I found this whole thing very interesting (maybe because of all the work I did with GPS stuff) and so decided to publish the press release in full. Take a look after the break to see a listing of top author states per capita based on titles by authors with a connection to a state and another listing of top author colleges and universities based on titles by authors connected to a school. Press release begins:
Today, Above the Treeline introduced a new way for book industry professionals to search for titles and authors of interest: GeoSearch. GeoSearch allows users to specify geographic criteria to search digital catalogs within Edelweiss, Above the Treeline‘s market-leading digital publisher catalog service, for titles connected to cities, states, colleges, and universities across North America. GeoSearch is freely available to registered Edelweiss users.
The user simply specifies a starting location and a radius in miles. GeoSearchreturns all titles connected to locations within the radius specified. The locations are mapped with coded markers and the map is accompanied by a corresponding location summary in order by distance. The actual titles are also provided for the selected location. Click on the image below for a view of a sample GeoSearch result, with notes. Click here for a clean view (without notes).
To refine the search, the user can specify filter criteria that includes BISAC subject category, format, pubdate, publisher, tags, and more.
GeoSearch currently finds title connections to geographic locations using automated logic that searches for patterns within author biography text such as “lives in New York City”. Within the next three months, title content relevancy will be added as well as publisher-supplied title coding to supplement the automated logic. In addition, international locations will be supported.
John Rubin, Above the Treeline‘s founder and CEO, was enthusiastic aboutGeoSearch‘s ability to help booksellers, librarians, and reviewers more easily connect to authors and titles of local interest. “We’re really proud of this new feature,” he said, “I think it is a great addition to Edelweiss and clearly advances our mission to help publishers, booksellers, librarians, and bloggers connect titles and readers.”
By summarizing the GeoSearch contents of approximately 30,000 title-location matches, states and universities can be ranked by author presence. Below is a list of the top 15 states, ranked by most titles published by connected authors (live there, raised there, born there) relative to the state’s total population. In addition, there is a list of top U.S. universities based on titles published by connected authors (attended, graduated, faculty member):
based on Titles by Authors with Connection to State
Rank State Index
1 Washington D.C. 10.71
2 Vermont 3.09
3 New York 3.00
4 Massachusetts 2.89
5 Connecticut 1.96
6 Maine 1.83
7 Montana 1.76
8 California 1.43
9 Colorado 1.19
10 Washington 1.15
11 Oregon 1.12
12 New Hampshire 1.10
13 New Mexico 1.10
14 Minnesota 1.06
15 Illinois 1.04
based on Titles by Authors Connected to School
1 Harvard University 21.18
2 Yale University 11.20
3 Columbia University 10.07
4 New York University 7.25
5 Stanford University 4.19
6 University of Chicago 3.99
7 Princeton University 3.79
8 University of California-Los Angeles 3.56
9 Duke University 3.39
10 Boston University 3.16
11 University of California-Berkeley 2.99
12 Wheaton College 2.89
13 Fordham University 2.76
14 Brown University 2.69
15 Cornell University 2.66
16 The University of Texas at Austin 2.63
17 University of Pennsylvania 2.46
18 University of Michigan-Ann Arbor 2.36
19 Northwestern University 2.13
20 Massachusetts Institute of Technology 1.96
21 School of Visual Arts 1.96
22 Georgetown University 1.80
23 Syracuse University 1.70
24 Philadelphia Biblical University 1.66
25 University of Virginia 1.66
