King's English Bookshop — Local services in Salt Lake City

The store is quaint but a bit cramped. I'd recommend calling ahead to see if they have the book you want if you have something specific in mind before going in since it's a small store with limited shelf space. If they don't have what you need in stock, it's easy to make a special order, and it will arrive quickly.

Adding an update based on my most recent experience here: King's English will forever have my undying loyalty. While completing my Timothy Zahn collection, I tried ordering the last books I needed through various companies, and I was shocked at how poorly these other companies handled books. Walking into a bookstore and taking them off the shelf wasn't an option since all the bookstores I know of didn't carry the hardbacks. With the options looking bleak, I remembered King's English. I'd gotten books through them a few times with the Salt Lake City Library's summer reading program, and all the books King's English ordered for in-store pickup for me were in excellent condition. I figured a bookstore's supplier would care more about proper treatment of books than the underpaid employees packing books for for large companies, so I decided to give it a go and ordered the last books I needed through King's English using the in-store pickup option. Points for excellent customer service. When the first two arrived, they called to let me know one had arrived in good condition, but the other had suffered minor damage. They were very upfront in letting me know that reordering it would add another 3-5 business days to the wait. I appreciated them taking the time to let me know and for not dismissing the minor damage as insignificant. When all the books arrived and I went to pick them up, I was pleased to find they were in perfect condition. In the end, the books cost more through King's English than they would have through a larger company, but it was worth it to add books to my shelf that hadn't been damaged due to the careless book shipping practices of the large companies. Support local businesses, y'all. They care more about their customers, and they'll provide better products. I learned my lesson. Most of the time, I'm a notorious library user, but for future occasions when I want to add books to my collection, King's English is now my official...

Woman in the blue dress with the bangs during the Joe Abercrombie signing was irritable and rude.

If you want people to follow instructions, probably start with clear instructions. No one could hear her because she doesn't know how microphones work, either way she didn't give her complete instructions up front. She kept going back to the microphone to reprimand the audience for queuing saying things like "don't get into MY line until I call your letter." Except she gave no instruction to explicitly wait until she called the letter, just that people needed to line up based on the letter on their ticket. The line would get down to less than 10 people and she hadn't called a letter yet so people just politely started lining up based on the next letter. Made perfect sense to the 150 other people in the building. No problem either way, just drop the attitude about it.

She would go around getting people's names and the spelling for Joe and tell them "open your book." Those exact words. So when people you know...opened their book to the first page she would talk to them like they were stupid and say "keep going..." they turned the next page, she would snap at them again, next page, snap again, next page until she finally, again with an exceptional attitude would say "I need you to open it to the title page."

Okay? After 75 of these you think it would have occurred to her to...

THIS STORE IS ANTI GREEN VEHICLES. You lost my business forever for throwing a very loud adult temper tantrum over our electric scooters. I might have thought this was a cute bookstore but one of the employees (possibly the manager?) had a meltdown bcs we had parked our Lime scooters outside near some other bikes. My husband and I had been riding them around SLC exploring bcs it was my birthday, and he had told me I could pick something out from the bookshop for one of my presents. We were looking around inside when whoever the guy was started yelling "ARE THOSE LIME SCOOTERS?? THIS IS ABSOLUTELY RIDICULOUS IM MAKING A CALL!" He was on the phone stomping around in and out of the back yelling at whoever he was talking to, so we asked the employee behind the counter if we had done something wrong or if we weren't supposed to park there and he said he had no idea what the problem was and looked super uncomfortable. We asked if the guy who was yelling worked there and he said yes. We decided to leave without buying anything since apparently this shop does not support environmentally friendly transportation. The guy was outside when we left and never said a word to us as we were leaving so whatever his beef with our scooters was, we never got to find out, but we were...