The head and heart of an independent bookseller


“If you can be lucky enough to do something that you’re passionate about and be business-like about it to make it profitable, that’s the homerun. I have not quite mastered that. I continue to have the business be tilted to heart. It’s not a very economically sound model running this bookstore…but I’ve now resolved that it’s good enough for me to have the pleasure of doing what I care so much about.”

Roxanne Coady - Photo Credit: Tricia Bohan Photography


At the age of forty, Roxanne Coady had the proverbial mid-life crisis. “At a certain point…I felt like I ought to spend the second half of my work life doing something where I thought I made a difference,” she explains. So she walked away from her prestigious position as national tax director—the first woman to hold that title—and the generous annual salary that came with it. “The two things I’ve always cared about are poor women and children and reading,” she reflects. “And then I couldn’t decide between a publishing company and a bookstore. But I realized a publishing company was a way to lose even more money.”


Read this interesting piece on Roxanne Coady and her life as an indie bookseller, RJ Julia, the struggles and the rewards............. story from examiner.com