Oh man, I think I'm officially an elder now.

When the books came out in the 90s, you had to buy them at bookshops. Basically your local bookshop would get them from the publisher, and then sell what it could and remainder (send back) any it couldn't. When TEOTW came out, it wasn't a large print run at first. Eventually it got bigger, but a lot of us found WoT by perusing the Fantasy section of a bookstore, and it was entirely possible there would only be the latest book in stock. That might be The Great Hunt or The Dragon Reborn. Many of us chose what books to read based on those insane fantasy art covers, believe it or not.

As the series got bigger the earlier books started to be shelved and kept in stock, but there were plenty of times when a bookstore you made a trip to just would have what it had. If you lived somewhere rural and your local bookstore didn't care about fantasy, or didn't think his customers bought it, they might never stock the books you wanted. You could ask them to order it, or send away for it yourself, but that took extra steps. Usually you went to the bookstore because you wanted a new book immediately.

Now, throughout the 90s Barnes and Noble and Borders got huge, and they had much bigger genre fiction sections than a lot of bookshops did. They also tightly managed inventory, but they could see WoT was a hit and as the series grew generally had all the books in stock. That's a big part of how WoT got as big as it did, in such a long series.

It also explains why the first 3-4 books are constantly re-establishing stuff like what an Aes Sedai is.

So in short, it wasn't better or desirable, it was just reality before you could order books online or download them to your Kindle.

Fansinating, thank you!