Escape Fiction Books — Local services in Salem

Anyone who has gone to Escape Fiction can do just that. Escape! Full service store. Thousands of books, NEW and used, room upon room fully lined floor to ceiling with paper and hard back tomes of all genre/nooks & crannies to sit on the floor and "taste" a book or 12 before you buy. Don't see it & want to support your local bookstore; they can order as well. They've provided more than adequate lighting enabling customers to see ALL titles plainly from top to bottom. You buy a book, get credit to pay less on the next. They keep track so I've come out of there feeling like I've stolen a few!😊 To look at the outside of the place you'd never suspect the time it takes meandering through what feels like a mini Powell's here in Salem. Not a fancy place, no room for a big luxuriously stuffed chair to sit in, no coffee unless you want to jump the back fence and get one from the new Starbuck's on Commercial by Wilco or bring your own. They mean business and their business is books. Lots of 'em. Best thing for me? After shopping this store for years, they (Maria), know my tastes & can make suggestions within my genre; even help expand to a few others. She can do that! If you have books you don't want, take them there; they donate to our Servicemen and women. All in all, for me and the other regulars I see when I come through the door, an hour or so in my week I look forward to...

Be careful if you try to trade your books for in store credit. The “Scott’s” tried to swindle me today. I was told a price per book while he looked at them, but in the end the total was very different. He said he made a mistake, but even with that, the totals didn’t add up. Beware. It’s too bad, I used to like this store, been coming here for years. Then, when I couldn’t talk to them about it as they both were yelling at me, talking faster and louder by the second as I left, they were laughing and insulting me. Kept saying they were trying to “do me a Solid!” The only solid I needed, was honesty.

Update, the novel they wrote below as a response should show some of what I was talking about. Lots of words. You did yell, you and your son were smirking and laughing as I tried to say my piece, but you didn’t even pause for breath! You say you cant reciprocate, but what you really mean is retaliate! Don’t sound like you were trying to be kind and soothing to me. I didn’t care about the meager store credit! I left your store and dropped all the books at a donation place. All you had to do was be honest, and you weren’t! Anyone would be upset the way you treated me, just most people won’t stand up for themselves when confronted by two grown men. Online reviews can be harmful, and unjust, unless they are deserved, and this...

The owner (or whatever title the guy behind the desk had) made it so I couldn’t wait to get out of here. We stopped here after seeing a movie a little while ago because my partner had gone in before, so when we walked in he asked if we had been there and she answered “yes.” After a bit of browsing I brought a book to him and asked for the price and he got snarky and brought up that we should know, since we said we’ve been here before. He then explained how they priced books (and why they don’t list the actual prices) which made very little sense. Whenever my partner and I went to him with anything he made a point to bring up how “this is why I always ask people if they’ve been here.” Even after making our purchases (which I had to practically guess the price since it was not clearly dictated anywhere) he kept bringing up how he “thought we knew the rules.” He even brought that up to the people behind us in line when it was their turn to check out, saying something along the lines of “I thought I had made it clear to them but I guess I didn’t.” Sir, we come to bookstores for a good experience, not to be hassled by the staff for not understanding their peculiar method for book pricing. On that note, if you’re not going to list prices on the books, you should expect people to come to you. Won’t...