Because of our imminent relocation and seismic changes to our culture and the book trade, we are not buying as aggressively as we did in the past. But we are still buying saleable books in good condition.

We buy second hand and rare books on many topics. If you have books you want to sell, please call us with an estimate of how many books you have and a brief description of their topics. We are not able to make offers based on phone descriptions but we can let you know if bringing the books in is likely to be worth the effort. We do all our purchasing by appointment. For 200 or fewer books we meet sellers in our bookstore. For larger collections, such as moving or estate sales, we can make house calls.

If you are not located along the Wasatch Front, we do some purchasing by mail, but we limit such purchases to books of higher values. If you are not in the Salt Lake area, one of our buyers can tell you what information a book list should contain to be useful in helping us coach you about which books might be worth transporting.

We will consider noteworthy or beautiful books in nearly any field when in good condition. Following is a partial list of types of books in which we are usually interested:

• Mormonism & Utah History: Books of Mormon printed before 1921. Hymnals. Books by Bruce R. McConkie, Hugh Nibley, B.H. Roberts, James E. Talmage and John Widtsoe.
• Western Americana: especially Exploration. Works by John Charles Fremont, Lewis and Clark, and John Wesley Powell. Geological works by Clarence Edward Dutton, Ferdinand V. Hayden, Clarence King and George M. Wheeler. Historical works by Dale Morgan, Wallace Stegner.
• Good Fiction and Literature, especially nice editions: Yes, good is subjective. We do well with sixties and beat writers. We can use nice editions of Les Miserables, Don Quixote, and The Three Musketeers. Some authors we typically want are Edward Abbey, Jane Austen, Philip K. Dick, Charles Dickens, Allen Ginsberg, Robert Heinlein, Ernest Hemingway, Jack Kerouac, Haruki Murakami, Ayn Rand, J. D. Salinger, Wallace Stegner, John Steinbeck, Hunter S. Thompson, and Kurt Vonnegut.
• History: The closer to home and the more specific, the better.
• Graphic Novels.
• Philosophy and Religion: Major influential thinkers. C. S. Lewis.
• Great illustrators: Especially Maxfield Parrish, Willy Pogany, Arthur Rackham and Maurice Sendak.
• Science, Mathematics and Economics: Particularly seminal thinkers like Charles Darwin, Albert Einstein, Benjamin Graham, John Maynard Keynes, Issac Newton, Adam Smith, Alfred North Whitehead.
• Nature writers: Rachel Carson, Edward Abbey, Aldo Leopold.
• Children's Books: Especially Alice in Wonderland, Wizard of Oz, Chronicles of Narnia, and Dr. Suess.
• Sets and books in decorative or leather bindings. Books with beautiful maps or illustrations, particularly hand colored or chromolithographed plates. Fine press productions. It helps if they are well known titles.

Here is a list of types of books we do not want to purchase:

• Dated topics: May be actually or perceptually dated. Business, Diet, Investment, Study Guides, Travel Guides.
• Books from book clubs: There are a few, very few, exceptions.
• Ex-library copies: Unless a book is extremely scarce, don't even ask.
• Textbooks: Unless you have ones written by very noteworthy authors.
• Books containing black and white photos of color subjects: think art and nature.
• Books in less than good condition. We're talking about the whole book. A carefully handled book should only show faint signs of use.

There are so many exceptions to these guidelines that we implore you to call us before bringing books to our store or making a list. When buying small quantities of books of common value and availability, we only offer book credit. For large collections, books we need badly or books of high value we make payment or credit offers.

When you are ready, call us at 801-328-2586, and one of our buyers will help you figure out what you need to do to receive our offer.