New York, with the highest concentration of large book publishing houses, ranks way down at #29 on the just-released list of the most literate U.S. cities, below Lexington-Fayette, KY (#15) and New Orleans (#17).

This is the fifth year of the study. Seattle has been #1 for three of those years. It lost out to Minneapolis in 2007 and tied with that city last year.

The rankings are based on the following per capita factors:

• Number of booksellers
• Education level
• Number of internet book orders and visitors to the city’s newspaper Web site
• Number of libraries, volumes held, circs and library professional staff
• Newspaper circulation
• Number of magazine publishers

The top five cities in terms of libraries are:

1. Cleveland, OH
2. St. Louis, MO
3. Pittsburgh, PA
4. Seattle, Wa
5. Cincinnati, OH

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