Weller Book Works

In 1925, Gustav and Margaret Weller, Mormon converts, emigrated from Germany to Salt Lake City with their five children. Not long after, Gus opened the Salt Lake Bedding, Furniture & Radio shop at 14 East 1st South where he sold mostly second hand furniture. One day he bought a large collection of used Mormon books. Shortly thereafter, in 1929, his shop became Zion's Bookstore. The small store sold mainly second hand books about the Latter Day Saints. The family then had seven children and little money. John and Sam, the two oldest sons, helped their father in the bookstore. In 1932, the Bookstore moved a few doors to 28 East 1st South, a location large enough to enable a larger inventory with new books, including non-Mormon titles.

By 1939, there were eleven Weller children. Gus moved the store to 65 East 2nd South, roughly concurrent with his decision to take up farming. He bought some land in Marion, Utah and put the bookstore in the hands of his older sons. When he moved to the farm, the older children, including Sam, remained in Salt Lake.

In 1943, Sam was drafted into military service for the Second World War. He was 21. He served as private and military police, caring for prisoners. During the War, the bookstore was run by his younger sister Rachel, the second oldest daughter and fourth child. The oldest son, John had moved on to other endeavors. When Sam returned from the war in 1946, he had hoped to use the G.I Bill to study music and film but Gus compelled him to take over the bookstore. As the family story goes, fearing foreclosure, Gus had somehow “gifted” the store to Sam during the war, since wartime laws did not permit forcible closures of businesses owned by soldiers. Sam had given much of his youth to the bookstore and since it hadn’t ever provided enough income, he wasn’t exactly happy with his father’s plan. To make it worse, Zion’s Bookstore was deeply indebted. But Gus got his way and at 24, Sam took over.

Sam was hardworking and very charismatic. Within a few years he pulled the store out of debt. In 1949, he met Lila Nelson, a voracious reader who worked at the Deseret News. Sam and Lila fell in love and by 1950, she was working in the bookstore part time. Lila was good with numbers, patient and quiet, so she took over bookkeeping and finance. In 1953, they were married. In the 1950's, Zion’s Bookstore blossomed. The post-war economy was much improved and Sam was finally able to hire staff. The bookstore became known for Sam's energy, his zealous commitment to finding books and for having a broad range of new and used books of all topics -- with even a few contraband Henry Miller and D.H. Lawrence titles, for the customer who asked. Sam had also established himself as a formidable rare bookman with notable accolades for his work with Western History, Mormoniana, Geology and authors of the American West. In 1957 Lila devised an inventory control system that greatly improved inventory management.

In 1961, Zion's Bookstore moved to its current location in the David Keith Building at 254 South Main Street. To Sam, the move represented his arrival. In the 1960s, downtown Salt Lake City was a thriving district. By that time, Sam's reputation as an excellent bookman was well established. In 1968, he accepted a position on the board of directors for the American Booksellers Association (ABA). Locals took to calling him “the Mayor of Main Street” and referring to the bookstore as “Sam’s” In about 1969, at Lila’s suggestion, to reduce confusion between the LDS church-owned department store, ZCMI (Zion’s Cooperative Mercantile Institution); to take advantage of Sam’s prominent reputation; and to capitalize on his incidentally Dickensian name (Sam Weller was Mr. Pickwick’s comic servant in Charles Dickens’ first book, The Pickwick Papers), the name of the business was changed to Sam Weller’s Zion Bookstore.

In 1972, a devastating fire burned through the night, destroying much of the building. While the building burned, Sam and dedicated staff raced in and out, rescuing books. Late in the night, the Fire Marshal prohibited Sam from re-entering the building, fearing that it might collapse. The following morning, on their way home from the disaster, Sam spotted a "for rent" sign in a downtown building and asked the employee to whom he was giving a ride to take down the phone number. With characteristic determination and many helpers from the community, he moved the store and re-opened it within days with a fire sale. Several months later, the bookstore moved back into the building on Main Street, enlarged by its expansion into adjacent spaces that had not been reoccupied after the fire.

In the mid 1970's, Sam and Lila with other local booksellers founded the Intermountain Booksellers Association (IBA). In 1977, in partnership with a co-tenant, they bought the David Keith Building, a purchase that was crucial to our long stay on Main Street.

In 1976, Salt Lake City undertook "downtown beautification" which shut down the street for months and left it with less parking and fewer businesses. In 1980, a second mall was constructed across the street from the ZCMI mall two blocks north of us. By the late 1980s, the concentration of stores in the two malls gradually caused most of the street-side businesses to fail. Nonetheless, we remained, attracting bibliophiles locally and nationally to our vast collection of new, used and rare books. By then, the store had grown to occupy roughly 25,000 square feet of retail space and huge storage areas, Sam Weller’s Books had half a dozen branch stores in neighboring communities between the 1940's and 2000. Most were general new bookstores but one was a textbook store and the last was a mid-sized new and second-hand store in Sandy. We still have customers and real estate agents ask us to open branches in their communities. Though flattering, we are content running the one large store we have today.

In 1989, after dragging his feet for many years, Sam gained membership in the Antiquarian Booksellers Association of America (ABAA), the most prestigious association of American rare book dealers. At the same time, Joan Nay qualified for an associate membership in the ABAA. In the year 2000, Tony Weller became a member of the ABAA.

In 1994, Sam Weller’s Books conjoined with the American Booksellers Association and five other independent booksellers to sue six major publishers for violations of Robinson Patman Act anti-trust laws. The suit accused the publishers of illegal deals that benefited major retail bookselling chains. By 1996 settlements favorable to independent bookstores were achieved. Shortly thereafter, following a sale of the company, it was discovered that Penguin Books had violated the consent decree from that suit and had by new means continued secret and illegal deals with Barnes & Noble. The courts required Penguin to pay ABA and ABA member stores million in settlement with renewed injunctions.

In 1998, taking the charges to the sources, ABA with 26 plaintiff stores, including Weller’s, sued Barnes & Noble and Border’s for a new broader slate of antitrust violations. The nutshell version of the charges was that the two chains had used their market dominance to bully publishers into secret and illegal deals that harmed competitors. That suit was settled in 2001 with injunctions against the two corporations and combined settlement fees of .7 million paid to ABA.

In 1992, Sam suffered heart and artery problems that caused him to be hospitalized periodically and to undergo four arterial bypass surgeries. Although it looked like his working days might be over, he made an amazing recovery and by 1993, was back at work, slowed down only slightly. In January of 1997, Sam suddenly lost his vision due to an uncommon viral infection of his optic nerves. In March Lila Weller retired to care for him. In May, Catherine Weller, who had worked in the bookstore since 1994 and was married to Tony, gave birth to a daughter, Lila Ann, and took a leave of absence. In four tense months, the bookstore's staff had decreased from four Wellers to one.
Though the bookstore was a much quieter place without Sam's voluble energy, his opinions and influence were still felt by Tony and the staff due to the daily phone calls Sam made until months before his death.

Today, Sam Weller's Books is transitioning from its fourth location at 254 South Main Street to its fifth location in historic Trolley Square. When Sam and Lila retired, seeds of the changes that led to cataclysmic changes in the book industry had already sprouted. Between 1997 and today, booksellers have had to virtually re-learn everything we thought we knew about the book trade. The over-saturation of the retail, the demise of the downtown shopping district and the general decline in readership cut so deeply into earnings that in spring 2009, Catherine and I announced we would move the bookstore, to accommodate the community and cultural changes that have made it progressively harder to earn a living in the manner that sustained us on Main Street since 1961. Although the decision was born of hardship, embracing the inevitability of change, we recognize the move as an opportunity to build a bookstore that will be exciting and fun to visit and appropriate for the new era. Our new location in Trolley Square will be full of the mystery and surprise that accompanies a good novel, as well as the knowledge and illumination that is gained from a solid work of non-fiction. We are excited see you there.

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