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 small town.

Of course, they believed in her. She had been i of the top tax accountants in the country. She was whip- smart, driven, and tireless — "on 82 dissimilar boards," equally she likes to say, which is only a slight exaggeration. She even grew upwards in business: As a girl, she kept the books for her begetter'south bakeries. "If you were to option a dream person to start her own bookstore, it would be Roxanne," says friend and Connecticut Public Radio host Organized religion Middleton. "She's so smart about business."

Coady nigh proved everybody wrong.

For the outset several years, R.J. Julia Independent Booksellers, located on the main drag in Madison, Connecticut, grew by leaps and premises. The im-pressive growth, even so, 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 hubby, a former existent-estate programmer, had saved up. It was twice what she should have invested, but she couldn't resist going all out on gratis vino and food at book signings, fashionable extra-forcefulness bags, and excessive bonuses. "Instead of solving problems, I threw more money at them," she says. "I didn't run the store similar a business."

As an accountant, Coady had always used her head. But as a bookseller and book lover, she let her heart take over. She built the most appealing bookstore she could imagine, while neglecting to build a sustainable business organisation. "Now," she says, "I'1000 combining head and heart."

Thirteen years later dramatically changing careers, Coady, 54, has proven that she could pull it off after all. In the same time that nearly half of the contained bookstores in the country accept closed, R.J. Julia has achieved more than than $3 meg in annual sales and a small profit. And Coady, its always-stylish, opinionated, and animated possessor, has fabricated the transition from successful accountant to successful bookseller.

A Bookseller Waiting to Happen

Coady'southward 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 E Side. Although her mother had all the same to empathise English, she read to her children anyway, pronouncing the words phonetically. Once Coady learned to read, she wanted to tackle every children'due south book in the library in alphabetical order. When she was in middle school, her father, a baker, purchased the first of 10 bakeries, chosen Em'south, and brought her to a meeting with his accountant.

"Who'south going to do the bookkeeping?" the auditor asked.

"She is," her father replied.

He wasn't joking. The auditor agreed to teach her, and Coady, the oldest of six, juggled school, 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, 'You can't ride two horses with one ass.' I tell him, 'Daddy, this is what you raised me to practice.' "

By the 1980s, Coady had become a partner and national taxation director at BDO Seidman, the New Yorkffibased international accounting firm. She was the first woman 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 twelfth-floor corner office overlooking Central Park and was making nigh $250,000 a year. In 1988, she was featured on the cover of Coin mag, which dubbed her "the accountant's accountant."

Heady stuff, to be sure. But it wasn't plenty to continue her there. "Every bit much as I enjoyed the work, it wasn't enriching," Coady says. "Information technology was in terms of dollars, but information technology wasn't enriching to my centre." At least non 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 little library out of my house," she says. "People would say, 'Oh geez, that was the best volume y'all gave me.' "

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

Creating a Modern-Twenty-four hours Town Green

R.J. Julia, named for Coady'southward grandmother, Julia, who perished in a concentration camp in World War II, is much more than than a store where you buy the latest Harry Potter or John Grisham. Information technology'south a local institution that has become interwoven with people's lives as few businesses are. "Information technology's the eye of the community," says Norman Weissman, a retired writer, managing 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 experience a responsibility to support the independent bookstore — their bookstore — fifty-fifty if it means paying a little more at times.

From the get-go, Coady wanted R.J. Julia to be a modern-solar day town dark-green. "I felt people were becoming disconnected from each other," she says. "We had lost a public place for conversation nigh things that mattered." The store hosts more than than 200 events a year, from book signings to book-guild meetings to children's-story 60 minutes on Wednesday mornings. By lobbying publishers and catering to visiting authors, Coady has made Madison, an affluent littoral 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 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 language at the Academy of Connecticut, he prepares as though he were still teaching in a classroom, reading, analyzing, and making notes 40 minutes a day, 3 days a week. "It's an enormous fourth dimension investment and, yeah, I exercise 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 market, 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 take read. "That's the value that we add to the book-ownership feel," Coady says. "We put the right book in the correct easily." The store'southward top-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 kid ("I'm 11, and I finished in exactly 5 days, downwards to the hour! In one case you showtime reading information technology, you won't stop!" raves Hana, the managing director'due south stepdaughter).

Suzanne Coopersmith is one of almost 35 booksellers on staff. Like Coady, she's sociable, totally unreserved, and capable of talking virtually books all day. She tin can't imagine working at a chain, even the one that's coming to Waterford, about fifteen miles from where she lives. "At that place are too many rules," says Coopersmith. "Here, I can give a discount to a customer whenever I want to." It's true. Coady lets the staff do any it takes to make a customer happy. There may non 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's an open book. Equally she reminds the staff, she prefers the offer, "Let me know if I tin can be of aid," or "Are you finding what you need?" "Tin can I assistance you?" strikes her equally intrusive.

For Natalie Ferringer, information technology was love with R.J. Julia at first scan. The night wooden bookshelves, brass fixtures, and renditions of various 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 Academy of New Oasis, can spend entire afternoons shopping, which translates to between $350 and $400 worth of books a month. And all the same, it'southward difficult to say who benefits more than: Ferringer or the bookstore. "I know them by name," she says of the staff. "At that place'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 town are inseparable."

Perhaps the best measure of R.J. Julia'south 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 upwardly a special order, The Thin Adult female, a lighthearted British who-washed-it, written by Dorothy Cannell and originally published in 1984. What'south remarkable about 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 honey it," says Coopersmith.

She was right.

The Roxanne Effect

When Coady launched R.J. Julia, Madison, like many pocket-sized towns, was in decline. 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 merely do?' " Now, Madison is a dissimilar story. Although the business district consists of but ane long cake on Boston Post Road, there's an art house and an elegant Italian restaurant across from R.J. Julia. There are a variety of shops and boutiques. In that location'due south even a Starbucks.

As an entrepreneur, Coady has come up a long fashion herself. She's running R.J. Julia like a business 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 xiii this year, says Coady, both have had their bar mitzvahs: Edward became a human, R.J. Julia a mature business organisation.

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 independent bookseller is contained. When Coady tried to become the staff to wear matching R.J. Julia shirts, they declined. And then 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 adjacent. "This is where the republic thing shoots me in the foot," she says.

Coady's natural effusiveness and love of writing — she reads virtually half-dozen books at a time — make her an irresistible bookseller. "When Roxanne is on the flooring, our sales become up 20%," says store director Meredith Warner. Faith Middleton, the radio host, experiences the Roxanne Outcome twice a month, when Coady appears on her testify to talk about books. Recently, as she described Family History, Dani Shapiro'southward novel near a female parent'southward attempts to save her fractured family unit, "the hair stood upwards on the dorsum of my neck," 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 showtime contemplated changing careers, she imagined that running a bookstore would be a change of step, less demanding for her than existence an executive at a large firm. "I often joke that I gave up coin for time, and now I have neither," she says. She'southward even so a blazon A, then it comes as no surprise that running a successful bookstore isn't enough. Currently, she'due south expanding the children's section, revamping the gift-store surface area, and drawing up a business plan to have the brand in new directions.

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

Sidebar: five Great Reads

"Everybody has fourth dimension for 1 discretionary matter," says Roxanne Coady, the owner of R.J. Julia. "Mine's reading."

Beneath are five of her all-time favorite books. If these aren't enough, cheque out R.J. Julia's 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 virtually World War II and the Holocaust from the perspective of a pocket-sized German town that may or may not understand what'due south going on, but in a placidity way is mimicking what's happening. You feel the impact of betrayal and of beingness 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 information technology was similar at home, raising her kids during a dangerous time."

The Book of Laughter and Forgetting past Milan Kundera

"It's near sorrow as a way of defining you lot, how you need information technology to live and role in a meaningful way. It's a philosophical book, only in that Eastern European, wacky Kafka way."

The Bluest Centre by Toni Morrison

"The narrator is a blackness daughter who has been driveling, and the novel is most how she moves through that feel. This is i of those books that changes the mode you look at the earth."

A Child's Anthology of Verse past Elizabeth Sword

"I've been reading from this to my son since he was ii, and we 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).