NewSouth, Inc., is an Alabama-based company co-owned by partners Randall Williams and Suzanne La Rosa. The business is a publisher, printer, and bookseller. NewSouth’s roots go back to 1984, when Randall Williams proposed to a few other writers a concept for a cooperative that would be called the Black Belt Communications Group. In 1986, BBCG came into being as a publisher of magazines, newspapers, and newsletters. In 1989, BBCG, Inc., began publishing books under the Black Belt Press imprint. By 1996, Black Belt Press was the state’s leading independent publisher of Southern fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and folklore. That year a group of investors joined Randall in an expansion which included the acquisition of the Elliott & Clark and Starrhill Press imprints from the Washington, D.C.-based Elliott & Clark Publishing. As a part of the expansion, Williams’s BBCG, Inc., went into dormancy and its Black Belt Press assets were rolled into a new company, Black Belt Publishing, LLC. The acquisition failed financially, but Black Belt Press held on and continued to publish award-winning books. In 1998, Williams recruited publishing veteran Suzanne La Rosa, who joined Black Belt as publisher. In 2000, following two years of turnaround success and increased sales, Williams and La Rosa were ousted in a disagreement with another investor. They then reactivated BBCG, Inc., changed its name to NewSouth, and in April 2000 resumed publishing award-winning regional books of national interest. As of mid-2002, the company had about 70 titles in print, and growing.

NewSouth’s world headquarters are in historic downtown Montgomery, in a 1960s-era building formerly known as the Montgomery Shoe Factory, a shoe-repair business. We changed the sign on the front to Montgomery Book Factory, kept the boot on top of the two-story building, and installed a bookstore on the first floor.