FAQs:
What do you do? We are booksellers, and have been selling books online for over 22 years. Our first physical location in Santa Fe was on Baca Street, and opened in July 2011; in May, 2013, we moved to Sanbusco. In August, 2016, we opened a branch, creatively called 'op.cit. Taos' or 'op. north' in Taos. In November, 2015, we relocated the Santa Fe store to our home in DeVargas. We carry new, used and rare/collectible books. We also have a great selection of remainders (remainders, generally speaking, are publishers overstocks and returns, that we can get a markdown, and pass the savings on to you.) We have a small selection of audio books. We can do consignments for customers but they must be valued over $50.00 per book.
Where are you and what are your hours? We're in the DeVargas Center, at 157 Paseo de Peralta. The easiest way to find us is to use the entrance between Starbucks and the Santa Fe Bar and Grill -- we're right down the hall. We are open from 8AM to 7PM M-S, and from 8AM to 6PM on Sunday. Our online inventory can be searched at www.opcit.com. op.cit. Taos is located at 124A Bent Street, Taos, NM 87571, 575.751.1999, open daily from 10AM - 6PM. Our sister store in Las Vegas, Tome on the Range, is on the plaza at 247 Plaza Street, Las Vegas, NM 87701, 505.454.9944.
Can I sell or trade my books? Yes! Our general policy is to offer store credit for your used books. This credit isn't restricted on anything we own; you can use it for anything in the store, or for any of our online books, or for special orders. (The only exception is consignment art. Since we pass all payment for the art through to the artist, we can't apply store credit to that.) We may, on occasion, offer you cash for the book(s), but generally you will be offered store credit. We also do out-buys (meaning we'll come to you if you have an extensive library) for cash, but please note that these must be scheduled and, due to the volume, can take weeks to review once we get the books back to the store. You can give your store credit to anyone, including to a teacher or a school.
What types of books do you take? It is probably easier to clarify what we won't take: textbooks, technical books, romances, serial westerns. Generally, though, we'll be happy to look at any and all of your books. Condition is paramount, and problems with condition will decrease what we can offer you. Unless a book is rare or hard-to-find, if a book has highlighting or underlining, or extensive inked marginalia, we can't take it. We may pass on books with yellowing or sun damage. Hardcovers need to have their jackets (if they were issued with jackets.) Water damage is not acceptable. Even if you have some wonderful books, we may not be able to take them if we already have those titles in stock. It all depends on where we are in the inventory cycle. If we can't take your books, we may ask you if you'd like to put them in the free box for the community, or donate them to organizations we work with. In 2017, we donated boxes of books to artists, to people using books to practice repairing them, to benefit sales for Lou Gehrig's Disease and ran a benefit sale for the Friends of the Las Vegas Carnegie Library. If you'd like us to donate books to your sale or cause, let us know.
How much might I expect to get for my books? Please note that this is just a rule of thumb, we may offer you more or less depending on the individual book. As a guideline for trade credit: we may offer you up to 1/3 of the cover price for current titles in excellent condition (for example, these are books on current best seller lists that we would have to order new.) For other titles, we may offer you about 30% of the amount at which we would price the book. Condition of the book may increase or decrease the amount we offer you. We do market pricing -- if the title is very common, we may offer you less, if it's rare or very popular, we will offer you more. Since our trading volume has increased dramatically, an since we do not have full-time traders on staff, we ask that you leave your books with us so we can work on them as time permits. If you need us to look at books at a specific time, please call and set up an appointment. We will try to be fair. If you have a book that we can identify as rare or collectible, we'll do the research and try to be reasonable in what we offer you, and we'll try to explain why. We may not be able to take any or all your books, depending on what we may already have in inventory. Cash offers are always lower than trade offers. We may offer you half or less in cash than we'd offer you in trade. If you are requesting cash only, we will try our best to accommodate you, but there are genres for which we never offer cash.
Payment? Trade cards are kept on file at the store. Payments up to $20.00 may be done in cash. Anything over $20.00 will be paid by check. Checks are written once a week and are available on Friday mornings. If we haven't heard back from you by Thursday night (you can leave a message) specifically accepting the offer, your check won't be ready until the next week. We do not mail checks.
How many books may I bring in at once? We have a two-bag or two-box (banker-sized) book limit per trade, and have a limit of one active trade per person at any time. Once you've responded to your trade offer, you may bring in the next batch.
Outbuy Service: What about large libraries or estates? If you have a large number of books, and in our case that means in the hundreds, we may be able to come to you. We call this an 'outbuy'. It is a service. Doing an outbuy involves staff time, driving time, and expenses, so they have to be scheduled at a mutually convenient time, and they have to be cost-effective and efficient for us. We will ask you some basic questions about your books first, so we have an idea of what to expect. We will not come out until you have pulled out all the books you want to keep. Then, we will set up a time to preview and/or cull the books. Since we know this can be stressful and emotional, we let you review the books before we take them. We will cull the titles we think we want, leave them for you to review, and then pick them up. The process may vary depending on the situation -- for example, some people just donate books and want us to take them immediately; some people need time to review the books we are going to take. Since this process involves a larger number of books, we may need more time to assess them and develop an offer. We will try to let you know how long it will take us to get back to you. We do not provide a list of estimated values for individual books. If you decline an offer, you will have one week to retrieve your books. Space is always at a premium and we can't store your books, especially a large number of them, for longer than that. As always there are nuances to this process, so call us at the store and we can talk you through it.
Why is it called op.cit.? The name comes from the Latin, an abbreviation for 'opere citato', translating to 'in the work cited'. You may remember it from your days of having to write footnotes. We like it because it's general enough to cover many genres of work, though we do concentrate on the literary.
