I think we need them as places for community, for information, and many people still prefer to read paper books so I think we need for the time being. It is also a free secular place for people to gather and that is very important. The internet is not the solution for every problem. Paying writers to write books is an ongoing and difficult problem to solve because the price of living is rising and the wages for almost everything is falling. Our society does not value certain things and art is certainly one of those.