The aisles at the Book Tavern downtown were crowded on April 27 as Augusta’s largest independent bookstore celebrated Indie Bookstore Day.
Patrons of the Book Tavern, located at 978 Broad St., hunted for “golden tickets” and other prizes stuffed in among the thousands of books lining the shelves, there was live music, food trucks and plenty of goodies for the kids.
David Hutchison started selling used books at flea markets 20 years ago, and after one year of peddling publications out his car’s trunk, he moved into his first physical location on Broad Street.
“Technically, I say we will celebrate our 20th anniversary next year, because that is when we settled downtown and took on the name Book Tavern,” Hutchison said.
When Hutchison first started, the bookseller’s market was dominated by big box retailers like Barnes and Noble. At first, the big boxes were able to do what other large retailers do, and that was buy titles in sufficient bulk quantity to undercut pricing, thereby squeezing small local book sellers like a hungry anaconda.
“We could not make a living selling new John Grisham books. They took the cake away and left us with a little of the leftover icing,” Hutchison said.
The rise of internet book sales might have nailed the final nail in the independent bookstore coffin; but actually, Amazon did the indies a favor by undercutting the undercutters, forcing them out of business.
According to Hutchison, independent bookstores went from 10,000 stores nationwide down to less than 1,000.
“Those were some hard times, definitely, but we are on the rebound. There are now around 3,000 indie book dealers in America, so everything is looking up,” Hutchison said.
The success of the Book Tavern shows people still want paper books.
“After the novelty of Kindle wore off a little, people returned to wanting to mingle with other people and be able to browse, and they want a real book to read,” Hutchison said.
According to Hutchison, the act of reading a physical copy of a book affects the brain differently than reading material on a screen. There are five different cognitive processes that occur when a person reads a physical book; however, studies show reading on a tablet does not engage the brain in the same manner.
One of those cognitive senses is smell, whether it is a brand new tome or a dogeared paperback, all books have distinctive smells that activate certain portions of the brain.
“As a book ages, the chemicals released are like those in vanilla, while it doesn’t smell exactly like vanilla, the chemicals trigger the same pleasure receptacles in the brain,” Hutchison said.
Scott Hudson is the Senior Investigative Reporter and Editorial Page Editor for The Augusta Press. Reach him at scott@theaugustapress.com
