* reviews,
* analysis (historical context, more about author etc),
* other peoples thoughts about that book,
* free legal copy on Guttenberg,
* I am bored and dont care what comes out as long as it is interesting (which excludes selling places due to them not being interesting).
I just don't see the behavior the op is describing.
I tried searching for the last 5 or 6 books I've read, in every single case the results that came up were Amazon and Wikipedia, but also Goodreads, the authors website, at least one review or article about the book, and several had wikis.
In the main results I never saw more than two places to buy the book (unless the authors are selling it directly through their site, I didn't check). The bar on the right side of the page did include additional places to buy the ebooks, but it also includes places to borrow the ebooks, which is a cool feature I didn't even know existed until now.
* reviews, * analysis (historical context, more about author etc), * other peoples thoughts about that book, * free legal copy on Guttenberg, * I am bored and dont care what comes out as long as it is interesting (which excludes selling places due to them not being interesting).