Austen Baack rediscovered his love of books while chopping fruits and vegetables at the back of a grocery store.

As a young kid, Baack was a voracious reader. But that changed in his teens.

“I was SparkNotes-ing everything,” he recalled. “I hardly read anything in high school.”

Then, after graduation, Baack found himself working eight-hour shifts at Hy-Vee. He started listening to audio books to navigate the monotony of the job.

“And that reignited my whole love for reading.”

He carried that passion to the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, where he studied political science and economics while working as a page in the Legislature. But after taking a few months off to travel around India and the Himalayas, COVID-19 upended his return to college.

That’s when Baack decided to start taking his hobby a little more seriously. What started as an attempt to build his personal library turned into something entirely different.

Today, the Lincoln resident is the owner and operator of Revolving Books, an online bookshop.

Boasting 125,000 followers on Instagram, Revolving Books has established itself as a trusted curator of both fiction and non-fiction for readers across the U.S. It capitalized on a growing community of online readers, and slid neatly into an underfilled niche — making high-quality, hard-to-find secondhand books available to the masses for a reasonable price. 

Baack admits he’s a bit baffled by the success.

“These people have found me organically through social media, and they are buying the kinds of books that I’m selling,” Baack said. “It’s not popular fiction. It’s not the general Barnes & Noble zeitgeist type stuff, or even the Booktok type stuff (on TikTok) … It’s incredible that I have this really literary customer base that’s buying challenging, dense, obscure literature.”

In early summer, Baack sat down in his living room, surrounded by floor-to-ceiling books, and addressed his online audience with a serious expression:

“Perhaps the time has finally come for me to stop buying so many books.”

He paused — then grinned.

“Sike, that’s literally never going to happen.”

That Instagram reel, which featured a hit of what Baack called “bookmail dopamine” (a book haul, for the uninitiated), showcased the relaxed, intimate style of communication Baack has with his virtual customers. By early August, the reel had amassed 45,300 views — an impressive feat, but light work compared to some of his other reels, which have attracted hundreds of thousands of eyes.

Baack’s social content varies. Sometimes, a video focuses on a particular author Baack feels is underappreciated. Other times, it’s a how-to: Want to build your own library? Still more are dedicated to the art of recommendation: 1 million people tuned in to hear his thoughts on the five best books on consciousness.

“I think he’s really smart about the way he makes those videos,” said Andie Blaine, a Revolving Books customer who lives in New York City. “I just think he’s got a good business model that’s very genuine, because it’s hard when you’re trying to sell something, to be yourself. And he does that.”

Instagram is where Revolving Books became more than an idea. In the four years since Baack first made the account and mass-followed other bookish creators — immediately landing him 1,000 followers — he has amassed an audience of readers across the globe.

Sales are limited to the U.S., but they’re prolific: He has sent books to followers in all 50 states. That growing popularity pushed Baack to launch a formal website where he now sells his books.

Revolving Books’ online fame reflects the increasing appetite readers have for digital spaces where they can share their love for books with others. “Bookstagram” and “Booktok” have become part of reading in the 21st century, bringing longtime enthusiasts and first-time page turners together through reels and TikToks.

“Reading is something that’s deeply personal,” Blaine said. “Books kind of live inside everybody after you read them. I think getting to talk to people about certain books and certain editions and sharing that love is great. … The book community on Instagram over the years, I just feel like everyone gets to learn more from each other.”

Baack hit the bookseller equivalent of the lottery at 5:01 p.m. on an overcast June day.

After a long day of restocking the website, the bookseller checked his messages to find a tip from a Lincoln-based follower: A former literature professor’s personal collection was being sold as part of a local estate sale.

The sale was set to end at 5:30 p.m. Baack scrambled to make it in time — and when he did, he found himself surrounded by a lifetime’s worth of cherished literature.

While many online book spaces focus on new releases, Revolving Books occupies a smaller niche: rediscovering and highlighting secondhand books. In early August, customers browsing through the store’s website could quickly find a 1951 printing of “The Catcher in the Rye” by J.D. Salinger, a vintage edition of “Spartacus” by Howard Fast with a portfolio of drawings from the film adaptation or “Essays on The Great Depression” by Ben S. Bernanke.

That’s thanks to Baack’s personal curation, a process he has honed through hundreds of trips to thrift stores, estate sales and other bookish goldmines. If there’s a thrift store with 500 books on the shelves, he’s looking for the 20 best.

“It’s really just whatever piques my interest personally,” he said. “I read in a lot of different genres, a lot of different realms, and so I’m always trying to kind of expand my knowledge base.”

Baack’s wide-ranging tastes have served Chelsea Kirkaldie well. A longtime customer living in Enumclaw, Washington, Kirkaldie has purchased more than 100 books from Revolving Books. They include a ’70s box set of the Lord of the Rings, religious works from Mircea Eliade, a first-edition book authored by former U.S. President Teddy Roosevelt — and a gift for her husband.

“My husband manages a video store, and he’s really into obscure, different Italian movies. I was able to find a cool old book on Italian film,” she said.

Prices vary. Trade paperbacks can go for $5-$10 each. Rare finds — like a first edition, signed printing of “The War of the End of the World” by Mario Vargas Llosa — can go for several hundred dollars. 

“My philosophy of reading is really about finding under-appreciated classics, especially from different places around the world,” he said. “I think that reading global fiction is such an expansionary act … you can learn so much about the world and history and different cultures by reading the great novels that have come out of there.”

Curation is also an act of preservation for Baack. He ended up coming back after the end of the estate sale to snag more of the literature professor’s collection, ending up with thousands of volumes when all was said and done. If he hadn’t stepped in, he said, many of those would have ended up thrown away. Now they’re listed online, ready to broaden the horizons of their next owners.

To Kirkaldie, saving older books is more important than ever.

“I go to my local library, and it’s slightly horrifying to me that nearly everything is brand new,” she said. “It’s great that libraries have access to money to buy new books. But it seems like there’s a lot of really good books that are not as accessible.”

Lincoln is home to a variety of new, used and children’s book stores, including Francie and Finch Bookshop, Sower Books, Bluestem Books, A Novel Idea Bookstore and Elleinad Books.

What sets each of these apart from Revolving Books are their brick-and-mortar locations. Baack’s secondhand bookstore operates exclusively online — but that could change, especially if the business continues to expand.

Anytime he travels, Baack makes sure to pop into the local bookstores and get advice from longtime booksellers. The No. 1 key to success: Own the space, don’t rent.

“And that has kind of infiltrated my brain, and has kind of been at the center of all my hypothesizing.”

For now, Baack said, the vision is fantastical — at least in a financial sense. But he’s excited about the possibility of creating a bookstore and community space in Lincoln. In the meantime, he’s branching out and setting up shop at the Haymarket Farmer’s Market on Saturdays.

This has been Revolving Book’s year. In 2024, Baack sold a little over 5,000 books. Halfway through this year, he’s already surpassed that.

It has been a heartening experience for Baack, who never anticipated rediscovering his love of reading at a summer job could culminate in becoming a full-time book dealer.

Instead of chopping fruits and veggies, Baack’s days are now consumed by tracking down the best books he can find — and sharing his passion with others across the globe.

“I think it’s really important that people read challenging stuff and thought-provoking stuff and stuff that makes you think critically … that’s what I really want to advocate for,” he said. “That’s my primary ambition.”

This story was originally published by Flatwater Free Press, an independent, nonprofit newsroom focused on investigations and feature stories in Nebraska that matter. Read the article at: https://flatwaterfreepress.org/a-lincoln-man-took-to-social-media-to-sha...