What are the Best and Worst States for Bookstore Lovers?

Johann Thorsson

Staff Writer

Johann Thorsson is a native of Iceland, but spends much of his time in Bookland. He has lived in a few parts of the world but currently lives in Iceland with a pretty woman and a mischievous son who resembles Calvin (of Calvin and Hobbes fame) more each day. He has a complicated but ultimately useless degree in bioinformatics from a very pretty college in England. His favorite books are 1984, Flowers for Algernon and The English Patient. He hopes one day to call himself a writer without feeling like he's just fooling himself. Blog: Johann Thorsson - On Book and Writing Twitter: @johannthors

When it comes to bookstores, not all states are equal. We can all agree that when we are browsing bookstore shelves, we like a little privacy, right?

So, by that logic, the fewer people there are per bookstore, the better. And if we just compare the number of bookstores* per state to the population of that state, we can see which states are optimal for bookstore-browsing.

Still with me? Good.

I took a look at information about the number of bookstores in each state and then just divided this by the number of people living in that state to figure out how many people there were per bookstore. And then we get two groups, the yellow and the red, for the best ten and the worst ten states for bookstore privacy-lovers.

Before I tell you… which do you think have the fewest bookstores per person?

Best and worst states for book lovers

Group A…. that’s where you want to live. If you want privacy while shopping for books, that is.

 

Yeah. The red ones are the bad ones, the states that have fewer and more crowded bookstores (or, you know, more people per bookstore).

Let’s start with the bad ones- the states that have the fewest (and so probably most crowded) bookstores compared to population. (These are the ones in Group B above).

State

Population

Bookstores

People per bookstore

5. Connecticut

3,590,347

102

35199

4. Hawaii

1,392,313

36

38675

3. New York

19,570,261

505

38753

2. Rhode Island

1,050,292

27

38900

1. New Jersey

8,864,590

217

40851

 

And the best states for bookstore lovers?

State

Population

Bookstores

People per bookstore

5. Tennessee

6,456,243

369

17497

4. Alabama

4,822,023

286

16860

3. Vermont

626,011

38

16474

2. Wyoming

576,412

35

16469

1. Montana

1,005,141

64

15705

 

Montana, you are now my favorite state. Wyoming and Vermont are OK, but I am never setting a foot in New Jersey.

*Source: a Publishers Weekly article from 2013