I lived in the countryside, and where I lived there wasn’t a bookstore, only a place that sold newspaper, magazines, stuff for sewing, and amusingly underwear and socks. It was possible to mail order books from publishers at pay them to the postman. In the package there was a leaflet with the new books and a postcard to order other books.
To buy books in foreign language, I had to wait to go in the city in the university. There were internal bookstores that had some scientific books available or some literature. There were a couple of bookstores in the city that had international titles.
The interesting thing is that the publishers that I bought stuff with mail order now have e-commerce websites. In most cases buying from them it’s cheaper than Amazon.
