The above bar chart explicitly shows where the residents in one specific city choose to buy books from. In the chart, it can be seen that 51.5％ of the people tend to buy books online, by contrast, only 23.4％ people buy from private bookstores. The other two ways, buying books from state-owned stores and from book fairs, account for 45.8％ and 23.7％ respectively.

Two plausible reasons for this phenomenon can be concluded as follows. Firstly, home delivery service has been attracting more and more people to buy books online, by saving them a lot of time and energy. Secondly, the rich varieties and low prices offered by online bookstores allow people to buy any book they want at a satisfied price, which also leads to an increasing number of people buying books online.

There is every possible reason to believe that this phenomenon will continue in the future. Therefore, it is necessary for traditional bookstores to make some changes in order to adapt to this new era of internet.