Imagine in 1998 trying to get distribution for your literal box of disks in dozens of stores and thinking it costs you less than 30% of retail
In reality you could sell your software by direct mail if you thought it was a better cost structure than a store, or if a store didn’t want to carry your product.
IIRC, that's exactly how some famous companies/developers (Apogee, for one) started out. They uploaded the demo to BBSes and then had interested users buy the full product by mail.