Genre Mormon books Founder Bret Eborn | Founded 1989 in Layton, Utah | |
Type Limited liability company Industry Book sales and publishing Headquarters 254 South Main Street
Salt Lake City, Utah 84101
United States | ||
Eborn Books is a bookstore (selling new, used, and rare books) and book publisher located on the Wasatch Front with its main store in Salt Lake City, Utah, United States.
Contents
Description
The company specializes primarily in the Mormon book market and sells a majority of its more than half-million books on a consignment plan. It also publishes non-fiction works within the Mormon literature genre. (The publishing division also has an association with Shady Hill Press, which specializes in fictional works within the same genre [including fantasy and science fiction].) The enterprise is named after its founder-owner Bret Eborn.
Eborn Books' main store is located in the David Keith Building at 254 South Main Street in Downtown Salt Lake City (across from the Gallivan Center and in front of the Gallivan Plaza TRAX station). Two additional shops are located in the Newgate Mall in Ogden and in the Provo Towne Centre in Provo. In addition to its "brick and mortar" locations, the bookstore has substantial sales via the Internet and ships books worldwide.
History
The business originally started when Bret Eborn (having been a book collector for many years) began buying and selling used textbooks. He was sufficiently successful at this endeavor that he and his wife Cindy opened their first bookstore in Layton in 1989. Eborn claims that the business increased substantially once it began selling books on consignment. Sometime during the next decade or so the store moved to a location in Roy.
By April 2002, Eborn Books opened a shop in Downtown Salt Lake City at 433 East 300 South, adding to its previous location in Roy. Within a several months, Bret Eborn indicated that he planned to close the Roy location and open another one in the Sandy area.
In April 2008, Bret Eborn purchased two first edition Book of Mormons for about $11,000 at his store in the Valley Fair Mall in West Valley City. Later the same evening he discovered that the books had been stolen from the Daughters of Utah Pioneers Museum several days before, along with 11 other rare books. Upon verifying the proper ownership of the books much later that night, Eborn contacted the Salt Lake City Police Department (SLCPD) and turned over the artifacts. The two books had an estimated value of "anywhere from $800,000 to a million dollars," according to the SLCPD. Fortunately for Eborn, the matter was exposed before his payment checks were cashed.
In March 2012 Eborn Books moved into its current main location on South Main Street in Downtown Salt Lake City. The locale had been previously occupied (since 1964) by Sam Weller's Bookstore, until that bookstore moved across town to the Trolley Square earlier in the same year. The inventory of books that Sam Weller's was unable to sell prior to moving were purchased by Eborn Books.
In 2013, Eborn Books was named as "Best Reborn Book Nook" in Salt Lake City Weekly newspaper's "Best of Utah 2013: Main Street" nomination.