Do you offer curbside service?

Yes. We always have. We are a small store so it is much easier to accommodate our customers current situations.

Who is Jan?

She is the original owner who opened the store but retired in 2000.

Side question - why didn't you change the name to Lori's?

Ultimately, it's not the smartest idea to lose 40 years of history for vanity sake. There is also a Laurie's in Oregon City that has been around for quite a while. We may change the name someday, but we have no current plans.

Can you order books?

Yes. Absolutely! We love to order. But not everything is available to be ordered. The easiest way to check the availbility is to email contact@janspaperbacks.com or call 503-649-3444.

Do you have an online inventory of your books?

No, unfortunately, that is a costly venture and we don't have the funds for that. If you'd like to sponsor it, make sure to let us know! We would love to have it available. In the meantime, we do have a catalog we can check. Most times though, Lori knows what books we have in the store so she can tell you pretty quickly.

Trading in Books

There's no way to explain this easily in a way that everyone understands, but I'm going to give it my best shot.

First of all - the biggest question - Do we give cash for books? No.

The next question is invariably, do you have any recommendations on what bookstore does? No. Online is your best bet if you want to make money on your books. Unfortunately, bookstores can't really afford to pay people for books. You can find several bookstores in the area that would discuss it for rare or vintage books, but only for rare and vintage.

We give 25% of the printed cover price of any books we take from you in store credit. That store credit can only be used on Used Books. Why can credit only be used on used books...because everything else we have/had to pay for.

The credit can only be used to cover up to half of the purchase price on the used books. Another way to look at this is that no matter how much credit you amass, you will always be paying something. Unfortunately, bookstores can no longer pay bills utilizing the 2 books for 1 book model that existed in the 80's and 90's.

Rules for trading in:

*We will only go through the equivalent of 2 paper grocery store bags a day per customer. This amounts to approximately 80 books. Being limited on space, means we only have so much room to stash books. Also, since we only usually have 1 person working the front counter at a time, checking in books can cause a back up.

*If we don't take the books, you will need to take them back. We are very limited on space, so if we don't want it, we don't have a place to put it. The Book Corner is 4 blocks away and will take everything.

*In general, we are a fiction paperback store. A lot of what we choose to take is within those parameters. For non-fiction we tend to only take history or military books. Hardbacks we take if we don't have the paperback but we want it. We do not take any crafting, how-to guides, textbooks, etc.

*After all that, what we take and don't take is based on our inventory. If it's a fiction paperback that we don't currently have, we may previously have had a copy that didn't sell in 2 or more years. If it's a fiction paperback that we do carry, we may have too many copies currently.