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 form, 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 different boards," as she likes to say, which is just a slight exaggeration. She even grew up in business: Equally a girl, she kept the books for her father's bakeries. "If you were to pick a dream person to start her own bookstore, it would exist Roxanne," says friend and Connecticut Public Radio host Religion Middleton. "She'south so smart about business."

Coady virtually proved everybody wrong.

For the outset several years, R.J. Julia Contained Booksellers, located on the main drag in Madison, Connecticut, grew by leaps and bounds. The im-pressive growth, notwithstanding, 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 former real-manor developer, had saved up. It was twice what she should have invested, but she couldn't resist going all out on complimentary wine and food at book signings, stylish extra-forcefulness bags, and excessive bonuses. "Instead of solving problems, I threw more coin at them," she says. "I didn't run the store like a business."

As an accountant, Coady had always used her caput. Only as a bookseller and volume lover, she permit her centre accept over. She built the most appealing bookstore she could imagine, while neglecting to build a sustainable business organisation. "Now," she says, "I'm combining caput and centre."

Thirteen years after dramatically irresolute careers, Coady, 54, has proven that she could pull it off after all. In the same time that virtually half of the independent bookstores in the country have closed, R.J. Julia has achieved more than $3 one thousand thousand in almanac sales and a modest profit. And Coady, its ever-fashionable, opinionated, and animated owner, has made the transition from successful accountant to successful bookseller.

A Bookseller Waiting to Happen

Coady'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'due south Lower East Side. Although her mother had all the same 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 volume in the library in alphabetical order. When she was in middle school, her begetter, a baker, purchased the offset of 10 bakeries, called Em's, and brought her to a meeting with his accountant.

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

"She is," her begetter replied.

He wasn't joking. The accountant agreed to teach her, and Coady, the oldest of half dozen, juggled schoolhouse, family unit baby-sitting duties and payroll books until she left for higher. "Now my male parent feels I work also 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 exercise.' "

By the 1980s, Coady had become a partner and national tax manager at BDO Seidman, the New Yorkffibased international accounting firm. She was the first woman selected for the job. "People tell me at present, 'It must have been ho-hum working with taxes,' " Coady says. "But I loved it." She had a twelfth-floor corner office overlooking Central Park and was making about $250,000 a year. In 1988, she was featured on the embrace of Coin mag, which dubbed her "the accountant'south auditor."

Heady stuff, to be sure. Simply information technology 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, just information technology wasn't enriching to my heart." At least not in the way that books had always been.

Even every bit she climbed the corporate ladder, Coady remained an insatiable reader. She would ever conduct 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 house," she says. "People would say, 'Oh geez, that was the best book yous gave me.' "

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

Creating a Modern-24-hour interval Town Green

R.J. Julia, named for Coady's grandmother, Julia, who perished in a concentration camp in Globe War II, is much more than than a store where you lot buy the latest Harry Potter or John Grisham. It's a local institution that has become interwoven with people's lives as few businesses are. "It'southward the center of the customs," says Norman Weissman, a retired writer, manager, and producer who lives in neighboring Guilford and attends a monthly book-guild meetings at R.J. Julia. "The bookstore and the boondocks are inseparable." Area residents feel a responsibility to support the independent bookstore — their bookstore — even if it means paying a niggling more at times.

From the beginning, Coady wanted R.J. Julia to exist a mod-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 than 200 events a year, from book signings to book-guild meetings to children's-story hour on Wednesday mornings. By lobbying publishers and catering to visiting authors, Coady has made Madison, an affluent coastal boondocks with two,200 residents, a regular book-tour stop betwixt New York and Boston. The walls are lined with dozens of autographed photos of by visitors: Jimmy Carter, Garrison Keillor, and Anne Rice.

At Coady's proffer, Lee Jacobus started a classical literature volume social club at R.J. Julia. A professor emeritus of English at the University of Connecticut, he prepares as though he were however didactics in a classroom, reading, analyzing, and making notes 40 minutes a day, iii days a calendar week. "It'due south an enormous time investment and, aye, I practice it for free," says Jacobus. "Simply this is an establishment that should be supported. It'southward important to the intellectual life of the boondocks."

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 "manus-selling" — that is, recommending books that they or their colleagues have read. "That's the value that nosotros add to the book-buying experience," Coady says. "We put the right book in the right hands." The store's top-selling department is staff recommendations, where each book is accompanied past a "shelf talker," a capsule review from a bookseller, or in the case of the new Harry Potter, by a bookseller's child ("I'thousand 11, and I finished in exactly five days, down to the hour! Once y'all start reading information technology, you won't stop!" raves Hana, the manager's stepdaughter).

Suzanne Coopersmith is i of about 35 booksellers on staff. Like Coady, she'southward sociable, totally unreserved, and capable of talking about books all day. She tin can't imagine working at a chain, even the one that'due south coming to Waterford, most 15 miles from where she lives. "There are as well many rules," says Coopersmith. "Here, I can give a discount to a customer whenever I want to." It'south truthful. Coady lets the staff do whatever it takes to make a customer happy. At that place may non be many official rules, but the staff definitely knows the kind of shop 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, "Permit me know if I can exist of help," or "Are you finding what y'all need?" "Tin I help you?" strikes her as intrusive.

For Natalie Ferringer, it was love with R.J. Julia at first browse. The dark wooden bookshelves, brass fixtures, and renditions of various writers' signatures painted on the hardwood flooring give the place the ambience of a neighborhood bookstore in Europe or New York. Ferringer, the caput of the political-science section at the University of New Oasis, tin spend unabridged afternoons shopping, which translates to between $350 and $400 worth of books a month. And however, it'south hard to say who benefits more: Ferringer or the bookstore. "I know them past proper noun," she says of the staff. "There's Nancy, Karen, Lisa, Suzanne, Meredith, Beth, Babette, Roxanne."

"It'southward the heart of the community," says an R.J. Julia client. "The bookstore and the boondocks are inseparable."

Perhaps 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 up a special order, The Thin Woman, a lighthearted British who-done-it, written by Dorothy Cannell and originally published in 1984. What'due south remarkable most her purchase is that Harrington never requested the book. In fact, she had never fifty-fifty heard of information technology. "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 refuse. Suburban big-box retailers were becoming the rage. "After I opened, the theater, the hardware store, the five-and-dime, and the restaurant all closed," she says. "I thought, 'What did I just do?' " Now, Madison is a different story. Although the business organization commune consists of just ane long block on Boston Mail Road, there'south an art house and an elegant Italian restaurant across from R.J. Julia. There are a multifariousness of shops and boutiques. At that place'south even a Starbucks.

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

In reality, though, adding corporate field of study to the bookstore remains a challenge, especially without the financial incentives she had at her disposal at a major accounting business firm. Instead, Coady offers a casual, fun surroundings in which booksellers can be their passionate selves. They constantly remind her that the operative word in independent bookseller is independent. When Coady tried to go the staff to vesture 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 exist adjacent. "This is where the democracy 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 become up 20%," says store manager Meredith Warner. Faith Middleton, the radio host, experiences the Roxanne Effect twice a month, when Coady appears on her show to talk most books. Recently, as she described Family History, Dani Shapiro's novel about a mother's attempts to save her fractured family, "the pilus stood up on the back of my cervix," says Middleton. "You could hear a pin drop in the studio."

That passion infuses every foursquare human foot 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 beingness an executive at a large firm. "I often joke that I gave up money for time, and now I have neither," she says. She'southward still a blazon A, so information technology comes as no surprise that running a successful bookstore isn't plenty. Currently, she'south expanding the children's section, revamping the gift-shop area, and cartoon up a concern programme to accept the make in new directions.

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

Sidebar: 5 Great Reads

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

Below are five of her all-fourth dimension favorite books. If these aren't enough, bank 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'due south nigh World State of war II and the Holocaust from the perspective of a modest German town that may or may not empathize what's going on, but in a quiet way is mimicking what's happening. You feel the impact of expose and of existence co-conspirators through silence."

Dear Friend: A Life of Abigail Adams by Lynne Withey

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

The Book of Laughter and Forgetting by Milan Kundera

"It's about sorrow every bit a way of defining y'all, how you demand information technology to live and function in a meaningful manner. Information technology'south a philosophical book, but in that Eastern European, wacky Kafka fashion."

The Bluest Heart past Toni Morrison

"The narrator is a black girl who has been driveling, and the novel is near how she moves through that experience. This is 1 of those books that changes the style yous look at the world."

A Child's Anthology of Poetry by Elizabeth Sword

"I've been reading from this to my son since he was two, and nosotros ever 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 about R.J. Julia on the Web (www.rjjulia.com).