The Book Tavern is turning the page to a new chapter: “Chapter 5,” to be exact, according to owner David Hutchison.
“This is the fifth incarnation of The Book Tavern,” Hutchison said about the downtown bookseller’s upcoming new location at 1026 Broad St., next door to Nacho Mama’s.
The first iteration was in a stall at Barnyard Flea Markets, back in 2004; first on the “G” row, then on the “H” row.
“That place was really good to me,” Hutchison said. “If it wasn’t for the Barnyard, I don’t know that I would have ever, ever opened the store here. It gave me a real sense for Augusta’s appetite for books.”
When Hutchison first tried to start a bookstore in Augusta, many locals told him, “Nobody reads here,” and that the best he could hope for were customers clamoring after John Grisham, James Patterson and romance novels—which he would have accommodated if things turned out that way. But what he found was a yearning for all varieties of literature from history to philosophy to fantasy and science-fiction, signifying an overall hunger for reading that has kept The Book Tavern afloat for 18 years.
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Hutchison notes a strong core of supporters that have followed him from his first downtown location on Eighth Street, which he left after a year to open on 1026 Broad St., then to the shop’s current location in the JB Whites Building, where The Book Tavern has been for nine years.
“At each phase, I have always known I would be moving,” Hutchison said. “None of the places that I’ve been have been satisfying to my vision.”
That ideal that Hutchison has carried for so long in the twinkle of his eye is a place both humbling and humble, welcoming and grandiose; a place where the abundance of books gives space for a book to find a reader.
“That’s always kind of thing that I’m after,” he said. “This sense of discoverability and accessibility, but at the same time, knowing that somewhere in the store, there, there’s this hidden magical book, because there’s so many.”
At two stories and 3,263 square feet, the new building has the space to hew closer to Hutchison’s quintessential book shop. Since renovations, the wall boasts 12-foot shelves, where much of the store’s inventory can be displayed along the walls, as opposed to in the center, like at the current location, leaving more room throughout.
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Hutchison hopes to revive the “old, pre-internet bookshop,” a place where customer service means providing expertise about books, and that whatever the bookseller doesn’t know, they will find out to get what a customer wants. This is part of the reason he opened the store as an old and used bookstore. It’s also what helped him through COVID-19.
“Our plan for helping people get through the pandemic was, ‘Well, you can’t come and shop, but we can drop books off to you or ship books to you,’” Hutchison said. “Maybe you don’t even have the bandwidth to pick a book out, so we’ll pick books out for you. Tell us a little bit about you and your reading, and we’ll find a selection of books, we came up with a couple of price points, so that it would be accessible to, you know, various size families or budgets.”
These surprise care packages led to April 2020 being one of the Book Tavern’s most profitable periods, Hutchison says, whereas 2019 had been so dismal he thought he might have to close for good.
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Hutchison’s dream continues, and with the new space, he plans toward meeting old goals. While he will initially keep the current hours after the move, he ultimately intends to keep The Book Tavern open evenings at least five days a week. He says the space is more apt to hold seating for author events, author and poetry readings. And, per the store’s moniker, once he’s settled he intends to pursue a beer and wine license so that the store could be a proper tavern with books.
But these, he says, are part of the next phase in this chapter. Right now he’s focused on the move. He hopes to be moved out of the current location between March 15 and a tentative date for the opening of the new location is March 25. Once he does, The Book Tavern will be a little closer to the dream he had in mind for a “vibrant, independent bookstore” way back in the Barnyard days.
“It’s one thing for you to have your own vision, and it’s another thing to share a vision with the city,” Hutchison said. “This is my way of taking care of Augusta, the community that I love. It’s like a family; sometimes, it is hard to love. But it is my family; it’s my place. It’s my home.”
The Book Tavern, for now, is located at 936 Broad St, Ste. 101, downtown.
Skyler Q. Andrews is a staff reporter covering education in Columbia County and business-related topics for The Augusta Press. Reach him at skyler@theaugustapress.com.
