If anyone could pull it off, she could. That'south 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 height tax accountants in the country. She was whip- smart, driven, and tireless — "on 82 different boards," as she likes to say, which is only a slight exaggeration. She even grew up in business: As a daughter, she kept the books for her begetter's bakeries. "If yous were to pick a dream person to outset her ain bookstore, it would exist Roxanne," says friend and Connecticut Public Radio host Faith Middleton. "She's so smart virtually business."

Coady nearly proved everybody wrong.

For the get-go several years, R.J. Julia Independent Booksellers, located on the master drag in Madison, Connecticut, grew by leaps and bounds. The im-pressive growth, still, obscured a dotcomlike inability to plow a profit. Coady says that she ignored budgets and "blew probably $250,000" of the money that she and her married man, a sometime existent-estate developer, had saved up. It was twice what she should have invested, but she couldn't resist going all out on gratuitous vino and food at book signings, stylish extra-force bags, and excessive bonuses. "Instead of solving problems, I threw more money at them," she says. "I didn't run the shop like a business."

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

Thirteen years afterward dramatically changing careers, Coady, 54, has proven that she could pull it off afterward all. In the same fourth dimension that nigh one-half of the contained bookstores in the state have closed, R.J. Julia has achieved more than $3 million in annual sales and a modest profit. And Coady, its always-fashionable, opinionated, and animated 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 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 yet to empathise English, she read to her children anyway, pronouncing the words phonetically. Once Coady learned to read, she wanted to tackle every children's volume in the library in alphabetical gild. When she was in middle schoolhouse, her father, a baker, purchased the first of ten bakeries, called Em's, and brought her to a coming together with his accountant.

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

"She is," her male parent replied.

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

By the 1980s, Coady had go a partner and national tax manager at BDO Seidman, the New Yorkffibased international accounting business firm. She was the first woman selected for the task. "People tell me now, 'Information technology must accept been boring working with taxes,' " Coady says. "But I loved information technology." She had a 12th-flooring corner office overlooking Key Park and was making nigh $250,000 a year. In 1988, she was featured on the embrace of Money mag, which dubbed her "the accountant'south accountant."

Heady stuff, to exist certain. Merely information technology wasn't plenty to proceed her there. "As much as I enjoyed the work, information technology wasn't enriching," Coady says. "It was in terms of dollars, only it wasn't enriching to my heart." At least non in the way that books had always been.

Even as she climbed the corporate ladder, Coady remained an clamorous reader. She would always comport 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 you gave me.' "

They were telling her something. It was time to brand a modify.

Creating a Modern-Twenty-four hour period Town Dark-green

R.J. Julia, named for Coady's grandmother, Julia, who perished in a concentration military camp in World War 2, is much more than a store where you buy the latest Harry Potter or John Grisham. It's a local institution that has go interwoven with people'southward lives as few businesses are. "It'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-club meetings at R.J. Julia. "The bookstore and the town are inseparable." Area residents feel a responsibility to support the independent bookstore — their bookstore — even if it means paying a little more at times.

From the starting time, 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 identify for conversation about things that mattered." The store hosts more than than 200 events a yr, from book signings to volume-club meetings to children's-story hr on Wednesday mornings. Past lobbying publishers and catering to visiting authors, Coady has fabricated Madison, an affluent coastal town with 2,200 residents, a regular volume-bout 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 proffer, Lee Jacobus started a classical literature book club at R.J. Julia. A professor emeritus of English at the University of Connecticut, he prepares equally though he were notwithstanding teaching in a classroom, reading, analyzing, and making notes 40 minutes a mean solar day, three days a week. "Information technology'south an enormous time investment and, yes, I do it for complimentary," says Jacobus. "Simply 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 have read. "That'due south the value that nosotros add together to the volume-ownership experience," Coady says. "We put the correct book in the right hands." The store's summit-selling section is staff recommendations, where each book is accompanied by a "shelf talker," a sheathing review from a bookseller, or in the case of the new Harry Potter, by a bookseller's kid ("I'thou xi, and I finished in exactly five days, down to the 60 minutes! Once you kickoff reading it, you won't stop!" raves Hana, the managing 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 tin't imagine working at a chain, even the one that's coming to Waterford, well-nigh 15 miles from where she lives. "There are too many rules," says Coopersmith. "Hither, I can give a discount to a customer whenever I want to." It'due south true. Coady lets the staff practise whatsoever it takes to make a client happy. There may non be 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 up book. As she reminds the staff, she prefers the offer, "Let me know if I can be of assist," or "Are y'all finding what you demand?" "Can I assist you?" strikes her every bit intrusive.

For Natalie Ferringer, it was honey with R.J. Julia at start browse. The night wooden bookshelves, brass 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-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 month. And yet, it's difficult 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 community," says an R.J. Julia customer. "The bookstore and the boondocks are inseparable."

Perhaps the best measure 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 gild, The Sparse Adult female, a lighthearted British who-done-it, written by Dorothy Cannell and originally published in 1984. What's remarkable almost her purchase is that Harrington never requested the volume. 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 right.

The Roxanne Effect

When Coady launched R.J. Julia, Madison, like many small 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 airtight," she says. "I thought, 'What did I just do?' " At present, Madison is a different story. Although the business organization district consists of just one long cake on Boston Post Road, there'south an art firm and an elegant Italian restaurant across from R.J. Julia. In that location are a multifariousness of shops and boutiques. At that place'due south even a Starbucks.

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

In reality, though, calculation corporate subject field to the bookstore remains a claiming, especially without the financial incentives she had at her disposal at a major accounting firm. Instead, Coady offers a casual, fun surround in which booksellers can be their passionate selves. They constantly remind her that the operative give-and-take in independent bookseller is contained. 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 dark-green R.J. Julia lanyards in the office could be next. "This is where the republic thing shoots me in the foot," she says.

Coady's natural effusiveness and love of writing — she reads about six books at a time — make her an irresistible bookseller. "When Roxanne is on the floor, our sales go up 20%," says store 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'southward novel about a mother'southward attempts to salve her fractured family unit, "the hair stood up on the dorsum of my neck," says Middleton. "You could hear a pin drop in the studio."

That passion infuses every foursquare foot of R.J. Julia, and every ounce of its possessor. When Coady first contemplated changing careers, she imagined that running a bookstore would exist a modify of footstep, less demanding for her than being an executive at a large firm. "I ofttimes joke that I gave up money for time, and now I have neither," she says. She's still a type A, so it comes every bit no surprise that running a successful bookstore isn't enough. Currently, she'due south expanding the children'southward section, revamping the gift-store area, and drawing upwardly a business plan to take the brand in new directions.

A second R.J. Julia? A chain of stores? Coady can't say. That chapter has yet to exist 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 five of her all-time favorite books. If these aren't enough, check out R.J. Julia's lists of recommended books for adults (world wide web.rjjulia.com/fivefeet.htm) and kids (www.rjjulia.com/threefeet.htm).

Stones From the River by Ursula Hegi

"It'south about World State of war II and the Holocaust from the perspective of a small German town that may or may not understand what's going on, only in a quiet way is mimicking what's happening. You feel the bear upon of betrayal and of existence co-conspirators through silence."

Love Friend: A Life of Abigail Adams by Lynne Withey

"A view of the Revolution from Abigail'south vantage betoken, what information technology was similar at abode, raising her kids during a dangerous time."

The Volume of Laughter and Forgetting by Milan Kundera

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

The Bluest Centre past Toni Morrison

"The narrator is a blackness girl who has been abused, and the novel is nearly how she moves through that experience. This is i of those books that changes the way you lot look at the earth."

A Kid's Anthology of Poetry by Elizabeth Sword

"I've been reading from this to my son since he was two, and nosotros ever observe something that amuses united states of america, whatsoever mood we're in."

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