Hello again!

Welcome back to A Girl and Her Charts! This week, I thought I’d try to make some fun maps. Here they are!

What People are Reading

In 2022, 76,000 Americans completed a survey about what their favorite book is. I mapped the results of this survey to see what the favorite book is in each state. Of course, this map is based on the results of one survey and does not necessarily reflect the opinions of the majority of people, but it’s still interesting to look at.

The most popular book across the country was Pride and Prejudice, with it being the favorite book in 21 states. The favorite book in nine states was Harry Potter, many of these states in the northeastern part of the country. The only states that had a unique favorite book were Alaska, Hawaii, and North Dakota. There doesn’t really appear to be any trends between favorite book and region of the country.

Who People are Reading

The same survey from above also asked people who their favorite author is. Here is the results of the most common favorite authors by state.

The most common favorite author was JK Rowling, being the favorite author in 21 states, although Harry Potter was only the favorite book for nine states. Only four states had Harry Potter as the favorite book and JK Rowling as the favorite author. The second most common favorite author by state was Stephen King, with 18 states choosing him. Which is interesting, because none of the states had a Stephen King book as their favorite. Only 5 states had Jane Austen as the favorite author, 3 of which had Pride and Prejudice as the favorite book. Hawaii was consistent, since it was the only state to choose The Da Vinci Code and it’s author, Dan Brown, as the favorite. Two states had Colleen Hoover as the favorite, neither of which chose her book Verity as the favorite book. Again, there does not appear to be a big trend in favorite author by region.

What Writers are Making

Just for fun, I found data from the census that shows the averages wages for authors and writers in each state. There was data starting in 2014 until 2022, so I made a map that shows the change in wages by state over time.

Here we can see that wages generally increase over time across the country. Yay! Unsurprisingly, the Northeast and California have the highest average wages, while the middle of the country has lower wages. Wyoming is interesting because it starts with fairly average wages, increasing until 2018 where it suddenly drops and continues to decrease through 2022. By 2022, Wyoming had by far the lowest average wage, with the next lowest state, Kentucky, nearly doubling those wages. Other than that, there’s really not much to discuss here. But what a cool map!