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The world's cities with the most bookstores and libraries per capita
- arethuza 10y agoInteresting 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/
- ungzd 10y agoBittorrent trackers are the best libraries.
- emodendroket 10y agoThey tend overwhelmingly toward technical manuals and sci-fi. Great if you like those things, I guess.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- icebraining 10y agoLibrary Genesis is pretty cool too, as is Project Gutenberg.
- 11thEarlOfMar 10y agoIt'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 10y agoI 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 10y ago> books, vinyl, DVDs, bluray Wow, we covered a lot of technological development rather quickly there.
- louthy 10y agoVinyl is very much alive
- wldcordeiro 10y agoIt's the only physical music medium I'm really willing to buy, CDs are useless since I use streaming services and cassette tapes are just bad. The fact that there's a boom in vinyl is great for me because I love the art and colored vinyls that often are made.
- lfam 10y agoStreaming is convenient, but I think it's not a substitute for CDs. The value of CDs is that they provide a canonical and lossless recording, which isn't provided by vinyl, tapes, or streaming services (AFAIK). Of course, lossless digital audio files are even better.
- ethbro 10y agoCanonical and lossless recording doesn't matter when you're listening to remastered recordings. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war Most CD's sound on par with vinyl to me. More "accurate" reproduction certainly, but accuracy doesn't matter when the mastering is done by a monkey being prodded by a record exec.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- hrayr 10y agoThere are plenty of Barns & Noble's around Los Angeles. They're usually located in town centers (Americana at Brand, The Commons, etc.) and most of them are treated as such with open reading areas for children and a coffee shop for adults and students. It's one of my daughters' favorite spots, I hope that element doesn't go away anytime soon.
- yodsanklai 10y agoI love Barnes & Noble, especially their huge selection combined with the possibility to read the books in their café. Actually, I go to NYC regularly partly because of B&N.
- icantdrive55 10y agoI hope they stay open a few more years. Its my favorite stores. This company's eventual demise is one of the many things I hate about "living in the future". We are going to run out of stores we can browse, see people, use their bathroom without dirty looks, and a friendly staff. When I go in there, I think about how they could compete, and can't think of much. I like the stores so much I would consider spending my money on a monthly membership. Yes, like a gym membership. It would have to be reasonable, like $10/month, but I would gladly pay it for the honor of sitting at their tables. I know I need to buy more books there. I don't understand the individuals who pull 15 books off the shelf, leaves them on the floor, and buys the one book they want on Amazon.(I understand the low income buyer, but not being disrespectful by not putting books back.) They are putting a lot of toys in the stores. I guess that's a good idea. They have so much potential shelf space, I would like to see used books in their stores. Used technical books would be nice. So many customers would give them their old books. I feel like I'm writing their obituary.
- ars 10y ago> When I go in there, I think about how they could compete, and can't think of much. Hybrid Library and bookstore. (Not the same books :) Your $10/month membership gets you access to the library, and a discount on books.
- RobertKerans 10y ago[UK, but I assume same everywhere] Libraries have their own set of massive problems though, usage has been dropping off for years. Public libraries keep steadily expanding the internet services relative to books. They're still central to a small group of people's lives, but that's generally contingent to them being free. Private fee-based libraries already exist, have done forever. There's never been an issue with having those libraries allow sale of some titles at discount due to bulk buying, but that's always going to exclude some interesting/rare titles (which could well be mitigated in part by ebooks, but then this goes full circle; why do you need a physical shop). University libraries are generally accessible to anyone for a fee, but are maybe too specialist and tooled toward courses to be universally useful (+ there's that balance to be made between learning and land value which seems to be swinging heavily toward the latter). I really, really hope there is some path that would work here (i value books over any other possession, I'm a member of 2 public libraries, my old University's library, and a private library, so I'm pretty partisan) but I'm sceptical as to survival prospects of that line of thinking. [plug, just member] the Lit and Phil in Newcastle - if you're in the the North East of England, it's an incredible, beautiful thing, and well worth the small yearly fee
- mtw 10y agoI'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 10y agoI'm pretty sure we haven't lost that many libraries, and I have even seen new ones in recent years.
- maxerickson 10y agoIt also doesn't do much to account for differences between libraries. A small, poorly funded library is probably going to be less interesting than a large, well funded library.
- tulsidas 10y agoBuenos Aires didn't submit the data this year :(
- wahsd 10y agoThis is a useless assessment for many many reasons, but it's not even an accurate representation for several reasons. For example, two similar cities, one with hole in the wall hoarder "bookstores" and the other with with large and inviting banes and nobles book stores will be equal on the list. There are many more reasons why this evaluation is erroneous but I'll leave it at that.
- timwaagh 10y agoI 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 10y agoMy 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).
- jobigoud 10y agoAren't online bookstores real bookstores?
- pklausler 10y agoI'm not going to argue 'real', but the experiences are sure distinct.
- pklausler 10y agoNot 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 10y ago>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 10y agoI 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)
- ethbro 10y ago> If this is a good proxy for something else, that I don't know, but it's certainly interesting. I'd daresay most people who are upvoting this are finding it interesting as a proxy for something.
- bsder 10y agoYeah, Austin, for example, is artificially inflated because of Half Price Books.
- spxdcz 10y agoShame 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
- kps 10y agoI 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.
- Finnucane 10y agoThis is just making me remember the days when there were dozens of bookstores here in Cambridge, most of which are gone now.
- ghaff 10y agoThere 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.
- aw3c2 10y agoFor an amazing sample size of 18 self-reports. The results will surprise you, especially #5.
- ubersync 10y agoIf it were a survey of most temples/religious places per capita, I'll bet anything top 10 cities would be in India.
- throwaway2016a 10y agoDoes 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 10y agoRegular citizens may not have borrowing ability at a university library, it varies greatly.
- santaclaus 10y agoIn the US, at least, don't most states mandate library access at public universities for taxpayers of that state?
- mindcrime 10y agoAt 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
- colomon 10y agoAnn Arbor (pop 114,000) has well over ten libraries -- at least four public, and I can think of seven university libraries I have been to.
- cheriot 10y agoI've never seen a city with book vendor streets like Yangon, Myanmar. https://www.google.ru/search?q=yangon+myanmar+book+vendor&prmd=imvn&tbm=isch https://www.google.ru/search?q=yangon+myanmar+book+vendor&pr...
- contingencies 10y agoChatuchak ('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.
- keypusher 10y agoI 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/Orchard-Road-A-great-street-for-shopping-in-Singapore-4.jpg http://friendlybooking.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Orchar...
- tacostakohashi 10y agoI 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.
- fhood 10y agoDon't worry, China has been doing its utmost to relieve Hong Kong of its #1 spot.
- mathattack 10y agoI 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 10y agoThey 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.
- ihaveahadron 10y agoYou don't trust them because your retarded and your an American.
- jonknee 10y agoYou seem new here and your comments haven't added to the discussions. It's worth reading the guidelines before you get banned: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
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- LeanderK 10y agoi 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)
- startupdiscuss 10y agoIt 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.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- davidw 10y agoPortland has Powell's, so I think they win by default. If you ever go to Portland, visit Powell's... it's fantastic!
- santaclaus 10y agoStrand can give Powell's a run for its money!
- erickhill 10y agoI'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.
- quantum_nerd 10y agoSeattle isn't on the list. So yea, not a serious list :P
- red_blobs 10y agoAny 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 10y agocough...pirating ebooks...cough
- red_blobs 10y agoOf 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.
- contingencies 10y agoI've lived in China 15 years on and off. While bookstores with interesting English language titles are rare, I think you have greatly exaggerated the situation. Almost any copy shop in China will happily photocopy 20+ copies of any book your bring them, which makes it very easy to run book clubs... so it isn't exactly all negative.
- 50CNT 10y agoI'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.
- ihaveahadron 10y agoYea your smarter than the average Hong longer. Oh actually your not your a MORON.
- ihaveahadron 10y agoNot a single us city. Pathetic.
- jonknee 10y agoNew York City is #6 for bookstores and #15 for libraries...
- ihaveahadron 10y agoNot a single us city besides NYC.
- jonknee 10y agoAustin is #10 for bookstores. Please stop trolling HN.
- bradyd 10y agoAlso, the cities on the lists are the only cities they even have data for, so it's possible for other cities to have higher counts.
- jlarocco 10y agoIs New York no longer in the U.S.?
- jlarocco 10y agoThe 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.
- eternalban 10y agoTehran is not even on this list. A glaring omission of a nation historically hooked on books: http://www.irantravelingcenter.com/amazing-intellectual-treasure-of-tehran/ http://www.irantravelingcenter.com/amazing-intellectual-trea...
- spacehunt 10y agoOne reason for Hong Kong's top ranking might be because Amazon doesn't serve Hong Kong well, particularly for local titles.
- sidek 10y agoAlso, HK has a lot of teeny, teeny, bookstores, squeezed into the fourth floor of a building.
- mjevans 10y agoThere 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.
- metaphorical 10y agoFunny 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 10y agoYeah, 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/complete-lawlessness-booksellers-dramatic-tale-spooks-hong-kong-underlines-concern-for-swede/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2016/06/17...
- dmd 10y agoI very much doubt the CCCP was involved.
- 11thEarlOfMar 10y agoCCCP is a correct acronym for the Chinese Communist Party: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Committee_of_the_Communist_Party_of_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Committee_of_the_Commu... 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.