If anyone could pull information technology off, she could. That's what friends and colleagues said when Roxanne Coady left New York in 1989 to open a bookstore in a small town.

Of course, they believed in her. She had been one of the peak tax accountants in the country. She was whip- smart, driven, and tireless — "on 82 dissimilar boards," as she likes to say, which is only a slight exaggeration. She even grew up in concern: As a girl, she kept the books for her father'southward bakeries. "If you were to pick a dream person to start her ain bookstore, information technology would be Roxanne," says friend and Connecticut Public Radio host Religion Middleton. "She's so smart about business."

Coady nigh proved everybody incorrect.

For the first several years, R.J. Julia Independent Booksellers, located on the main drag in Madison, Connecticut, grew by leaps and premises. The im-pressive growth, however, obscured a dotcomlike inability to turn a profit. Coady says that she ignored budgets and "blew probably $250,000" of the money that she and her husband, a erstwhile existent-manor programmer, had saved up. It was twice what she should accept invested, but she couldn't resist going all out on gratuitous wine and nutrient at book signings, fashionable extra-strength bags, and excessive bonuses. "Instead of solving problems, I threw more than coin at them," she says. "I didn't run the store like a business concern."

Equally an accountant, Coady had always used her head. Just as a bookseller and book lover, she let her heart accept over. She congenital the near appealing bookstore she could imagine, while neglecting to build a sustainable concern. "At present," she says, "I'm combining head and heart."

Thirteen years after dramatically changing careers, Coady, 54, has proven that she could pull it off after all. In the aforementioned fourth dimension that almost half of the independent bookstores in the land have closed, R.J. Julia has accomplished more than $3 million in almanac sales and a modest profit. And Coady, its always-fashionable, opinionated, and blithe owner, has made the transition from successful accountant to successful bookseller.

A Bookseller Waiting to Happen

Coady's passion for reading and her talent for accounting were inspired past her parents, who survived the Holocaust and immigrated to the United States in 1948, settling in New York'due south Lower East Side. Although her mother had withal to understand English, she read to her children anyway, pronouncing the words phonetically. Once Coady learned to read, she wanted to tackle every children'due south book in the library in alphabetical order. When she was in center school, her father, a baker, purchased the commencement of 10 bakeries, called Em's, and brought her to a meeting with his accountant.

"Who'south going to exercise the accounting?" the auditor asked.

"She is," her father replied.

He wasn't joking. The accountant agreed to teach her, and Coady, the oldest of six, juggled school, family unit infant-sitting duties and payroll books until she left for college. "Now my father feels I piece of work also hard," she says, laughing. "He says, 'You tin't ride 2 horses with one ass.' I tell him, 'Daddy, this is what yous raised me to do.' "

By the 1980s, Coady had go a partner and national tax director at BDO Seidman, the New Yorkffibased international accounting house. She was the first adult female selected for the job. "People tell me now, 'It must have been irksome working with taxes,' " Coady says. "But I loved it." She had a twelfth-floor corner office overlooking Central Park and was making almost $250,000 a twelvemonth. In 1988, she was featured on the comprehend of Coin magazine, which dubbed her "the accountant's accountant."

Heady stuff, to be sure. But information technology wasn't enough to keep her there. "Every bit much as I enjoyed the work, information technology wasn't enriching," Coady says. "It was in terms of dollars, just it wasn't enriching to my center." At least not in the manner that books had ever been.

Even every bit 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 little library out of my house," 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 Mod-Solar day Boondocks Green

R.J. Julia, named for Coady'south grandmother, Julia, who perished in a concentration camp in Earth War Two, is much more than a store where you lot buy the latest Harry Potter or John Grisham. It's a local institution that has get interwoven with people's lives as few businesses are. "Information technology'south the heart of the community," says Norman Weissman, a retired author, director, and producer who lives in neighboring Guilford and attends a monthly volume-order meetings at R.J. Julia. "The bookstore and the boondocks are inseparable." Surface area residents feel a responsibility to support the contained bookstore — their bookstore — even if it means paying a lilliputian more at times.

From the kickoff, Coady wanted R.J. Julia to be a modern-day town green. "I felt people were becoming 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 volume signings to book-club meetings to children's-story hr on Wednesday mornings. Past lobbying publishers and catering to visiting authors, Coady has made Madison, an affluent coastal town with 2,200 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 order at R.J. Julia. A professor emeritus of English language at the Academy of Connecticut, he prepares as though he were nonetheless teaching in a classroom, reading, analyzing, and making notes xl minutes a solar day, three days a week. "Information technology's an enormous fourth dimension investment and, yes, I do information technology for free," says Jacobus. "Merely this is an institution that should exist supported. It's important to the intellectual life of the town."

For R.J. Julia to distinguish itself in an increasingly crowded marketplace, Coady believes it has to offer 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 together to the volume-buying experience," Coady says. "We put the right book in the right hands." The store's top-selling department is staff recommendations, where each volume is accompanied by a "shelf talker," a capsule review from a bookseller, or in the case of the new Harry Potter, by a bookseller's kid ("I'1000 xi, and I finished in exactly 5 days, downwards to the hour! Once you start reading it, you lot won't finish!" raves Hana, the manager'south stepdaughter).

Suzanne Coopersmith is one of about 35 booksellers on staff. Like Coady, she's sociable, totally unreserved, and capable of talking near books all day. She can't imagine working at a chain, fifty-fifty the 1 that's coming to Waterford, virtually 15 miles from where she lives. "At that place are too many rules," says Coopersmith. "Here, I can give a disbelieve to a customer whenever I want to." It's truthful. Coady lets the staff exercise whatever it takes to make a customer happy. At that place may not exist many official rules, only the staff definitely knows the kind of store that she wants R.J. Julia to be. When it comes to sharing likes and dislikes, Coady's an open book. As she reminds the staff, she prefers the offer, "Let me know if I tin can be of help," or "Are you finding what yous need?" "Can I help you?" strikes her as intrusive.

For Natalie Ferringer, information technology was love with R.J. Julia at commencement browse. The night wooden bookshelves, contumely fixtures, and renditions of various writers' signatures painted on the hardwood floor give the place the ambience of a neighborhood bookstore in Europe or New York. Ferringer, the caput of the political-scientific discipline department at the University of New Haven, can spend entire afternoons shopping, which translates to between $350 and $400 worth of books a calendar month. And yet, it's hard to say who benefits more: Ferringer or the bookstore. "I know them by proper noun," she says of the staff. "There's Nancy, Karen, Lisa, Suzanne, Meredith, Beth, Babette, Roxanne."

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

Perhaps the all-time measure out of R.J. Julia's human 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 up 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 purchase is that Harrington never requested the book. In fact, she had never even heard of it. "Suzanne ordered it for me without my knowing," she says.

"I knew she'd love it," says Coopersmith.

She was correct.

The Roxanne Effect

When Coady launched R.J. Julia, Madison, similar many pocket-sized towns, was in decline. Suburban big-box retailers were becoming the rage. "After I opened, the theater, the hardware store, the v-and-dime, and the restaurant all closed," she says. "I thought, 'What did I just do?' " Now, Madison is a unlike story. Although the concern district consists of but one long block on Boston Postal service Road, there's an art house and an elegant Italian restaurant across from R.J. Julia. In that location are a variety of shops and boutiques. In that location's fifty-fifty a Starbucks.

As an entrepreneur, Coady has come a long way herself. She's running R.J. Julia similar a business, with budgets, a training transmission, and more-structured evaluations. By coincidence, her son Edward and the shop were born in the aforementioned yr. 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, particularly without the financial incentives she had at her disposal at a major bookkeeping firm. Instead, Coady offers a coincidental, fun environment 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 get the staff to wear matching R.J. Julia shirts, they declined. So she bought R.J. Julia buttons, which no one wore for long. A newly arrived box of green R.J. Julia lanyards in the role could be next. "This is where the democracy affair shoots me in the foot," she says.

Coady's natural effusiveness and love of writing — she reads about half dozen books at a time — make her an irresistible bookseller. "When Roxanne is on the flooring, our sales go up 20%," says store manager Meredith Warner. Religion Middleton, the radio host, experiences the Roxanne Effect twice a calendar month, when Coady appears on her show to talk near books. Recently, every bit she described Family History, Dani Shapiro's novel near a mother's attempts to salvage her fractured family unit, "the hair stood up on the back of my neck," says Middleton. "Yous could hear a pin drop in the studio."

That passion infuses every foursquare pes of R.J. Julia, and every ounce of its owner. When Coady get-go contemplated changing careers, she imagined that running a bookstore would be a modify of pace, less enervating for her than being an executive at a large firm. "I oftentimes joke that I gave up money for fourth dimension, and now I take neither," she says. She's still a type A, so information technology comes as no surprise that running a successful bookstore isn't plenty. Currently, she's expanding the children's section, revamping the gift-shop area, and drawing up a business programme to take the brand in new directions.

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

Sidebar: 5 Great Reads

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

Below are 5 of her all-time favorite books. If these aren't enough, 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 past Ursula Hegi

"It's about World War 2 and the Holocaust from the perspective of a small-scale German town that may or may not empathize what'southward going on, merely in a quiet way is mimicking what's happening. You feel the touch of betrayal and of beingness co-conspirators through silence."

Beloved Friend: A Life of Abigail Adams by Lynne Withey

"A view of the Revolution from Abigail'southward vantage point, what it was similar at home, raising her kids during a unsafe fourth dimension."

The Volume of Laughter and Forgetting past Milan Kundera

"It's well-nigh sorrow equally a fashion of defining you, how you lot need it to alive and function in a meaningful style. Information technology'south a philosophical book, but in that Eastern European, wacky Kafka way."

The Bluest Middle by Toni Morrison

"The narrator is a blackness girl who has been driveling, and the novel is nigh how she moves through that experience. This is one of those books that changes the style you look at the globe."

A Child's Album of Poetry past Elizabeth Sword

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

Chuck Salter (csalter@fastcompany.com) is a Fast Company senior writer based in Baltimore. Learn more than well-nigh R.J. Julia on the Web (www.rjjulia.com).