Paperback Dreams

Tony Weller of Sam Weller’s Bookstore

An Interview with Tony Weller
Sam Weller’s Bookstore
Salt Lake City, Utah

What’s the story of your bookstore?
It was founded by Gustav Weller, my father’s father in 1929, right before the depression. Gus ran it until the end of WWII, when Sam took over. My mother joined the business in 1951. I was born in 1962 and have worked in the store for my whole life though i only claim the last 30 years. Store was founded as a second-hand Mormon shop but has become increasingly general, secular and liberal with each succeeding generation. I married Catherine Cheves, now Weller, in 1991 and she joined the family bookstore in 1994. Her background is in library work, though now her experience as a bookseller is longer than her experience as a librarian. A longer version of this history is on our web site. We run the store together with the help of three other managers. I manage the rare book department and she manages new book purchasing, author events and outreach.

How did you get involved?
I was invited to commence work here when i was ten years old and wanted a new bike. My dad paid me 50 cents an hour to perform menial tasks after school in the mid-1970s.

Why do you keep doing it?
This is how i have spent my entire working career. Books, the bookstore and book people shaped my personality. I mistook the people i met in the book trade for ordinary and it caused me to be a quiet elitist teenager who always expected more of people than was reasonable. After high school, i realized that me expectations had been skewed by my association with book people who were smarter, more open minded, more creative and less bigotted than any other group of people i had ever met. I stuck with the family bookstore in order to work in a tiny pleasant niche within a mostly screwed up world.

How has bookstore culture in Salt Lake changed over the years?
In Salt Lake as everywhere, readership has steadily declined since television, more so since the internet. Urban sprawl has decentralized communities and fueled big box growth along with pollution and the sad homogenization of our community. Bookstores were once cultural hubs within a community but sadly, that seems to have ended before my time. Chain stores with their advertising budgets have caused slimly experienced shoppers to mistake prominence for excellence.

How have the interests of your readers changed?
I am always trying to figure this out. My perspectives are influenced by the second hand and rare book trade more than the new since that is where i spend most of my working time. Catherine could give you better info on the new side of the trade. It’s very hard to generalize such a question. I have noticed a decline in interest in Western history and military history. We have seen growth in graphic novels, young adult novels, science and economics. Don’t attempt to make too much of this. Too many different tastes for any meaningful pattern to be inferred.

What has that meant for your stores?
We had to close two branch stores in the 1990s due to oversaturation of the market, driven by the chains, who were chasing stock money rather than consumer money. Translate: Store is marketing tool to sell stock. We today, survive on about half the income we had before the internet began funneling money to corporations who expanded despite operational losses. Do you know that Amazon lost about a million dollars a month for about five years? Do you know that B & N opened a new store every ten days between about 1994 and 1995? Do you know that the retail sector for books quadrupled in size between the birth of the net and the millennium? During that period, the market for books only grew by 5%. That is an 80-fold discrepancy and one of the reasons our economy and our industry is so messed up.

Talk about free speech and bookselling.
Nothing has done more to further human technology, culture and freedoms and rights than the book. However, by educating people, it has made it harder for those who would control people to do so. The conflicts between power and learning have been constant since the invention of the press. I tend to think of freedom of speech and the press as a choice between security and freedom. Yes, freedom is challenging because it means freedom for everyone, including idiots and fools. However, if the alternative is control, I don’t know who I would trust to make decisions on my behalf. I am far more worried about the interests of those who seek to control others (churches, governments, businesses) than i am about the extremes of expression that freedom permits.

Talk about experiences where you’ve faced free speech issues in your stores.
We have defended ourselves against complaints from every side of the spectrum. I have had to explain in writing or verbally why we sell Mormon books, liberal books, conservative books or books with graphic pictures. Regardless of which side my assailant comes from, the response is pretty much the same. I ususlly admit that i dislike many books and think that many are wrong, mean, stupid or damaging. But i also explain that i am not the ultimate arbitrator of that any more than the person making the complaint and that that is just one of the risks and annoyances of living in a free society which, afterall, has far more good about it than bad. We joined with Kings English in a law suit against the Utah State government as they were seeking to establish an office to monitor and shut down web sites in Utah that have, “harmful or offensive” content. We are not pornography dealers but the definition of these terms is far from clear and even if it were and the state were to shut down all Utah based sites that were deemed dangerous, it would be a mere drop in the bucket and have no meaningful effect. Idiots.

Talk about your triumphs.
These days, just staying in business feels like a triumph, considering the sorry state of our industry. Staying in our old location here on Main Street is a triumph since most of the stores have left our neighborhood. We have expanded our store several times since the onslaught of the corporate colonists. I have enlarged and expanded our market and reputation for rare books. We won productive settlements from Random House, St Martins, Putnam, Viking, Penguin and other publishers as well as from Borders and Barnes & Noble when we sued all those bastards for breaking anti-trust laws.

What have been your proudest accomplishments as booksellers?
We get daily compliments from world travelers. We are told that we are one of the best bookstores that many of these book lovers have ever visited. We hear this from visitors from London, New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, even Asia. Such sentiments tend to praise our size, our selection, our orderly store, our reasonable prices and our diligent and friendly staff. Our rare book department produces a Christmas catalog that receives much praise.

Talk about your challenges.
Challenges mostly have to do with being able to sell enough books to cover our sizable overhead. We are challenged because we do business in a neighborhood that used to be well trafficked but is no longer. We are challenged because people just don’t read as much as they used to. We are challenged that too many people try to sell us more books than we are able to accommodate. I’m personally challenged because books have made me an idealist and the world depresses me.

What makes it hard to keep doing what you do?
All the above and the rather meager income.

Remind us why it matters.
Independent bookstores matter because they are run by people who care about books and who are rooted in the communities where they live. Indies know their customers and have an interest that is deeper than mere business. Books are the most stable and enduring of media that has been or is used to store, transmit and preserve human thought. Why would we entrust such an important thing to a few whorish corporations. Note: It was the chains who first capitulated to the threats from the Muslim fanatics who wanted to kill Salman Rushdie and prevent people from reading the Satanic Verses. Independents are typically operated by local citizens and locally owned businesses are always better for the local economy and more responsive to local needs. Books are powerful things and diversity and free flow of them is harmed be consolidation of influence.