NewSouth enters new phase as a true community bookstore in Montgomery
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Though it’s been around for about 23 years in Montgomery, NewSouth Bookstore is only now starting to flourish as a “honest-to-God” independent community bookstore.
“It’s been an evolution,” said co-owner Suzanne La Rosa, a partner in business and life with Randall Williams.
That evolution includes a name change. For a few years, the bookstore operated as Read Herring. In March of this year, the bookstore reverted to NewSouth.
The bookstore is open from 10 a.m. until 6 p.m. Monday through Saturday, and 11 a.m. until 4 p.m. Sunday.
Enter through the glass door at 105 S. Court St. and you’ll see wall shelves and displays packed with books from authors around the world and close in Montgomery — classics, new and notable, Alabama history, civil rights, Black history, LGBTQ works, biographies, memoirs, fiction, poetry, drama, and more. They also stock books that many schools have banned for one reason or another — everything from “Charlotte’s Web” to “Captain Underpants.”
“We take a lot of pride in the offerings that we have,” La Rosa said.
Frequent visitors will notice new quotes on the walls from authors, including Fran Lebowitz's "Think before you speak. Read before you think," and Margaret Fuller's "Today a reader, tomorrow a leader."
Displays in the middle of the front room are mobile because, for now, the space doubles as an event center where authors, creatives and various groups hold gatherings. The bookstore even hosts concerts.
That front room used to be the extent of the store. Most of the rest of the building was a publishing company, NewSouth Books. After selling their publishing business last year, La Rosa and Williams began a bookstore expansion.
“We really never had had time to devote to the bookstore until then,” Williams said.
Now, there’s a new section in back. Part of it they’re especially proud of is designed for young readers.
“I want to do more with the youth in our city… If we don’t grow readers, then we have no future at all,” La Rosa said.
Connecting with the community at large is also important, and La Rosa said they've made improvements to their website newsouthbookstore.com, and put more emphasis on social media. They're using that — and an in-house white board — to promote upcoming 5:30 p.m. events like:
Sept. 7: A program with Dr. Lee Farrow on Russia's great 19th-century writers.
Sept. 14: A talk and book signing with Victor Luckerson, who wrote "Built From the Fire: The Epic Story of Tulsa's Greenwood District, America's Black Wall Street."
Sept. 19: Sickle cell anemia awareness event with the UAB children's hospital.
Sept. 28: A evening of live music and stories with the Vikings: Nils Maeetoft, Karren Pell and friends.
Developing NewSouth into a true community bookstore in Montgomery has been in the back of their minds since Thomas and Cheryl Upchurch closed 65-year-old Capitol Book & News in early 2016.
“They were a great bookstore with a big history here in Montgomery,” Williams said.
Take a selfie with civil rights history
Toward the back of NewSouth’s new extension is the store’s historic centerpiece — a couch that belonged to late civil rights activist Johnnie Carr. Fellow icons and friends likely sat on it while visiting the Carr home — Rosa Parks, Fred Gray, E.D. Nixon, Robert and Jeannie Graetz and many others.
“One day, back in 2005 or thereabouts, the phone rang,” said La Rosa. “I happened to pick up, and it was Mrs. Carr.”
Carr was hoping Williams could bring a truck over to her home, “because I am redecorating and I am done with this couch,” Carr told La Rosa. “He can just cart it away to the city dump.”
“I explained that we would haul the couch away, if she wouldn’t mind if we put it to use in the bookstore,” La Rosa said.
Since then, La Rosa and Williams have encouraged visitors to take selfies on the Carr Memorial Couch.
“Thousands and thousands of people by this time have sat on it,” La Rosa said. “You just feel a tingle when you sit there.”
More growth to come
NewSouth’s current expansion won’t be its last.
In the near future, the bookstore will expand into a section on the left being used by AfriAmeri, an African clothing store and gift shop that’s outgrown the space and plans to move, Williams said. NewSouth will likely use it to host events, so that displays from the store’s front don’t have to be moved every time they host an event.
“We want this to become a hub for conversation, for people to meet,” La Rosa said.
There’s also room to expand the bookstore into the building’s second floor and basement.
“The store is about half of the space that it will be in a year or so,” Williams said.
Looking back on NewSouth’s origins
“We ran it with only modest effort,” La Rosa said of NewSouth Bookstore’s early years.
That’s because La Rosa and Williams were focused on their publishing company, NewSouth Books. Through that, Williams said he’d edit around 25 projects a year.
“We’ve edited and published close to 900 books,” Williams said.
NewSouth Books began in the spring of 2000. That same year in the summer, they purchased the South Court Street building.
“Randall and I are urbanists,” La Rosa said, explaining part of why they picked that downtown location. “We really believe in the urban experiment. We like walking. We try not to use cars.”
The building was also affordable, La Rosa said. At the time, this kind of downtown Montgomery real estate wasn’t in demand.
“This building had been vacant for a long time prior to us buying it,” La Rosa said.
By the fall, they realized they had both the facility and inventory to open a bookstore.
“It was really for the publishing company, but it had this retail space out front, and we had a lot of books,” Williams said — ones they’d published and plenty of personal ones. He said they also had the inventory of two or three Montgomery bookstores that had gone out of business.
“We had some people come in," Williams said. "But it was pretty clear to everyone that we were a publishing company, not a bookstore, at that time.”
That’s how things remained, at least until they sold their publishing company to the University of Georgia Press in June of 2022. The building wasn’t part of the deal.
So is there any part of the publishing business they’re going to miss?
“All of it,” La Rosa said. “We do miss it. It was a bittersweet thing to sell our business.”
“We never felt like we had a job, because we were doing something that we love doing,” Williams said.
To an extent, they still are.
The University of Georgia Press maintains the NewSouth Books imprint, and La Rosa said she and Williams still recommend literary projects to them.
Williams said that he’s still editing projects. Since last year, he has sent around a dozen books to press that were in the works before the publishing business sold.
“And we have a few more,” Williams said.
“We might retire when we’re 100,” La Rosa said.
Montgomery Advertiser reporter Shannon Heupel covers things to do in the River Region. Contact him at sheupel@gannett.com.
This article originally appeared on Montgomery Advertiser: NewSouth enters new phase as a true community bookstore in Montgomery
