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 up a bookstore in a pocket-sized town.

Of course, they believed in her. She had been ane of the peak tax accountants in the land. 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 upward in business organization: As a girl, she kept the books for her father's bakeries. "If y'all were to pick a dream person to start her own bookstore, it would exist Roxanne," says friend and Connecticut Public Radio host Faith Middleton. "She'southward and then smart about concern."

Coady about proved everybody wrong.

For the first several years, R.J. Julia Independent Booksellers, located on the main drag in Madison, Connecticut, grew past leaps and bounds. The im-pressive growth, however, obscured a dotcomlike inability to 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, just she couldn't resist going all out on free wine and nutrient at volume signings, stylish extra-strength bags, and excessive bonuses. "Instead of solving problems, I threw more than money at them," she says. "I didn't run the store like a business organization."

Every bit an accountant, Coady had ever 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 concern. "Now," she says, "I'1000 combining caput and center."

13 years after dramatically changing careers, Coady, 54, has proven that she could pull it off after all. In the aforementioned time that virtually one-half of the independent bookstores in the country take closed, R.J. Julia has accomplished more than $three million in annual sales and a modest profit. And Coady, its e'er-fashionable, opinionated, and animated owner, has fabricated the transition from successful auditor to successful bookseller.

A Bookseller Waiting to Happen

Coady'southward passion for reading and her talent for bookkeeping 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 mother had yet to empathize 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 order. When she was in middle school, her father, a baker, purchased the first of 10 bakeries, called Em'due south, and brought her to a meeting with his accountant.

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

"She is," her begetter replied.

He wasn't joking. The auditor agreed to teach her, and Coady, the oldest of six, juggled school, family infant-sitting duties and payroll books until she left for higher. "Now my father feels I work likewise hard," she says, laughing. "He says, 'Yous tin can't ride two horses with 1 ass.' I tell him, 'Daddy, this is what you raised me to do.' "

Past the 1980s, Coady had become a partner and national tax director at BDO Seidman, the New Yorkffibased international accounting firm. She was the offset woman selected for the task. "People tell me now, 'It must have been boring working with taxes,' " Coady says. "Merely I loved it." She had a 12th-floor corner part overlooking Central Park and was making virtually $250,000 a yr. In 1988, she was featured on the cover of Money mag, which dubbed her "the accountant's accountant."

Heady stuff, to exist sure. Simply it wasn't enough to go on her there. "As much every bit I enjoyed the piece of work, it wasn't enriching," Coady says. "It was in terms of dollars, but it wasn't enriching to my heart." At least not in the style that books had always been.

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

They were telling her something. Information technology 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 campsite in World War Two, is much more than a store where you buy the latest Harry Potter or John Grisham. Information technology'due south a local institution that has become interwoven with people'due south lives as few businesses are. "It's the eye 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." Surface area residents experience a responsibility to support the contained bookstore — their bookstore — even if it ways paying a fiddling more than at times.

From the outset, Coady wanted R.J. Julia to exist a modern-day town green. "I felt people were condign asunder from each other," she says. "We had lost a public identify for conversation almost things that mattered." The store hosts more than than 200 events a year, from book signings to volume-lodge meetings to children's-story hr on Wednesday mornings. Past lobbying publishers and catering to visiting authors, Coady has fabricated Madison, an flush coastal town with 2,200 residents, a regular book-tour cease betwixt 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'southward proposition, Lee Jacobus started a classical literature book order 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 xl minutes a day, iii days a week. "Information technology'due south an enormous fourth dimension investment and, yeah, I do it for complimentary," says Jacobus. "But this is an institution that should be supported. It's of import to the intellectual life of the town."

For R.J. Julia to distinguish itself in an increasingly crowded marketplace, Coady believes information technology 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 accept read. "That's the value that we add to the volume-buying experience," Coady says. "We put the right book in the right hands." The store'due south meridian-selling section is staff recommendations, where each book is accompanied past a "shelf talker," a capsule review from a bookseller, or in the example of the new Harry Potter, past a bookseller's child ("I'yard 11, and I finished in exactly five days, down to the hour! Once yous showtime reading it, you won't terminate!" raves Hana, the manager's stepdaughter).

Suzanne Coopersmith is one of about 35 booksellers on staff. Like Coady, she's sociable, totally unreserved, and capable of talking about books all twenty-four hours. She can't imagine working at a chain, even the i that's coming to Waterford, virtually 15 miles from where she lives. "In that location are likewise many rules," says Coopersmith. "Here, I can requite a discount to a customer whenever I want to." It's true. Coady lets the staff do whatever it takes to make a customer happy. There may not be many official rules, but the staff definitely knows the kind of store that she wants R.J. Julia to be. When information technology comes to sharing likes and dislikes, Coady'due south 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 you demand?" "Tin I aid you?" strikes her as intrusive.

For Natalie Ferringer, information technology was honey 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 head of the political-scientific discipline department at the University of New Oasis, can spend entire afternoons shopping, which translates to betwixt $350 and $400 worth of books a calendar month. And yet, it'southward hard to say who benefits more than: 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'due south the heart of the community," says an R.J. Julia customer. "The bookstore and the boondocks are inseparable."

Maybe the best measure out of R.J. Julia's relationship with its customers comes from Denise Harrington, an gorging murder-mystery reader and a customer 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'south remarkable well-nigh 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 dear it," says Coopersmith.

She was right.

The Roxanne Upshot

When Coady launched R.J. Julia, Madison, like many pocket-size towns, was in turn down. Suburban big-box retailers were becoming the rage. "Later I opened, the theater, the hardware store, the five-and-dime, and the restaurant all airtight," she says. "I thought, 'What did I just exercise?' " Now, Madison is a unlike story. Although the business district consists of merely one long block on Boston Post Road, in that location's an art house and an elegant Italian restaurant beyond from R.J. Julia. There are a variety of shops and boutiques. There's even a Starbucks.

Equally an entrepreneur, Coady has come up a long way herself. She'southward running R.J. Julia like a business concern, with budgets, a preparation manual, and more-structured evaluations. By coincidence, her son Edward and the store were born in the aforementioned yr. 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 claiming, specially without the financial incentives she had at her disposal at a major accounting business 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 independent. When Coady tried to become the staff to wearable 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 side by side. "This is where the democracy thing shoots me in the human foot," she says.

Coady'due south natural effusiveness and love of writing — she reads almost half dozen books at a fourth dimension — brand her an irresistible bookseller. "When Roxanne is on the floor, our sales get upwards 20%," says shop managing director Meredith Warner. Faith Middleton, the radio host, experiences the Roxanne Effect twice a month, when Coady appears on her show to talk about books. Recently, as she described Family History, Dani Shapiro's novel near a mother'south attempts to relieve her fractured family, "the hair stood upwards on the back of my neck," says Middleton. "You could hear a pivot drop in the studio."

That passion infuses every square foot 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 alter of step, less demanding for her than existence an executive at a large firm. "I frequently joke that I gave upward coin 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's expanding the children's section, revamping the gift-shop surface area, and cartoon up a business plan to take the brand in new directions.

A 2d R.J. Julia? A chain of stores? Coady tin't say. That affiliate has nevertheless to exist written.

Sidebar: five Great Reads

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

Below are v 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 past Ursula Hegi

"It'due south well-nigh World State of war Ii and the Holocaust from the perspective of a pocket-sized High german town that may or may not understand what's going on, just in a quiet mode is mimicking what's happening. You lot feel the impact of betrayal and of existence co-conspirators through silence."

Dearest Friend: A Life of Abigail Adams by Lynne Withey

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

The Book of Laughter and Forgetting by Milan Kundera

"Information technology's about sorrow equally a way of defining yous, how you need it to alive and office in a meaningful mode. Information technology's a philosophical book, but in that Eastern European, wacky Kafka way."

The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison

"The narrator is a black girl 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 y'all expect at the world."

A Child's Album of Poetry by Elizabeth Sword

"I've been reading from this to my son since he was two, and we ever find something that amuses u.s., whatsoever mood we're in."

Chuck Salter (csalter@fastcompany.com) is a Fast Company senior writer based in Baltimore. Learn more about R.J. Julia on the Spider web (world wide web.rjjulia.com).