People from all over could tune in on a Maine town, and smell the balsam. I'd thought the internet would dissolve local boundaries, instead it has enhanced our localism. The web is weaving us together in a new way. Beware academic generalizations about big systems until you've checked on what the locals are actually doing. While you can buy your eggs and broccoli from many different sources, and still get eggs or broccoli, the same is not true for books.
Books are, by their nature, a monopolistic product.
People have traditionally chosen to buy books from bookstores, for the simple reason that they were more or less the only places you could buy them, but recently, other sources have become popular. I have seen the book business from many different angles. When I first started working in a bookstore, I had wanted to learn the trade and open a bookstore myself. I quickly discovered that selling books is not such a romantic job as I had thought, and the pressure from publishers to sell the books they wanted was too great to be able to really make a living selling the books I wanted. This is true here in France, but also in the US, and probably in most countries.