The store has an estimated 1 million books in stock, with a large collection of rare and used titles.[9] In a 2011 article from the online magazine Salon, the store was described as "one of the largest and strangest collections in North America".[6]
The store has four above-ground floors open to customers. An adjacent building has a collection of rarer and notable items available for viewing by appointment only. The rare book holdings are the only cataloged part of the inventory and can be viewed and ordered by visiting rarebooklink.com.
History
The store was established in Dearborn, Michigan by John K. King in 1965.[10] In 1971 it was moved to the Michigan Theatre in downtown Detroit.[10] In 1983 King purchased the abandoned Advance Glove factory, which has since housed the store's collections.[6][11] Later[when?], two smaller stores were opened: John K. King Books North in Detroit's Ferndale suburb and The Big Book Store in the Cass Corridor neighborhood, adjacent to Wayne State University, specializing in rare comics and paperbacks.
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James, Sheryl (April 7, 2002). "Hunting rare books a rarely profitable pursuit". Knight Ridder Newspapers. Retrieved May 10, 2012. ... John K. King Books in Detroit, one of the nation's biggest and best-known used, rare and out-of-print book dealers.
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Clemens, Paul (June 26, 2005). "A City of Hard Knocks and Hardwood". The New York Times. Retrieved May 10, 2012. For every hour I've spent at King's, I've heard the same three-word phrase repeated to customers a dozen times: We're not computerized.
^ abcCytron, Megan (May 15, 2011). "The world's most inspiring bookstores". Salon. Retrieved May 10, 2012. Converted from an abandoned 1940s glove factory, John King is a five-story wooden maze stuffed stairwells-to-ceilings with used and rare books — one of the largest and strangest collections in North America.
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Hyde, Justin (July 19, 1999). "Bookseller Collects Used Volumes". Associated Press. Archived from the original on March 4, 2016. Retrieved May 9, 2012. King's world includes as many as 1 million books housed in a converted glove factory, filling four stories in an industrial area near downtown.(subscription required)
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Loren D. Estleman; Monte Nagler (30 August 2007). Amos Walker's Detroit. Wayne State University Press. pp. 5–. ISBN978-0-8143-3357-0. Retrieved 10 May 2012. That was when John King bought it, tore out most of the partitions, reinforced the interior walls, and filled it top to bottom with books on every subject ...
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