If anyone could pull it off, she could. That's what friends and colleagues said when Roxanne Coady left New York in 1989 to open a bookstore in a pocket-sized boondocks.

Of course, they believed in her. She had been 1 of the acme taxation accountants in the state. She was whip- smart, driven, and tireless — "on 82 different boards," as she likes to say, which is only a slight exaggeration. She fifty-fifty grew upward in business organisation: As a girl, she kept the books for her male parent'south bakeries. "If you were to pick a dream person to kickoff her own bookstore, it would be Roxanne," says friend and Connecticut Public Radio host Faith Middleton. "She's then smart nigh business."

Coady about proved everybody incorrect.

For the starting time several years, R.J. Julia Independent Booksellers, located on the main drag in Madison, Connecticut, grew past leaps and bounds. The im-pressive growth, still, obscured a dotcomlike disability to plow a profit. Coady says that she ignored budgets and "blew probably $250,000" of the money that she and her husband, a former real-estate developer, had saved up. Information technology was twice what she should have invested, simply she couldn't resist going all out on gratuitous wine and food at book signings, fashionable actress-strength bags, and excessive bonuses. "Instead of solving problems, I threw more money at them," she says. "I didn't run the store like a business."

As an auditor, Coady had always used her caput. But as a bookseller and book lover, she allow her centre accept over. She built the almost appealing bookstore she could imagine, while neglecting to build a sustainable business. "Now," she says, "I'chiliad combining caput and heart."

Thirteen years later on dramatically changing careers, Coady, 54, has proven that she could pull information technology off later on all. In the same time that nearly one-half of the independent bookstores in the country take closed, R.J. Julia has achieved more than $3 one thousand thousand in almanac sales and a pocket-sized profit. And Coady, its ever-fashionable, opinionated, and blithe owner, has fabricated the transition from successful accountant to successful bookseller.

A Bookseller Waiting to Happen

Coady's passion for reading and her talent for bookkeeping were inspired by her parents, who survived the Holocaust and immigrated to the United States in 1948, settling in New York's Lower East Side. Although her female parent had even so to understand English, she read to her children anyway, pronouncing the words phonetically. Once Coady learned to read, she wanted to tackle every children's book in the library in alphabetical order. When she was in middle schoolhouse, her father, a baker, purchased the first of ten bakeries, chosen Em'south, and brought her to a meeting with his auditor.

"Who'southward going to practise the bookkeeping?" the accountant asked.

"She is," her father replied.

He wasn't joking. The auditor agreed to teach her, and Coady, the oldest of six, juggled school, family unit babe-sitting duties and payroll books until she left for college. "Now my father feels I work too hard," she says, laughing. "He says, 'You can't ride two horses with one ass.' I tell him, 'Daddy, this is what you raised me to practise.' "

Past the 1980s, Coady had go a partner and national revenue enhancement managing director at BDO Seidman, the New Yorkffibased international bookkeeping firm. She was the starting time woman selected for the job. "People tell me at present, 'Information technology must have been ho-hum working with taxes,' " Coady says. "But I loved it." She had a 12th-flooring corner part overlooking Central Park and was making about $250,000 a year. In 1988, she was featured on the cover of Money magazine, which dubbed her "the accountant'southward accountant."

Exciting stuff, to be certain. But it wasn't enough to keep her in that location. "Equally much as I enjoyed the work, information technology wasn't enriching," Coady says. "It was in terms of dollars, but it wasn't enriching to my heart." At least not in the way that books had always been.

Even as she climbed the corporate ladder, Coady remained an insatiable reader. She would always carry a novel with her, stealing a few moments in a taxi, on the railroad train, anywhere. She was forever recommending favorite titles to friends. "I ran a fiddling library out of my business firm," she says. "People would say, 'Oh geez, that was the best book you gave me.' "

They were telling her something. It was time to make a change.

Creating a Modern-Day Boondocks Greenish

R.J. Julia, named for Coady's grandmother, Julia, who perished in a concentration camp in World State of war II, is much more a store where you buy the latest Harry Potter or John Grisham. Information technology's a local institution that has go interwoven with people'south lives as few businesses are. "Information technology's the heart of the community," says Norman Weissman, a retired writer, director, and producer who lives in neighboring Guilford and attends a monthly book-society meetings at R.J. Julia. "The bookstore and the boondocks are inseparable." Expanse residents experience a responsibleness to back up the independent bookstore — their bookstore — fifty-fifty if it means paying a little more than at times.

From the start, Coady wanted R.J. Julia to be a modern-day town green. "I felt people were condign disconnected from each other," she says. "Nosotros had lost a public place for conversation about things that mattered." The store hosts more than 200 events a year, from book signings to volume-lodge meetings to children'south-story 60 minutes on Midweek mornings. Past lobbying publishers and catering to visiting authors, Coady has made Madison, an affluent coastal town with ii,200 residents, a regular book-tour stop between New York and Boston. The walls are lined with dozens of autographed photos of past visitors: Jimmy Carter, Garrison Keillor, and Anne Rice.

At Coady's suggestion, Lee Jacobus started a classical literature book club at R.J. Julia. A professor emeritus of English language at the University of Connecticut, he prepares every bit though he were still teaching in a classroom, reading, analyzing, and making notes 40 minutes a 24-hour interval, 3 days a week. "Information technology'due south an enormous fourth dimension investment and, yeah, I do information technology for free," says Jacobus. "But this is an institution that should be supported. It'south of import to the intellectual life of the town."

For R.J. Julia to distinguish itself in an increasingly crowded marketplace, Coady believes information technology has to offering unparalleled service and expertise. Like their boss, the staff is well read, which prepares them for "hand-selling" — that is, recommending books that they or their colleagues take read. "That's the value that we add to the book-buying experience," Coady says. "We put the right volume in the right hands." The store's pinnacle-selling section is staff recommendations, where each volume is accompanied by a "shelf talker," a capsule review from a bookseller, or in the example of the new Harry Potter, by a bookseller'due south child ("I'g 11, and I finished in exactly five days, down to the hour! In one case y'all start reading it, you won't stop!" raves Hana, the manager's stepdaughter).

Suzanne Coopersmith is ane of near 35 booksellers on staff. Like Coady, she's sociable, totally unreserved, and capable of talking nigh books all day. She can't imagine working at a chain, even the one that's coming to Waterford, about 15 miles from where she lives. "There are too many rules," says Coopersmith. "Here, I can give a discount to a client whenever I want to." It's true. Coady lets the staff exercise whatsoever it takes to make a customer happy. There may not be many official rules, but the staff definitely knows the kind of store that she wants R.J. Julia to exist. When it comes to sharing likes and dislikes, Coady'southward an open book. As she reminds the staff, she prefers the offering, "Let me know if I tin can be of help," or "Are yous finding what you need?" "Tin I aid you?" strikes her as intrusive.

For Natalie Ferringer, information technology was love with R.J. Julia at first scan. The night wooden bookshelves, contumely fixtures, and renditions of various writers' signatures painted on the hardwood floor requite the place the ambience of a neighborhood bookstore in Europe or New York. Ferringer, the head of the political-science section at the Academy of New Oasis, can spend entire afternoons shopping, which translates to betwixt $350 and $400 worth of books a month. And yet, information technology'south hard to say who benefits more: Ferringer or the bookstore. "I know them by name," she says of the staff. "There'southward Nancy, Karen, Lisa, Suzanne, Meredith, Beth, Babette, Roxanne."

"Information technology's the heart of the customs," says an R.J. Julia customer. "The bookstore and the town are inseparable."

Perchance the all-time measure of R.J. Julia's relationship with its customers comes from Denise Harrington, an avid murder-mystery reader and a client from the beginning. During a recent visit, she picked upwards a special order, The Thin Woman, a lighthearted British who-done-it, written by Dorothy Cannell and originally published in 1984. What's remarkable about her buy is that Harrington never requested the book. In fact, she had never even heard of information technology. "Suzanne ordered it for me without my knowing," she says.

"I knew she'd love information technology," says Coopersmith.

She was right.

The Roxanne Issue

When Coady launched R.J. Julia, Madison, similar many small towns, was in refuse. Suburban big-box retailers were condign the rage. "After I opened, the theater, the hardware store, the 5-and-dime, and the eating house all closed," she says. "I idea, 'What did I just do?' " Now, Madison is a different story. Although the business district consists of just one long block on Boston Post Route, at that place's an art house and an elegant Italian eating place across from R.J. Julia. There are a variety of shops and boutiques. There's even a Starbucks.

As an entrepreneur, Coady has come a long fashion herself. She's running R.J. Julia like a business, with budgets, a grooming manual, and more-structured evaluations. By coincidence, her son Edward and the store were built-in in the aforementioned year. Since turning 13 this year, says Coady, both accept had their bar mitzvahs: Edward became a homo, R.J. Julia a mature business.

In reality, though, calculation corporate discipline to the bookstore remains a challenge, especially without the fiscal incentives she had at her disposal at a major accounting firm. Instead, Coady offers a coincidental, fun environs in which booksellers can exist their passionate selves. They constantly remind her that the operative word in independent bookseller is independent. When Coady tried to become the staff to wear matching R.J. Julia shirts, they declined. Then she bought R.J. Julia buttons, which no one wore for long. A newly arrived box of green R.J. Julia lanyards in the office could exist next. "This is where the democracy affair shoots me in the pes," she says.

Coady's natural effusiveness and dear of writing — she reads almost six books at a time — make her an irresistible bookseller. "When Roxanne is on the flooring, our sales go upwards 20%," says shop manager Meredith Warner. Faith Middleton, the radio host, experiences the Roxanne Result twice a month, when Coady appears on her show to talk nearly books. Recently, as she described Family History, Dani Shapiro's novel about a mother's attempts to save her fractured family, "the hair stood upward on the back of my neck," says Middleton. "Yous could hear a pin drop in the studio."

That passion infuses every foursquare foot of R.J. Julia, and every ounce of its owner. When Coady first contemplated changing careers, she imagined that running a bookstore would exist a change of pace, less demanding for her than being an executive at a large firm. "I often joke that I gave up money for time, and now I have neither," she says. She's still a type A, then it comes as no surprise that running a successful bookstore isn't enough. Currently, she's expanding the children's department, revamping the souvenir-shop area, and drawing upward a business programme to have the make in new directions.

A 2nd R.J. Julia? A chain of stores? Coady can't say. That chapter has yet to be written.

Sidebar: 5 Bang-up Reads

"Everybody has time for one discretionary thing," says Roxanne Coady, the owner of R.J. Julia. "Mine's reading."

Below are five of her all-fourth dimension favorite books. If these aren't plenty, check out R.J. Julia's lists of recommended books for adults (www.rjjulia.com/fivefeet.htm) and kids (www.rjjulia.com/threefeet.htm).

Stones From the River by Ursula Hegi

"Information technology's about World War II and the Holocaust from the perspective of a small German town that may or may not understand what's going on, but in a quiet way is mimicking what's happening. You feel the impact of betrayal and of existence co-conspirators through silence."

Dearest Friend: A Life of Abigail Adams by Lynne Withey

"A view of the Revolution from Abigail'south vantage indicate, what it was similar at domicile, raising her kids during a dangerous time."

The Book of Laughter and Forgetting by Milan Kundera

"It's about sorrow equally a way of defining you, how you need it to live and function in a meaningful mode. It's a philosophical book, only in that Eastern European, wacky Kafka fashion."

The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison

"The narrator is a black daughter who has been abused, and the novel is near how she moves through that experience. This is ane of those books that changes the mode yous expect at the globe."

A Kid's Album of Poetry by Elizabeth Sword

"I've been reading from this to my son since he was two, and we e'er find something that amuses us, whatsoever mood nosotros're in."

Chuck Salter (csalter@fastcompany.com) is a Fast Visitor senior author based in Baltimore. Learn more about R.J. Julia on the Web (world wide web.rjjulia.com).