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

Of course, they believed in her. She had been one of the top tax accountants in the country. She was whip- smart, driven, and tireless — "on 82 unlike boards," as she likes to say, which is only a slight exaggeration. She fifty-fifty grew upwardly in business organisation: As a girl, she kept the books for her begetter's bakeries. "If you were to pick a dream person to starting time her own bookstore, it would exist Roxanne," says friend and Connecticut Public Radio host Organized religion Middleton. "She's then smart about business."

Coady nearly proved everybody wrong.

For the first several years, R.J. Julia Independent Booksellers, located on the main elevate in Madison, Connecticut, grew by leaps and bounds. The im-pressive growth, however, obscured a dotcomlike disability to plough 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 upward. It was twice what she should take invested, simply she couldn't resist going all out on free vino and food at book signings, fashionable extra-strength bags, and excessive bonuses. "Instead of solving bug, I threw more money at them," she says. "I didn't run the store like a business."

As an accountant, Coady had ever used her head. But every bit a bookseller and volume lover, she allow her heart have over. She congenital the virtually appealing bookstore she could imagine, while neglecting to build a sustainable business. "Now," she says, "I'm combining head and heart."

Thirteen years after dramatically changing careers, Coady, 54, has proven that she could pull it off subsequently all. In the aforementioned time that nearly half of the independent bookstores in the country have closed, R.J. Julia has achieved more than $three million in annual sales and a modest turn a profit. And Coady, its ever-stylish, opinionated, and animated owner, has made the transition from successful accountant to successful bookseller.

A Bookseller Waiting to Happen

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

"Who's going to do the bookkeeping?" 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. "Now my father feels I work too hard," she says, laughing. "He says, 'Yous can't ride two horses with one ass.' I tell him, 'Daddy, this is what you raised me to practise.' "

By the 1980s, Coady had become a partner and national tax managing director at BDO Seidman, the New Yorkffibased international bookkeeping firm. She was the first woman 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 12th-floor corner function overlooking Central Park and was making about $250,000 a yr. In 1988, she was featured on the encompass of Money magazine, which dubbed her "the accountant's accountant."

Heady stuff, to be sure. Just it wasn't enough to keep her there. "Every bit much as I enjoyed the piece of work, it wasn't enriching," Coady says. "It was in terms of dollars, just 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 train, anywhere. She was forever recommending favorite titles to friends. "I ran a petty 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 brand a modify.

Creating a Modern-Day Boondocks Green

R.J. Julia, named for Coady's grandmother, Julia, who perished in a concentration camp in Earth War Ii, is much more than a store where you lot buy the latest Harry Potter or John Grisham. It'due south a local institution that has become interwoven with people's lives equally 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-gild meetings at R.J. Julia. "The bookstore and the town are inseparable." Surface area residents feel a responsibility to support the independent bookstore — their bookstore — even if information technology ways paying a little more at times.

From the get-go, Coady wanted R.J. Julia to be a modern-day town green. "I felt people were becoming asunder from each other," she says. "We had lost a public identify for conversation about things that mattered." The store hosts more than 200 events a twelvemonth, from book signings to book-club meetings to children'south-story hr on Midweek mornings. By lobbying publishers and catering to visiting authors, Coady has fabricated Madison, an affluent coastal town with 2,200 residents, a regular book-tour terminate 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 at the University of Connecticut, he prepares as though he were still pedagogy in a classroom, reading, analyzing, and making notes 40 minutes a twenty-four hour period, 3 days a week. "Information technology's an enormous fourth dimension investment and, yes, I practise it for free," says Jacobus. "But this is an establishment that should exist supported. It'southward important to the intellectual life of the town."

For R.J. Julia to distinguish itself in an increasingly crowded market place, 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 take read. "That's the value that we add to the book-ownership feel," Coady says. "We put the correct book in the right hands." The shop's acme-selling section is staff recommendations, where each book 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 child ("I'chiliad eleven, and I finished in exactly five days, downward to the 60 minutes! Once you kickoff reading it, yous won't stop!" raves Hana, the manager's stepdaughter).

Suzanne Coopersmith is one of about 35 booksellers on staff. Like Coady, she'south sociable, totally unreserved, and capable of talking near 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. "In that location are also many rules," says Coopersmith. "Here, I tin can give a discount to a customer whenever I want to." Information technology'south true. Coady lets the staff do whatever it takes to make a client happy. In that location may not be 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'southward an open up book. As she reminds the staff, she prefers the offering, "Let me know if I can be of help," or "Are yous finding what you need?" "Can I aid yous?" strikes her as intrusive.

For Natalie Ferringer, it was love with R.J. Julia at first browse. The nighttime wooden bookshelves, brass 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 head of the political-science department at the University of New Haven, tin spend entire afternoons shopping, which translates to between $350 and $400 worth of books a month. And yet, information technology'south hard to say who benefits more than: Ferringer or the bookstore. "I know them by name," 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 best mensurate of R.J. Julia'due south relationship with its customers comes from Denise Harrington, an avid murder-mystery reader and a customer from the beginning. During a contempo visit, she picked up a special order, The Thin Woman, a lighthearted British who-done-it, written past Dorothy Cannell and originally published in 1984. What's remarkable near 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 information technology," says Coopersmith.

She was right.

The Roxanne Effect

When Coady launched R.J. Julia, Madison, like many modest towns, was in refuse. Suburban big-box retailers were becoming the rage. "After I opened, the theater, the hardware shop, the v-and-dime, and the restaurant all airtight," she says. "I idea, 'What did I just do?' " Now, Madison is a different story. Although the business organization district consists of just ane long block on Boston Post Road, in that location'southward an art business firm and an elegant Italian eating house beyond from R.J. Julia. There are a diverseness of shops and boutiques. There's fifty-fifty a Starbucks.

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

In reality, though, adding corporate subject field to the bookstore remains a claiming, peculiarly 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 discussion in independent bookseller is independent. When Coady tried to get the staff to clothing 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 love of writing — she reads about 6 books at a fourth dimension — make her an irresistible bookseller. "When Roxanne is on the floor, our sales go up xx%," says store manager Meredith Warner. Faith Middleton, the radio host, experiences the Roxanne Outcome twice a calendar month, when Coady appears on her show to talk about books. Recently, every bit she described Family History, Dani Shapiro'south novel about a mother's attempts to save her fractured family unit, "the hair stood up on the back of my neck," says Middleton. "You could hear a pin driblet in the studio."

That passion infuses every square foot of R.J. Julia, and every ounce of its owner. When Coady first contemplated irresolute careers, she imagined that running a bookstore would be a change of pace, less demanding for her than being an executive at a large firm. "I oft joke that I gave up money for time, and now I take neither," she says. She's still a blazon A, so it comes equally no surprise that running a successful bookstore isn't enough. Currently, she's expanding the children's section, revamping the gift-shop area, and drawing upwardly a business plan to take the brand in new directions.

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

Sidebar: 5 Neat Reads

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

Beneath are 5 of her all-time favorite books. If these aren't enough, bank check out R.J. Julia'south 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

"It's about World War II and the Holocaust from the perspective of a small German boondocks that may or may non sympathize what's going on, but in a quiet way is mimicking what's happening. You feel the bear on of expose and of being co-conspirators through silence."

Dearest Friend: A Life of Abigail Adams by Lynne Withey

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

The Book of Laughter and Forgetting by Milan Kundera

"It'due south about sorrow as a way of defining y'all, how you need information technology to alive and office in a meaningful mode. It'southward a philosophical book, merely in that Eastern European, wacky Kafka mode."

The Bluest Centre by Toni Morrison

"The narrator is a black daughter who has been driveling, and the novel is about how she moves through that experience. This is one of those books that changes the way you wait at the world."

A Kid'southward Anthology 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 we're in."

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