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 pocket-sized town.

Of class, they believed in her. She had been one of the summit tax accountants in the country. She was whip- smart, driven, and tireless — "on 82 different boards," every bit she likes to say, which is only a slight exaggeration. She even grew up in business: As a girl, she kept the books for her father's bakeries. "If yous were to choice a dream person to start her ain bookstore, information technology would be Roxanne," says friend and Connecticut Public Radio host Organized religion Middleton. "She's so smart most business organisation."

Coady nearly proved everybody wrong.

For the first several years, R.J. Julia Contained Booksellers, located on the primary drag in Madison, Connecticut, grew by leaps and bounds. The im-pressive growth, however, obscured a dotcomlike disability to turn a profit. Coady says that she ignored budgets and "blew probably $250,000" of the money that she and her married man, a former real-estate programmer, had saved up. It was twice what she should have invested, only she couldn't resist going all out on costless wine and food at book signings, stylish actress-strength numberless, and excessive bonuses. "Instead of solving problems, I threw more money at them," she says. "I didn't run the store similar a business."

Every bit an accountant, Coady had always used her head. But as a bookseller and volume lover, she let her heart take over. She built the nearly highly-seasoned bookstore she could imagine, while neglecting to build a sustainable business organisation. "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 afterward all. In the same time that nearly half of the independent bookstores in the country take closed, R.J. Julia has achieved more than than $3 one thousand thousand in almanac sales and a modest turn a profit. And Coady, its ever-fashionable, opinionated, and animated 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 accounting were inspired past her parents, who survived the Holocaust and immigrated to the Us in 1948, settling in New York's Lower E Side. Although her mother had yet to sympathise English, she read to her children anyhow, pronouncing the words phonetically. In one case Coady learned to read, she wanted to tackle every children's volume in the library in alphabetical club. When she was in middle schoolhouse, her father, a baker, purchased the first of 10 bakeries, chosen Em's, and brought her to a meeting with his accountant.

"Who's going to do the accounting?" the accountant asked.

"She is," her father replied.

He wasn't joking. The accountant agreed to teach her, and Coady, the oldest of six, juggled schoolhouse, family baby-sitting duties and payroll books until she left for higher. "At present my male parent feels I work too hard," she says, laughing. "He says, 'You can't ride 2 horses with one ass.' I tell him, 'Daddy, this is what you raised me to practise.' "

By the 1980s, Coady had get a partner and national tax director at BDO Seidman, the New Yorkffibased international accounting firm. She was the first adult female selected for the job. "People tell me now, 'It must have been boring working with taxes,' " Coady says. "But I loved it." She had a 12th-floor corner function overlooking Primal Park and was making nigh $250,000 a year. In 1988, she was featured on the cover of Coin mag, which dubbed her "the auditor's accountant."

Heady stuff, to be certain. Simply it wasn't enough to keep her there. "As much as I enjoyed the work, it wasn't enriching," Coady says. "It was in terms of dollars, but it wasn't enriching to my heart." At least non in the style that books had always been.

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

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

Creating a Modern-Day Town Green

R.J. Julia, named for Coady's grandmother, Julia, who perished in a concentration camp in Globe War 2, is much more a store where you lot buy the latest Harry Potter or John Grisham. It's a local establishment that has become interwoven with people's lives as few businesses are. "It'south the heart of the community," says Norman Weissman, a retired writer, director, and producer who lives in neighboring Guilford and attends a monthly volume-club meetings at R.J. Julia. "The bookstore and the town are inseparable." Area residents feel a responsibility to back up the contained bookstore — their bookstore — even if it means paying a little more at times.

From the start, Coady wanted R.J. Julia to be a modern-day boondocks light-green. "I felt people were becoming asunder from each other," she says. "We had lost a public place for conversation about things that mattered." The shop hosts more than 200 events a yr, from book signings to book-guild meetings to children's-story hr on Wednesday mornings. By lobbying publishers and catering to visiting authors, Coady has made Madison, an affluent coastal town with 2,200 residents, a regular book-bout cease 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 society at R.J. Julia. A professor emeritus of English 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 twenty-four hours, three days a week. "It'south an enormous time investment and, yes, I do it for complimentary," says Jacobus. "But this is an institution that should be 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 dominate, the staff is well read, which prepares them for "hand-selling" — that is, recommending books that they or their colleagues have read. "That'southward the value that nosotros add together to the volume-buying feel," Coady says. "We put the right volume in the right hands." The store's tiptop-selling section 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'southward child ("I'm 11, and I finished in exactly five days, down to the hr! In one case you start reading it, you lot won't stop!" raves Hana, the director's stepdaughter).

Suzanne Coopersmith is one of most 35 booksellers on staff. Like Coady, she's sociable, totally unreserved, and capable of talking about books all day. She can't imagine working at a concatenation, even the one that'southward coming to Waterford, most xv miles from where she lives. "In that location are too many rules," says Coopersmith. "Hither, I tin give a discount to a customer whenever I want to." It's truthful. Coady lets the staff do whatsoever it takes to brand a customer happy. In that location may not exist many official rules, but 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'south an open volume. As she reminds the staff, she prefers the offering, "Let me know if I can exist of help," or "Are y'all finding what you need?" "Tin can I assist you lot?" strikes her as intrusive.

For Natalie Ferringer, it was love with R.J. Julia at starting time browse. The night wooden bookshelves, brass fixtures, and renditions of diverse writers' signatures painted on the hardwood floor give the identify the ambience of a neighborhood bookstore in Europe or New York. Ferringer, the caput of the political-science department at the University of New Haven, can spend entire afternoons shopping, which translates to between $350 and $400 worth of books a month. And yet, it's hard to say who benefits more: Ferringer or the bookstore. "I know them by proper name," she says of the staff. "In that location'southward Nancy, Karen, Lisa, Suzanne, Meredith, Beth, Babette, Roxanne."

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

Perhaps the best measure out of R.J. Julia's relationship with its customers comes from Denise Harrington, an avid murder-mystery reader and a customer from the beginning. During a recent visit, she picked upwards a special order, The Thin Woman, a lighthearted British who-done-it, written past 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 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 Effect

When Coady launched R.J. Julia, Madison, like many modest towns, was in decline. Suburban large-box retailers were condign the rage. "After I opened, the theater, the hardware shop, the 5-and-dime, and the restaurant all closed," she says. "I thought, 'What did I just exercise?' " Now, Madison is a different story. Although the business district consists of only one long block on Boston Post Road, there's an art house and an elegant Italian restaurant across from R.J. Julia. At that place are a multifariousness of shops and boutiques. There'south even a Starbucks.

As an entrepreneur, Coady has come up a long way herself. She's running R.J. Julia like a concern, with budgets, a training manual, and more-structured evaluations. By coincidence, her son Edward and the store were born in the same year. Since turning 13 this year, says Coady, both have had their bar mitzvahs: Edward became a man, R.J. Julia a mature business.

In reality, though, adding corporate discipline to the bookstore remains a challenge, especially without the financial incentives she had at her disposal at a major accounting house. Instead, Coady offers a casual, fun environment in which booksellers tin can be their passionate selves. They constantly remind her that the operative word in contained bookseller is independent. When Coady tried to go 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 office could be next. "This is where the democracy thing shoots me in the foot," she says.

Coady's natural effusiveness and dearest of writing — she reads nearly six books at a fourth dimension — make her an irresistible bookseller. "When Roxanne is on the floor, our sales go up twenty%," says shop manager Meredith Warner. Faith Middleton, the radio host, experiences the Roxanne Event twice a month, when Coady appears on her show to talk about books. Recently, as she described Family History, Dani Shapiro'south novel about a female parent's attempts to save her fractured family, "the hair stood up on the back of my neck," says Middleton. "You lot could hear a pin drop in the studio."

That passion infuses every square pes 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 modify of pace, less demanding for her than beingness an executive at a large firm. "I ofttimes joke that I gave upward money for time, and now I accept neither," she says. She's notwithstanding a type A, and so it comes equally no surprise that running a successful bookstore isn't enough. Currently, she'due south expanding the children's section, revamping the gift-shop area, and drawing upwardly a business plan to have the brand in new directions.

A second R.J. Julia? A concatenation of stores? Coady can't say. That chapter has all the same to be written.

Sidebar: 5 Great Reads

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

Below are five of her all-time 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 (world wide web.rjjulia.com/threefeet.htm).

Stones From the River by Ursula Hegi

"It's about Earth War II and the Holocaust from the perspective of a small High german town that may or may not understand what'southward going on, only in a quiet way is mimicking what'south happening. Y'all feel the impact of betrayal and of being co-conspirators through silence."

Dearest Friend: A Life of Abigail Adams past Lynne Withey

"A view of the Revolution from Abigail's vantage bespeak, what it was like at habitation, raising her kids during a dangerous fourth dimension."

The Volume of Laughter and Forgetting by Milan Kundera

"It's almost sorrow as a fashion of defining you, how you need information technology to live and function in a meaningful way. Information technology'southward a philosophical book, simply in that Eastern European, wacky Kafka way."

The Bluest Eye past Toni Morrison

"The narrator is a black daughter who has been driveling, and the novel is most how she moves through that experience. This is ane of those books that changes the manner yous expect at the earth."

A Kid's Anthology of Poesy by Elizabeth Sword

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

Chuck Salter (csalter@fastcompany.com) is a Fast Visitor senior writer based in Baltimore. Larn more than about R.J. Julia on the Web (www.rjjulia.com).