Bookseller Spotlight: Peruse the Stacks
Peruse the Stacks was named as an invitation: to approach books with a spirit of inquiry and curiosity. With their personal book collections propelling them into the online book trade, Brandon and Mallory Wilhelm opened Peruse the Stacks as a side-hustle that became their full-time careers. Graduates of the Colorado Antiquarian Book Seminar, Brandon and Mallory share insights into their book trade experiences.
The following interview shares insights from Brandon and Mallory, with questions posed by Jeanne Dodds, ABSF's Administrative Director. The interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Jeanne Dodds:
Can you speak a bit about the evolution of Peruse the Stacks from personal collections to an online shop also selling at regional book fairs?
Brandon and Mallory:
Mallory here - I’m the daughter of a book collector and spent my weekends growing up driving around to used bookstores and antique malls to go “treasure hunting” for my father's collection. By high school, I'd started my own collection. When I met Brandon in 2009, he became fascinated by my little collection. One Thanksgiving, we took a trip to see my dad, browse his collection, and “talk books”. Books have been an integral part of our life ever since. We both taught music and spent our weekends reading and “booking.” Brandon sold some books on eBay to fund our collection as teaching did not leave a large book budget. One day, we decided to expand our eBay storefront and online bookselling presence. Brandon had been cataloging our collection on HomeBase and Abebooks offered a sale on listing fees – so we brainstormed a name and opened Peruse the Stacks in February 2020. Our intention was to have the store as a side-hustle until we left teaching later in life, but the store was more successful than we had anticipated. Brandon left teaching in 2022 to work on the store full-time and I joined him in the summer of 2023.
Mallory and Brandon of Peruse the Stacks at the San Francisco Book Fair
Shortly after launching our Abebooks storefront in 2020, we actually registered for the Seattle Antiquarian Book Fair (perhaps against our better judgement given that we had little to no bookselling experience), but by the time fairs were happening in-person again Brandon had attended CABS and we were so excited to exhibit everywhere we could!
JD: How did your experiences at CABS influence what you're doing today?
Mallory: Brandon attended CABS in 2021 [the only year so far the seminar has been held online -- ed.] after a year of managing our online shop while teaching virtually. That experience convinced him that bookselling could be his full-time job and inspired him to go into the 21-22 school year with the goal of replacing his teaching salary with profits from the store. I thought about going in summer 2023 to kick off my new career as a bookseller, but instead waited until 2024. I came back to work with a checklist of specific goals for growing the business and a lot more confidence in my role in our store’s success. Both of us agree that we use the resources, both from the lectures and the CABS notebook, regularly in our day to day work. Everything we do, from managing our budget to the way we catalog, was positively influenced by our time at CABS.
JD: What is one anecdote from your experience exhibiting and interacting with participants and buyers at the recent ABAA San Francisco Book Fair you'd like to share?
Brandon: One thing I always enjoy about showing material at fairs is how interest can spread quickly if you are enthusiastic about what you're selling. So, for instance, at this fair we had a great Thee Temple of Psychick Youth item in the case. It was a really rare internal manual, comb-bound, with the Psychick Cross on the cover, grainy xeroxed illustrations, the whole bit. I was showing it to a librarian who knew about the group, and we were talking about Genesis P-Orridge and Psychic TV, etc. Well, the fair was super busy - there was always a bit of a crowd around, and I think a few people picked up on the conversation. So, when I went to put it back in the case, a couple who had been standing close by excitedly wanted to see it and immediately asked me to hold it while they looked at other things. They ended up buying that and several other nice esoteric items.
JD: What is a unique quality of Peruse the Stacks, setting your shop or collection apart?
Mallory: Because Peruse the Stacks evolved from our personal collections, a lot of our individual personalities and personal histories are reflected in the materials we sell. You can see my love of children in our children’s literature; Brandon’s taste for fantasy and horror in our genre fiction; our home states of Wyoming, Texas, and now the West coast in the Americana; our musical training in our Performing Arts offerings, etc. We also hope that as former collectors we make our customers feel welcome and that they know that placing these books with folks who appreciate them is as important as our bottom line.
JD: Your collection includes a genuine first edition of Peter Rabbit. What is the story of this item?
Brandon: It’s really funny how things just fall into your lap sometimes. I worry and whine to whomever will listen about not having enough good new stuff for fairs. Mallory and my good friend Taylor Bowie bring helpful perspectives and remind me that even our older material will be new to just about everyone at the fair. But... this worry was especially strong leading up to our first ABAA show. So, a week or two before, while finishing our catalogue, we got a referral from a colleague for a consignment of this one book from a private collection: the self-published first edition of The Tale of Peter Rabbit. We absolutely couldn’t believe it, but it just goes to show how you work to slowly build connections in the trade, and eventually, these connections allow you to get your hands on some pretty amazing stuff. The copy we have is just wonderful - not perfect by any means, but gently read and seemingly cherished over the years. Not in rough shape at all, as is often the case. I really did feel giddy when I went to retrieve the book and first got to flip through it. Needless to say, it was a highlight at the fair, and drew a lot of attention.
JD: Are there any other stories from items in your collection that you'd like to highlight ?
Brandon: So right now we have a copy of Madeleine L’Engle’s first publication: a little Baker’s Royalty Play called18 Washington Square, South, published in 1944 a year before The Small Rain. L’Engle actually had a career as a stage actress in New York before she became a writer, and met her husband, Hugh Franklin that way. Anyway, this is the third copy of this we’ve ever seen, and we’ve had all three! Mallory collected hers growing up and of course, A Wrinkle in Time was and is her favorite book. When we met, she had basically a complete L’Engle collection except for one item: 18 Washington Square. We could see it existed in a few libraries via Worldcat, but could find zero evidence of it elsewhere. We always joked about getting a copy on interlibrary loan and then it mysteriously disappearing… but of course we would never do that… ahem. Fast forward to 2020-21 when New England Book Auctions sold her personal library. Needless to say, we were aggressive bidders, and when we saw a big lot with that play sitting inconspicuously on a lower shelf, we had to buy it. We were thrilled that we won, but that was nothing compared to the exhilaration when the packages came and we unwrapped not one but two copies from the same lot! To make it even better, one of them had her mother’s name on the cover. Interestingly, the copy we have now I found by chance, not even via a saved search, but a random search one day after we had sold the other two. It’s the kind of thing that just never turns up, and probably the majority of copies are buried in the libraries of a few drama departments on the East Coast. But, it’s an important first book, and one we always keep an eye out for.
Peruse the Stacks' current copy of 18 Washington Square by Madeleine L’Engle