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11/30/2016 06:00 AMR.J. Julia Booksellers in Madison prides itself on being the place for anyone in Connecticut—and anyone passing through Connecticut on the shoreline—who is looking for a good read, a gift, or a hot cup of tea and a quick bite to eat at the café out back.
And, for people who follow news about book awards, crave words on the printed page, and have an insatiable appetite for a good story, any kind of story, it’s more like a second home. It is a well-established, well-loved “third place”—so called because it’s not home and it’s not work, but rather a third place where people can come together formally and informally in a supportive community.
It’s also one of the largest employers in downtown Madison, with about 30 to 40 employees at any given time, a staff that swells during the peak summer weeks and during the holidays, when a small gift wrapping crew is recruited.
So when news broke a few years ago that owner Roxanne Coady was considering selling it, that sent a shiver down the collective spines of residents and her fellow merchants alike. News this year that it is now officially off the sales block came as a relief. Not only is the store not for sale, but Coady is embarking on a number of new initiatives designed to bring in additional revenue, including creating libraries for apartment buildings and hotels, and operating a new bookstore in Middletown, working with Wesleyan University.
One of the main reasons why Coady decided not to sell is at the bookstore most every day, either roaming the floors talking with customers, or tucked away in the offices upstairs in front of the building. Her name is Lori Fazio, the always-impeccably dressed young woman with the title of store manager. Over her many years at R.J. Julia, she has effectively become the second in command to Coady, and is the officer on deck most days as Coady comes and goes, tending to her other responsibilities along with her bookstore.
Fazio waves hello as I walk into her office space on the second floor of R.J. Julia. Her desk space along the front windows directly faces the word BOOKS in big white letters stenciled on a window facing the town’s main street. She has a view of Madison Art Cinemas, the U.S. Post Office, and the E.C. Scranton Memorial Library. Along with R.J. Julia, those institutions are often considered the four pillars of the downtown, the third places that generate foot traffic beneficial to the other retailers and restaurateurs downtown.
The Future of the Bookstore
After she gets off the phone, we briefly talk books. I mention two books that have piqued my interest, one that had just won the Man Booker Award, and another, I couldn’t remember the name of it, by Kate Tempest, a rapper/poet/playwright/recording artist and novelist I read about recently. Fazio had just finished Another Brooklyn, by Jacqueline Woodson, while she was on a rare vacation.
“I’m not very good at relaxing,” she says with a laugh, telling me about her trip.
One of the highlights? Having time to read. She says Woodson’s novel reads almost like a prose poem and is a bit disturbing.
“I like a bit of dark,” she says, when it comes to her reading.
Then our talk turns to the future of the bookstore. I said I was so glad it was no longer on the market.
“So really what happened is that when it was on the market, there were a lot of people interested, but just not the right combination of having the money it would take, and,” she pauses, “the right idea of what it takes to run a bookstore like this.”
She says that some people think you just turn the key in the door in the morning, and that everything just...happens; the books neatly shelved and categorized; the shelf talkers written up and hung beneath the featured books; the gifts selected and displayed just so; the events, hundreds each year, bringing people in for a specific book and, ideally, one or two more; the book clubs; the newsletters; the staff to manage all of that, along with responsibility for things like the air conditioners and the other nitty gritty of maintaining the building that houses all of the literary wonders.
“That’s a misconception, that you just turn the key and it’s all here,” she says. “There really is a whole lot more going on behind the scenes than people realize. And we like that people think it happens effortlessly, we want people to feel that way when they walk through the door. And then there are the finances. A bookstore is not the most profitable business.”
To say the least. The price of each book is predetermined and printed on the book. Certain operating expenses are fixed.
“It can be a tight squeeze,” she says. “We have to manage our way around that.”
And then there is the balancing act of determining which books, of the hundreds of thousands of new titles that are published each year, will make it onto the shelves of R. J. Julia.
“Which books? It’s a little bit of science, a little bit of retail savvy, and a little bit of luck” picking the right ones, she says.
The speaker phone crackles with the voice of an employee looking for Lori—”In a meeting?”
“Yup,” Fazio answers.
She turns back to the conversation, noting, “We’re constantly juggling balls with the train moving beneath us.”
She reflects for a minute.
“I care for this place like it’s my own,” says Fazio, who just celebrated her ninth anniversary at the store. “I love it.”
Coming Up with a System
Coady tells me later in a phone conversation that Fazio’s love for the bookstore, and her expertise at dealing with the nitty gritty that goes hand in hand with running one, makes her the perfect person to handle the kind of juggling act Fazio described.
She says when the store went up for sale, she spoke with people who thought owning a bookstore was a romantic notion. Others didn’t have any money. Some had the money, but had a different idea about how the bookstore should be run.
A little too hot. A little too cold. A little too…
“And, yes, somewhere in there was a reluctance on my part to give it up,” she admits.
She says the process of evaluating the store when it was put up for sale helped convince her to keep it. The fact is that when she was talking with potential buyers, many of them were interested in owning a bookstore, but that very few of them were interested in running it.
“They were worried about me leaving,” she says. “So what it made me do was really think about what it is I do, and what I could teach the staff internally to do.”
She says her staff has always been self-sufficient, so that provided the basis for her eventual decision to retain the store. She wrote down everything she did, and then worked with Fazio to expand her training.
“And the byproduct of that was that Lori could run the store,” Coady says. “And that meant I could spend less time on tasks that, after 25 years, just weren’t fun anymore.”
Coady says she still has a lot to worry about at the store.
“I still have to worry about money,” she says. “But I’m paying attention to things I like, like discovering books, thinking strategically. That meant being at the store was fun for me again.”
She says she and Fazio have come up with a system.
“With her hard work and her intelligence and her commitment, both to the industry and R.J. Julia, I’ve gotten her involved with things on a national level,” she says.
Having other dedicated and competent store employees helped with the process as well. Liz Bartek, the events manager, is now serving on advisory councils covering New England.
“During the process of evaluating how it is that we do what we do, everybody’s sophistication and experience moved forward in a way that was good for the store,” Coady says.
Encouraging Signs
Another thing happened while Coady and Fazio mulled the future direction of their bookstore. Retail book sales at bookstores started to inch up nationally. There were up two percent in August 2016, compared to the same month a year before, according to Census Bureau figures. And, for the first eight months of 2016, retail sales at bookstores were up 4.5 percent over the same period a year before. At the same time, sales of ebooks have been dropping steadily since their peak in the first quarter of 2014, according to Peter Hildick-Smith, founder and CEO of Codex Group, a company the specializes in book audience research and book testing, and Kristen McLean, the director of new business development at Nielsen Book, who recently released their latest data on trends in U.S. book retail. They say sales of ebooks are now dropping.
“People are just getting tired of ebooks for a variety of different reasons, and so we are just seeing a general downward trend. There is still a pretty steady core of about three percent of people who only read ebooks, but the hybrid readers—those who read both print books and ebooks—is where this change is taking place,” says Hildick-Smith, in an article published by the American Booksellers Association.
Coady says sales at R.J. Julia are not up—”Not quite,” she says.
But she does see some encouraging signs. Big chain bookstores continue to struggle, and all of the Border’s bookstores have closed for good.
“That was helpful. And people are beginning to understand that shopping at Amazon has real ramifications. It hurts state revenues. It hurts jobs. It affects main street. Economically it is detrimental. People starting to understand that helps,” she says.
Fazio is so adamantly against Amazon that she says, “My husband will tell you the ‘A word’ isn’t even allowed in our house.”
Yes, she says it with a smile—but, still, she sounds like she means it.
Fazio agrees that business could be better, but, she adds, “It always could be better.”
Fazio and Coady are plotting to make sure business will continue to get better. New writing workshops are in the works. And Fazio hints that there might be something new on the horizon, for the store. That something new, she says later, is operating a new bookstore at 413 Main Street in Middletown, working with Wesleyan University. The new store is scheduled to open in late spring of 2017. Coady says her intention is to "create the kind of bookstore that will be the new standard for a college bookstore that is an integral, active member of its town. We will bring our 30 years of experience as knowledgeable booksellers to create a vibrant author series and a place for discovery, enlightenment, entertainment, and contemplation.
Coady adds that the store plans to launch a new website soon, one that should be easier for customers to use. They’ve launched an app that allows customers to download audiobooks purchased through R.J. Julia. Coady’s Just the Right Book has launched a new website and she’s started a program, called R.J. Living, “where we are doing libraries for some apartment buildings and hotels. So we’re hoping to do more of that, working with architects and designers, creating home libraries.”
And they both know that they need to keep the store vibrant, and to continue to expand its geographic reach to keep up with increased costs, and changing tastes in how people consume stories and knowledge.
“We continue to feel grateful for the support we get from the community,” Coady says.
A Store for Everyone
Fazio says she is thrilled about the books just out for Christmas and is confident they will do well. Her phone rings.
“I just want to make sure it’s not my daughter,” she says, peeking at the phone (she has three girls, the youngest a senior in high school).
When Fazio, who started at R.J. Julia as a bookseller on the floor, was offered the general manager position, she held a family meeting, and she reflected upon her past nine years at the store, as she steadily took on one responsibility after another.
“There have definitely been frustrating moments. You wonder how it’s all going to get done,” she says. “But there is not one day in nine years where I wasn’t excited to come here. Not one day. Not one moment. I love it here. I love working for Roxanne. She has high expectations. And so do I.”
She said it’s her goal to continue to make the store a place for everyone.
“There is something for everyone. Different generations. Different authors. There are stories that are dark. Stories that are light. Happy. Sad. You can come here and not be out of place, no matter who you are,” she says. “Everyone can walk in here and feel at home. The conversations that happen here matter. And when tragedy strikes, people know they can come here and feel supported.”
She recalled the hurricanes of years past, when the power was out, but the doors were still open at R. J. Julia. She remembers one woman walking in, in a daze. Her house had been damaged and she just needed to go somewhere and escape.
“We get letters all the time,” she says. “There’s a note I read recently to my staff. A thank you note. I put it on the refrigerator. Their child had been at the Grove School. Sometimes they had a tough time when they came to visit. We were always the place they would go for refuge. They said we made the tough times bearable. It brought tears to my eyes. She said, ‘You didn’t know it, but I wanted to thank you.’”
Fazio recalls another customer whose mother had terrible dementia, and would call and order books, sometimes 10 at a time, sometime the same book over and over. So the staff, when the mother would call, would write it all down, and email the daughter, who lived in another state, and the daughter would say, ‘No, she already has that,’ or, ‘Yes, send that, she doesn’t have that.’
“We came up with a system so that she wouldn’t end up with 20 of the same book,” Fazio says.
“Those are the little things that you can’t put a value on,” Fazio says.
As I get up to leave, Fazio walks over to the computer and starts to type. She’s trying to find out if the store has the books I asked about at the beginning of the interview. She directs me to a display downstairs for the book by the award winning author. The other book is put on order, and arrives promptly a few days later.