross in London, but don't go to HK for books.

~~~
11thEarlOfMar
Yeah, it's pretty funny because Hong Kong bookstore owners find themselves
kidnapped, locked up, interrogated and brain washed for months for selling
books not to the liking of the CCCP:

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2016/06/17...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2016/06/17/complete-
lawlessness-booksellers-dramatic-tale-spooks-hong-kong-underlines-concern-for-
swede/)

~~~
dmd
I very much doubt the CCCP was involved.

~~~
11thEarlOfMar
CCCP is a correct acronym for the Chinese Communist Party:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Committee_of_the_Commu...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Committee_of_the_Communist_Party_of_China)

The abductee claims, and Britain states, that the Chinese government, née
communist party, was responsible. The books that the communist party found
objectionable, and which led to the booksellers' abductions, contained gossip
about the personal lives of party members.

~~~
dmd
Interesting. I did not know that 'CCCP' was overloaded. Thanks! I cannot find
any source other than you who claims that, however - can you?

~~~
11thEarlOfMar
I know a lot of people who live in Hong Kong. I visit there periodically. In
vernacular parlance, they frequently say 'CCCP' when referring to the Chinese
government. Or they just say 'Beijing'. So, granted, it's hearsay, so I'm
happy to start using a different and more acceptable epithet for the Chinese
government. Any suggestions?

~~~
dmd
Well, the party is CPC. The Central Committee is abbreviated CC in Wikipedia,
though that seems unofficial.

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spxdcz
Shame they only include cities; the town of Hay-on-Wye in Wales has 24
bookshops for 1,598 people.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hay-on-
Wye#Book_town](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hay-on-Wye#Book_town)

------
mathattack
I think it's missing a lot of cities. The concept is good, but I don't trust
the metrics. (Bookstore in an airport versus something else?)

I'd be interested in books read per person (though hard to measure) or at
least books sold per capita.

~~~
dogma1138
They said that they didn't actually do a proper survey, 18 cities reported the
amount of bookstores, and 20 reported the amount of libraries and i think
those figures are way to low to be accurate to begin with. I can name at least
15 book stores within <20 min walk from where I live in London, Waterstones
alone has about 50 stores in London.

I think using Google Business Directory, Yelp, Yellow Pages and a few other
repositories would give a much better picture, I've checked a few random
cities (both on and off their list) and the numbers are considerably higher
than what the article describes.

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davidw
Portland has Powell's, so I think they win by default. If you ever go to
Portland, visit Powell's... it's fantastic!

~~~
erickhill
I'm a huge fan of Powell's.

There is also a simply massive Half-Price Books in Dallas on Northwest HWY.
It's like an entire city block (single level). Powell's is a sight to behold,
but if you ever make it to Big D, their HPB is pretty great.

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red_blobs
Any city in China shouldn't even be counted in this study. The books are
filtered through the government and you are only allowed to read what is
'approved'.

I lived there for 5+ years and as an avid reader, it was infuriating.

~~~
50CNT
cough...pirating ebooks...cough

~~~
red_blobs
Of course this works. So does a VPN back to the US. However, I shouldn't have
to jump through all of these hoops for the freedom of information.

Anyone who claims China is 'free' should try living there for at least a year.
It will open your eyes to the reality of the situation. It also makes you
appreciate the freedoms we have in the US.

~~~
50CNT
I've done 5 in total. I live in Beijing, so it's right underneath the watchful
eye of the Communist Party. It's not 'free' free but outside of the Great
Firewall (nuisance), and various visa and registration related shenanigans
(fairly lax), I haven't gotten into situations where I really felt the iron
grip of the government.

------
LeanderK
i think its a bit misleading. I grew up in munich, germany and there are not
many public libraries, but they are massive. The münchner stadtbibliothek has
stores (?) in every district. Then a few extra stores near major places and a
big headquarter. It is roughly half the size of the new york public library
for a city of only 1.5 million inhabitants. its not the only one, the state
has one, the universities etc. The bavarian state library has nearly twice as
many books as the new york public library.

Maybe books per capita would be a better metric to rank cities (albeit a bit
more complicated to research)

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timwaagh
I do appreciate a good bookstore. How much of my money i impulsively spent on
animal covered volumes thinking they'd make me smarter I cannot be sure but it
must be over a thousand. However they don't sell those anymore in my city.

~~~
davb
My city is the same. Borders used to stock a fantastic selection of technical
books. Since they closed down, our only other large (multi-story) bookshop is
Waterstones. Their computing selection gradually dwindled to a couple of
bookcases, dedicated primarily to introductory books (getting started with
Microsoft Excel, make the most of my new Macbook - that sort of thing). They
had one O'Reilly book (a Docker one).

I've got so many great memories of spending time in the bookshop, looking at
all the newly published tech books and the venerable classics, deciding what I
was going to learn next. Books that had been edited and reviewed, giving such
in-depth overviews that you could come away from them saying "I understand
this technology".

Recently I've realise how reliant I've become on a mishmash of blog posts, API
docs, incomplete/outdated product documentation...

I know that books haven't gone anywhere, but there's something to be said for
the discoverability and tangibility of books at the bookstore vs catalog pages
on a website.

And ebooks are just not a great experience (currently) when it comes to
technical books with diagrams, tables and code examples. They do make for a
fantastic complimentary product, however (CTRL-F when I want to quickly look
up something I've already read).

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mtw
I'm not sure about the data; Buenos Aires reported 25 libraries in a year and
now it disappears from the ranking. I don't think they closed down their
libraries in a couple of years?

~~~
inkel
I'm pretty sure we haven't lost that many libraries, and I have even seen new
ones in recent years.

------
keypusher
I am a bit surprised to see Singapore so low on the list. I wonder if they
count all the small bookstores in shopping plazas? The last time I lived there
(early 90's), there were a ton of micro-bookstores like this:
[http://friendlybooking.com/wp-
content/uploads/2014/10/Orchar...](http://friendlybooking.com/wp-
content/uploads/2014/10/Orchard-Road-A-great-street-for-shopping-in-
Singapore-4.jpg)

~~~
tacostakohashi
I was surprised by that too, and also the disparity with Hong Kong makes me
suspect something is up with their data.

There are lots of little neighborhood bookshops in the heartlands, and also
plenty of big ones like Kinokuniya, MPH, Page One in the big malls, and there
was previously a huge Borders too.

The quality is a whole other issue, but for mass market stuff it's as good as
anywhere.

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Finnucane
This is just making me remember the days when there were dozens of bookstores
here in Cambridge, most of which are gone now.

~~~
ghaff
There was a time when I had a bimonthly or so ritual of driving into Harvard
Square on a weekend and sending half a day poking through new and used book
and music stores, in addition to various other errands. They're mostly all
gone with just a few exceptions.

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startupdiscuss
It would be interesting to see a historical plot of: # of bookstores vs cost
of land vs Amazon stock price.

I see bookstores closing every year in NYC, Houston and other major cities
because land prices go up, and it gets too expensive to have what is
essentially a warehouse you can browse in the middle of the city when you can
have it delivered.

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aw3c2
For an amazing sample size of 18 self-reports. The results will surprise you,
especially #5.

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mjevans
There might be a quality missing with ebooks, or even stories on websites (my
typical method of reading something for fun today), that printed books have.

I think ordering online, and automated small batch runs are how a more luxury
item (printed books) are going to be delivered in the future. Just like today
you special order prints of legacy audio containers.

Cities with few bookstores only has a marginal correlation with how people
obtain reading material versus the cost of having a store in that city.

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jlarocco
The headline is completely wrong.

From the article: "Over the past two years, 18 cities have reported how many
bookstores they have, and 20 have reported on their public libraries."

It's not "the most book stores and libraries per capita", it's just the
numbers each city sent them.

With Amazon and eBooks, I don't know if counting bookstores really matters.

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jobigoud
Aren't online bookstores real bookstores?

~~~
pklausler
I'm not going to argue 'real', but the experiences are sure distinct.

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eternalban
Tehran is not even on this list. A glaring omission of a nation historically
hooked on books: [http://www.irantravelingcenter.com/amazing-intellectual-
trea...](http://www.irantravelingcenter.com/amazing-intellectual-treasure-of-
tehran/)

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cheriot
I've never seen a city with book vendor streets like Yangon, Myanmar.

[https://www.google.ru/search?q=yangon+myanmar+book+vendor&pr...](https://www.google.ru/search?q=yangon+myanmar+book+vendor&prmd=imvn&tbm=isch)

~~~
contingencies
Chatuchak ('JJ') markets outside of Bangkok have a section with a very similar
street. Many places in India also, particularly Calcutta. As these are both
neighboring countries, it's not surprising to find Myanmar with a similar
model of retail.

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arethuza
Interesting to read this in an office that is about 100m from the Book
Festival being set up in Edinburgh's Charlotte Square:

[https://www.edbookfest.co.uk/](https://www.edbookfest.co.uk/)

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kps
I cannot reply directly to wahsd, but: on the contrary, the ‘large and
inviting Barnes & Noble’ offers a shallow selection that can be found online
cheaper, while the ‘hole in the wall hoarder bookstore’ has a diverse stock.

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spacehunt
One reason for Hong Kong's top ranking might be because Amazon doesn't serve
Hong Kong well, particularly for local titles.

~~~
sidek
Also, HK has a lot of teeny, teeny, bookstores, squeezed into the fourth floor
of a building.

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ungzd
Bittorrent trackers are the best libraries.

~~~
emodendroket
They tend overwhelmingly toward technical manuals and sci-fi. Great if you
like those things, I guess.

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fhood
Don't worry, China has been doing its utmost to relieve Hong Kong of its #1
spot.

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quantum_nerd
Seattle isn't on the list. So yea, not a serious list :P

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ubersync
If it were a survey of most temples/religious places per capita, I'll bet
anything top 10 cities would be in India.

