In a key scene of Frank Capra’s movie ‘It’s A Wonderful Life’, James Stewart’s George Bailey realizes what his life looks like as he lost his identity. The guardian angel of Bailey, Henry Travers’ Clarence, rhetorically tells him that it is a strange situation and that everyone touches the lives of several other people. The situation for The Bookman in California’s Orange County was not too dissimilar from Bailey’s case. In 2018, the bookstore was moved from its original Orange County location to Katella Avenue after staying there for the past 28 years.
Like Bailey from the film, The Bookman faced an uncertain future as a remnant of an age of physical bookstores. By 2018, the Amazon revolution had started, so it would only be uncertain for a traditional bookseller like The Bookman.
There were rumors doing the rounds regarding the move. When it became official through a GoFundMe campaign that it would move the location and needed help with the change, the community came forward to assist. It was only then The Bookman joint-founder David Hess had realized how much it meant to the community. Hess put the transition down to bad luck, as was the case for the James Stewart character.
Paul Bonaventure Junior was a high-school student when he started to work at The Bookman. In what seemed like a case of self-referencing, he said that some individuals grew up at the store. He contributed to building the cases, rolling racks, and shelves that were once at the store with an exhaustive range of books. Hess said that it was common to have people who visited The Bookman as kids revisit as grown-ups with their own children.
Paul Bonaventure Senior and Hess founded The Bookman together over 30 years ago. Hess met Paul Bonaventure Senior when they were working at Anaheim’s famous used bookstore named ‘The Book Baron’.
When they were peers at The Book Baron, they used to meet for morning meals and think about opening a bookstore at some time. They did more than just dream about it; they also took notes and learned how to do the business when at The Book Baron. That time came in March 1990 as The Bookman commenced business on its Tustin Avenue location.
Hess said that Tustin Avenue and Beach Boulevard were the most bustling streets of Orange County back in the day. Therefore, there was much street traffic at the time, which was a good thing for The Bookman from a business point of view. After the launch of The Bookman, Book Carnival, a bookstore that specialized in mystery novels, moved its location to Tustin Avenue.
Hess did not see the move as a case of unhealthy competition as he felt that an extra bookstore would only bring in more customers. The business situation turned out to be exactly like how Hess envisioned it. The first-ever book sold at this shop was a novel by Nancy Drew, part of a much-loved children’s series. Interestingly, The Bookman sold the novel for the same rate from 1990 to 2018 probably because it was for children.
A few years after its launch, The Bookman started a new California location in one unit between a school that offered cosmetology training and a cosmetic store. It was threefold larger than the old Bookman location. In some years, The Bookman was performing well enough business-wise to expand twice, including once to start a room for paperbacks.
Then, its second location named Bookman Too was opened in the City of Huntington Beach. The expansion meant that the bookstore had a business presence on two of Orange County’s busiest streets.
However, the early 2000’s saw the emergence of Amazon as a web-based bookseller. This meant that customers turned to the internet for used books, a major change in their buying habits. Several independent bookstores opened about when Hess and Paul started their business venture were a thing of the past after the arrival of Amazon. Then in the year 2007, the bookstore that inspired their venture, known as The Book Baron, went out of business.
In 2018, Bonaventure Junior wondered whether they could facilitate the move of The Bookman to another location while anticipating it. An optimistic Hess stated that they could plan the move from scratch and make it how he and Paul wanted. In 2018, they were planning a way of sharing their new location with the Orange County community that came to their rescue.
Hess stated that the section for children’s books was always in a lousy area of his store. Hess always wanted the section to have windows near a space in which kids could just sit down for a quick read. Hess and Paul were planning to not only host book signing events and other events but also have a space where the community could host book clubs at their new location.
The Frank Capra film ends with the scene of George Bailey coming back to his original world to reunite with his friends and family members. Who could forget the image of a jubilant James Stewart yelling ‘Hello Bedford Falls’ and ‘Merry Christmas’ as he runs through the street? Clarence gave Bailey Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, a book with a message that reminds the Jimmy Stewart character of the value of having friends in life. You would not see the same kind of message on the body of an Amazon Kindle Fire tablet. After all, that was and still is the beauty of paperbacks.
