It works like this: 1) "Oh, look! A bookstore! I love books! Let's go look at it!" 2) "This is a great book. I think I'll buy it. How much is... TWENTY NINE FUCKING DOLLARS? Surely it's not the same every..." 3) "Huh. Amazon has it for thirteen. This place is cool but it isn't worth paying more than double for this book." It's a publishing problem: monopolies are always more efficient than a diverse market and Amazon has a monopoly on online booksales (go ahead and quibble - it's a de facto monopoly). Publishers aren't about to favor brick'n'mortar because Amazon will crush them and the capitalist system favors giant, unregulated monopolies. You'll note every single person decrying the "death of books" is someone who has gotten fat'n'happy not because of writing but because of publishing and publishing is experiencing its greatest upheaval since the Gutenberg Press.