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 modest boondocks.

Of form, they believed in her. She had been i of the top tax accountants in the state. She was whip- smart, driven, and tireless — "on 82 different boards," equally she likes to say, which is but a slight exaggeration. She even grew up in business: As a girl, she kept the books for her father's bakeries. "If yous were to pick a dream person to beginning her own bookstore, it would be Roxanne," says friend and Connecticut Public Radio host Faith Middleton. "She's so smart about business organisation."

Coady nearly proved everybody wrong.

For the first several years, R.J. Julia Independent Booksellers, located on the chief drag in Madison, Connecticut, grew by leaps and bounds. The im-pressive growth, however, obscured a dotcomlike disability to turn a profit. Coady says that she ignored budgets and "blew probably $250,000" of the money that she and her married man, a former real-estate developer, had saved up. It was twice what she should have invested, merely she couldn't resist going all out on free wine and nutrient at volume signings, stylish extra-forcefulness numberless, and excessive bonuses. "Instead of solving issues, I threw more than coin at them," she says. "I didn't run the store like a business."

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

13 years later on dramatically changing careers, Coady, 54, has proven that she could pull it off after all. In the same time that well-nigh one-half of the independent bookstores in the state have closed, R.J. Julia has achieved more than than $3 1000000 in almanac sales and a small-scale 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's passion for reading and her talent for accounting were inspired past her parents, who survived the Holocaust and immigrated to the Us in 1948, settling in New York'due south Lower Eastward Side. Although her mother had nevertheless 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 book in the library in alphabetical order. When she was in heart school, her father, a baker, purchased the first of x bakeries, called Em's, and brought her to a coming together with his auditor.

"Who'southward 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 school, family baby-sitting duties and payroll books until she left for college. "Now my father feels I piece of work besides hard," she says, laughing. "He says, 'Y'all can't ride two horses with one donkey.' I tell him, 'Daddy, this is what you raised me to do.' "

Past the 1980s, Coady had become a partner and national taxation director at BDO Seidman, the New Yorkffibased international accounting firm. She was the beginning 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 twelfth-floor corner office overlooking Central Park and was making most $250,000 a yr. In 1988, she was featured on the cover of Money magazine, which dubbed her "the accountant'south accountant."

Exciting stuff, to be certain. But it wasn't enough to continue her there. "As much as 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 center." At to the lowest degree non in the style that books had always been.

Even as she climbed the corporate ladder, Coady remained an insatiable reader. She would ever deport 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 footling library out of my house," she says. "People would say, 'Oh geez, that was the all-time book you gave me.' "

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

Creating a Modern-Day Town Green

R.J. Julia, named for Coady's grandmother, Julia, who perished in a concentration camp in World State of war Ii, is much more than than a store where you buy the latest Harry Potter or John Grisham. Information technology's a local institution that has become interwoven with people's lives as few businesses are. "Information technology'due south 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 back up the independent bookstore — their bookstore — even if it means paying a little more at times.

From the start, Coady wanted R.J. Julia to be a modern-solar day boondocks greenish. "I felt people were becoming disconnected from each other," she says. "We had lost a public place for conversation about things that mattered." The store hosts more than than 200 events a year, from volume signings to book-society meetings to children's-story hour on Wednesday mornings. By lobbying publishers and catering to visiting authors, Coady has made Madison, an affluent littoral boondocks with 2,200 residents, a regular book-bout cease 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'south proffer, Lee Jacobus started a classical literature book social club at R.J. Julia. A professor emeritus of English at the University of Connecticut, he prepares as though he were still teaching in a classroom, reading, analyzing, and making notes twoscore minutes a day, three days a calendar week. "Information technology'due south an enormous fourth dimension investment and, yes, I do information technology for free," says Jacobus. "Only 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 "paw-selling" — that is, recommending books that they or their colleagues have read. "That's the value that nosotros add together to the book-buying experience," Coady says. "We put the right book in the right easily." The store'due south top-selling department is staff recommendations, where each book is accompanied past a "shelf talker," a sheathing 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 v days, down to the 60 minutes! In one case yous start reading it, you won't stop!" raves Hana, the manager's stepdaughter).

Suzanne Coopersmith is 1 of nigh 35 booksellers on staff. Like Coady, she's sociable, totally unreserved, and capable of talking nigh books all twenty-four hours. She tin can't imagine working at a chain, even the 1 that's coming to Waterford, about xv miles from where she lives. "There are also many rules," says Coopersmith. "Here, I can give a discount to a customer whenever I want to." It'southward true. Coady lets the staff do whatsoever information technology takes to make a customer happy. There may non exist 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's an open book. As she reminds the staff, she prefers the offer, "Permit me know if I can be of help," or "Are yous finding what you need?" "Tin can I assistance you?" strikes her as intrusive.

For Natalie Ferringer, it was honey with R.J. Julia at first browse. The dark wooden bookshelves, brass fixtures, and renditions of diverse 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 month. And even so, information technology's hard to say who benefits more: Ferringer or the bookstore. "I know them past name," she says of the staff. "There'due south Nancy, Karen, Lisa, Suzanne, Meredith, Beth, Babette, Roxanne."

"It's the centre of the community," says an R.J. Julia customer. "The bookstore and the boondocks are inseparable."

Perchance the best measure of R.J. Julia's relationship with its customers comes from Denise Harrington, an gorging murder-mystery reader and a customer from the starting time. During a recent visit, she picked up a special order, The Sparse Adult female, a lighthearted British who-done-information technology, written past 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 dear information technology," says Coopersmith.

She was right.

The Roxanne Outcome

When Coady launched R.J. Julia, Madison, like many small towns, was in decline. Suburban large-box retailers were condign the rage. "After I opened, the theater, the hardware store, the five-and-dime, and the restaurant all closed," she says. "I idea, 'What did I just practice?' " Now, Madison is a dissimilar story. Although the business organization district consists of only one long block on Boston Post Route, at that place'southward an art house and an elegant Italian restaurant across from R.J. Julia. There are a diverseness of shops and boutiques. At that place's fifty-fifty a Starbucks.

As an entrepreneur, Coady has come a long way herself. She'southward running R.J. Julia like a business, with budgets, a training manual, and more-structured evaluations. Past coincidence, her son Edward and the store were born in the same year. Since turning 13 this twelvemonth, says Coady, both have had their bar mitzvahs: Edward became a human being, 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 house. Instead, Coady offers a casual, fun environs in which booksellers can exist their passionate selves. They constantly remind her that the operative word in independent bookseller is independent. 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 1 wore for long. A newly arrived box of dark-green R.J. Julia lanyards in the office could be side by side. "This is where the democracy thing shoots me in the foot," she says.

Coady's natural effusiveness and love of writing — she reads nearly six books at a time — brand her an irresistible bookseller. "When Roxanne is on the floor, our sales become up twenty%," 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, equally she described Family History, Dani Shapiro'south novel about a mother'southward attempts to salve her fractured family, "the hair stood upwardly on the back of my cervix," says Middleton. "You lot could hear a pivot drib in the studio."

That passion infuses every square 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 alter of pace, less enervating for her than being an executive at a big firm. "I often joke that I gave up money for fourth dimension, and now I have neither," she says. She's even so a blazon 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-shop area, and drawing upwardly a business concern plan to take the make in new directions.

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

Sidebar: v Peachy Reads

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

Below are five of her all-time favorite books. If these aren't enough, bank check out R.J. Julia'due 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 Earth War II and the Holocaust from the perspective of a small German boondocks that may or may non understand what's going on, but in a quiet way is mimicking what's happening. You lot feel the impact 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'due south vantage point, what it was similar at dwelling, raising her kids during a dangerous time."

The Book of Laughter and Forgetting by Milan Kundera

"Information technology's nigh sorrow as a manner of defining y'all, how you need information technology to live and office in a meaningful way. It'southward a philosophical book, merely in that Eastern European, wacky Kafka mode."

The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison

"The narrator is a blackness girl who has been abused, and the novel is well-nigh how she moves through that feel. This is one of those books that changes the way you expect at the earth."

A Kid'southward Anthology of Verse by Elizabeth Sword

"I've been reading from this to my son since he was two, and nosotros e'er find something that amuses us, any mood we're in."

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