I still miss
Left Bank Books in St. Louis, and I haven't lived there for 10+ years. They have added another store and, looking at the website, seem to be going all out to add value. They have book clubs that meet in the stores, link to the books that a whole bunch of community book clubs are reading, host frequent author readings, make it easy to buy ebooks from their site, and a "Friends" system which has benefits from folks who sign up at different membership levels.
I can't begin to tell you how wonderful that book store was for the 25 or so years I shopped there. From what I can tell, it continues that tradition today.
Now, in Red Deer, I look to our library for much of that. They host authors, have book clubs etc. in fact tonight, I am going to a library book club meeting to pick the books for the coming year. The library will assure they have enough copies on hand (including e-books). The difference--it's free (well tax supported) and I suppose it is just as much competition to bookstores as e-books are.