Huntingdon and Spalding top Amazon list of best read towns in UK

Huntingdon and Spalding are two of the best read towns in the UK based on figures released by Amazon’s Kindle Store.

Amazon looked at the most popular towns in the UK for buying Kindle eBooks based on titles bought per capita and Huntingdon came out on top as the most well-read. Spalding meanwhile came sixth.

Since it opened in August 2010, the UK Kindle Store has allowed hundreds of thousands of authors to self-publish, with six independent authors breaking into the top 100 Kindle authors of all time.

The store was launched with the aim of allowing customers to buy and start reading books in 60 seconds, and is billed by Amazon as a “store with millions of titles in your bag or pocket”.

Psychological thriller author Rachel Abbott is the UK’s most popular independent author, with over one million eBooks sold globally.

Ms Abbott, who comes in at number 14 in the overall list of top authors, said her feet “haven’t touched the ground” since she began publishing books through the Kindle Store.

She said: “One day I decided to publish it to see what might happen, and that decision was life-changing. I’m now writing my fifth novel, have sold well over a million copies of the first four, and have a new full-time career as an author. Nobody, least of all me, could have seen that coming-but I’m loving every minute of it.”

EL James, who initially self-published Fifty Shades Of Grey, was announced as the Kindle Store’s best-selling author of all time, beating Game Of Thrones writer George RR Martin and The Hunger Games novelist Suzanne Collins.

Jorrit van der Meulen, vice-president of Kindle EU, said the store had played a significant role in providing “more books by more authors to readers around the world”.

He said: “During the last five years we have not only seen established authors succeed on Kindle, but also enjoyed watching the rise of independent authors, who are reaching a global audience and earning royalties of up to 70% along the way.”

The top 10 Kindle books of all time is dominated by films, with eight of them having made it to the silver screen, including Stieg Larson’s The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.

The full top 10 of best read towns (based on titles bought per capita) is

1. Huntingdon

2. Doncaster

3. Rochester

4. Truro

5. Chorley

6. Spalding

7. Dunfermline

8. Sevenoaks

9. Newton Abbot

10. Chichester