In the 10 or so counties that I routinely drive through there are ZERO bookstores. No indies, no bog box, NONE. Each county has at least one WalMart, and there are magazine racks and paperbacks in the grocery stores, but zero book stores. Amazon did not kill the bookstore, nor did B&N. An apathetic non-reading public killed the bookstore. They can only exist in major cities where people like us, who read, live.
https://www.publishersweekly.com/images/data/ARTICLE_PHOTO/photo/000/040/40670-1.JPG People haven't stopped reading. If anything, unit sales are up. We're not tracking a change in behavior, we're tracking a change in merchandising.
Kentucky has a fucked up County structure rooted in the far depths of time where everyone traveled on horseback. The state has more counties that all but Texas and Virginia. Some of the counties that I drive through daily are smaller than LA suburbs; I'm talking 200 square miles. Remember, Los Angeles County, CA has twice as many people as the whole state of Kentucky.
I give you a unicorn There are seven independent new book stores in Kansas. They can only exist in major cities where people like us, who read, live.