Getting back to the OP, I've never discovered books through bookstores. I mostly discover them through reviews, and through getting interested in a subject and then investigating said subject.
Last weekend my wife Barbara and I visited the open-to-tourists Perkasie Pennsylvania home of the late Nobel-prize winning author Pearl Buck. Now I'm finishing a hardback Buck biography from the library, and Barbara is a finishing an eBook Buck novel, also from a public library.
The weekend before that we visited the Peace Mission Movement headquarters in Gladwyne Pennsylvania AKA home of Mother Divine and the late Father Divine. If I can be allowed some disgraceful name-dropping, we actually met, and exchanged a few friendly words, with Mother Divine, meaning that we talked to someone whose in-laws entered adulthood as American slaves. I know this because I then took out from the library
God, Harlem U.S.A.: The Father Divine Story. This was the Peace Mission Movement history which, based on a web search, seems to have gotten the strongest reviews.
Most authors get more income from store sales than selling to libraries, so I have no problem with how the OP author finds books. My way is also OK.