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Old people read a lot more than young people. Old people have a hard time buying items online. The bricks and mortar business still has some life, but a business plan based around old, dying people who are not savvy enough to realize the prices are terrible is not so great.
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I understand the tendency to jump on this statement with anecdotal statements about this or that friend or family member. I help at the local senior center in a town in Minnesota with a very high education rate (we've got so many retired teachers and professors that you can't swing a cat without clobbering a dozen). When I've done "tech" sessions on e-readers and tablets the room's been absolutely jammed. There's a LOT of interest.
But, at the same time, there are a lot of people that bring in their e-reader because they can't figure out how to download a book from the library to their Kindle, or can't understand the relationship between ADE and library books and how to get things onto their Nook...
So, yes, you may know a bunch of "someone's" that are 70+, tech-savvy, and happily downloading from the library, hitting the online bookstores, and skulking around the darknet, but from what I've seen, there's a LARGE group of "elderly" that read for pleasure, like the idea of e-readers where they can change font sizes, and would LIKE to do all these things, but have a very hard time going though the process of actually navigating the labyrinth.