Bright Young Booksellers | August 31, 2026 |

Apport Used Books's Ben Roylance on Ufology, Eugenia Macer-Story, and Percy Grainger

Ben Roylance

Our Bright Young Booksellers series continues today with Ben Roylance, proprietor of Apport Used Books in Emmaus, Pennsylvania.

How did you get started in rare books?

My work with rare books came to be as a natural progression of operating the online and brick/mortar Apport concerns, slowly but undeniably moving from a happenstance (“look what I found”) part of bookselling to a more focused and intentional side of the business. At this point selling rare books and paper is the facet of Apport with the most momentum, and where much of my labor goes, though maintaining the storefront and selling less-than-rare books online and in the world remain a daily part of the equation too.

When did you open Apport and what do you specialize in?

I opened the Apport Used Books storefront in 2021; we just celebrated our 5th anniversary. I sold books as Apport for about five years before that too, mostly on Instagram, and on the usual online marketplaces.

Apport specializes in the strange, fringe, and forgotten, though I also like to sell books that more reliably sell, so I’ve got a picky generalist streak too. Poetry, outsider art and writing, genre fiction, “vanity” published oddities, esoterica, ufology, and abandoned or rejected philosophies and sciences are of particular interest.

What do you love about the book trade?

I love pulling a living, somehow, out of the bottomless pit / treasure chest of humanity’s records. Though I started as a more straightforward seller-of-books bookseller, someone who loved the medium and its adherents, I’ve come to really value the odds and ends (and ephemera) that tend to be sold with or as books. So: I love the shifting, often inclusive nature of the trade’s contents.

I love that I can put together a catalog entirely about headaches, or cybernetics, and face not confused silence from my colleagues, but pats on the back and sales. Which is to say: I love the people. Dealers, collectors, librarians, all of ‘em!

Describe a typical day for you:

I’m often manning the shop, so I’ll be doing the billion tasks and micro-tasks involved in that, half-finished projects and lost or misplaced items hunted and sometimes found, conversations with the sometimes sparse and sometimes brisk foot traffic that brings human beings into the shop. Often on the two days a week the shop is closed, or if I can find a day’s help, I’ll go out scouting, an apparently permanent source of excitement.

Favorite rare book (or ephemera) that you’ve handled?

My favorite item I’ve handled may not be the rarest or most expensive, and it may not be identifiable either. This is where the bookseller bleeds into the collector. I am willing to bet that if I could ever come up with a favorite item that’s passed through Apport, it would have to do with UFOs. Paris Flammonde’s handwritten sheet music for his song My Night in the Flying Saucer inscribed to Long John Nebel? Maybe a photo of a woman dowsing that I owned for about 20 minutes? A well-loved copy of Hohman’s Pow Wows / Long Lost Friend? A handpainted magic lantern slide of demons, wizards, and angels for a phrenologist’s sideshow presentation?

Apport Used Books

What makes a great collector?

I think what makes a great collector is sometimes what makes a rather difficult person: obsession. It isn’t always a negative or torturing trait; it can be a guide and is directly related to intuition. All of my customers who seem to be serious collectors find a way to balance impulse, knowledge, control, and imagination.

What do you personally collect?

I collect (I could almost say “archive” if I had the infrastructure) the works of poet, artist, and paranormal investigator Eugenia Macer-Story. I also collect interesting folk or outsider art, books or paper on flying saucers, poetry, and items related to the Frankfurt Group of composers including Percy Grainger and Cyril Scott.

What are your interests outside of work?

My creative work is as a poet, so that is a main non-bookselling interest, though they as you can imagine intersect quite often. I genuinely enjoy scouting for books and art, so much of my free time is spent at the work-leisure limen, though my travels, meaningful quests for strange destinations, visits to galleries and museums, etc. are often totally unrelated to bookselling, I promise. I do also like my family and friends!

What changes in the rare book trade most excite — or concern — you?

I like that the trade continues to invite and reward and frustrate its strange cast, even in the face of electronic and digital changes that some likely feel should have pulled a curtain down years ago. On that note, I’m interested in and concerned, like many, by the ways “AI” corporations and government projects may attempt to centralize and gatekeep knowledge, etc. This may, on the other hand, be a brief moral panic over a technology whose actual impact we can’t yet see. Ask me in two years?

Any upcoming fairs or catalogs?

I try to put out new arrivals or themed catalogs every few months, so ideally one will be on its way soon. They can always be found linked at my social media accounts, and on my website. I’m only just entering the larger world of fairs, but I can always be found at the (great) Allentown Book & Paper Show, twice a year. I hope to be in New York for the “shadow fair” this coming spring as well, as last time was a lot of fun.