Beyond Campus
Words of Encouragement
Who would open a bookstore in the Amazon age? Jonah Zimiles ’79
By Katherine Duke ’05 Small business U
In an era when many neighborhood bookstores are closing down, [words] in Maplewood, N.J.—run by Jonah Zimiles ’79 and his wife, Ellen—has succeeded by opening things up: opening its doors to families of children with autism, and opening up vocational and recreational possibilities for those young people.
n In addition to all of the standard bookshop offerings, visitors can find many autismrelated books. E The store has attracted such Amherst authors as Harlan Coben ’84. Q Teens work to attach stickers to shopping bags at the store.
Courtesy [words] bookstore (4)
In 1998 the Zimiles’ then-3year-old son, Daniel, was diagnosed with autism. Jonah, a lawyer by training, was director of planned giving and endowments for The Jewish Federations of North America, but coordinating his son’s appointments with doctors, teachers and therapists became so time-consuming that he made it his full-time job. Six years later, as Daniel’s schedule stabilized, Jonah enrolled in business school at Columbia, where he focused on social entrepreneurship, aspiring to raise money for autism research and services and to launch a job training facility for autistic people. But his plans changed again with the 2008 economic downturn, which struck the New York City suburb of Maplewood hard. Ellen read a sign at the town’s bookstore, Goldfinch, saying the business would shut down unless a local resident could buy it. “This idea flashed into her head,” says Jonah: What if they launched the training program as part of a business? So the Zimileses purchased Goldfinch and moved it to a larger downtown storefront. The new, bracketed name, [words], would
Sales have increased by 10 to 20 percent every year, but “that’s not really what we’re about.”
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