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Understood about African Voices. Crowdfunding is an interest animal to approach. I had a cousin call me yesterday. He said that he told another cousin about my project (I'm not very close with this side of the family). Now, what I'm about to say is a generalization, but it is definitely one that can be measured with real stats based on my two Kickstarter campaigns; Black people don't understand crowdfunding. In the same breath I would also say, that this dialogue (about Facebook) the majority of Black folks are not interested in because they don't understand the value of information, they don't understand ad revenue, and they don't understand monetizing websites or how websites earn money. This cousin told my other cousin that I was looking for a handout. I was speechless, but then I realized he was ignorant. The majority of my Facebook "friends" are completely clueless about how crowdfunding works. This is verifiable in the people who pledged on my first failed Kickstarter and on this current Kickstarter. It can also be seen in the type of people who pledge their support to other campaigns. The only time it seems that Blacks support a Kickstarter or project is when there is a big name attached to it. The same can be said about any form of media. I don't know if it is for us to focus our energy on Facebook as much as it is for us to focus our energy on explaining to Blacks that they need to begin visiting at least 5 websites a day in their daily web travels. Then we have to focus on having engaging content to keep them coming back. This is a distracted society we are in. They write and think in "Digital Chunks" and always with a form of communication at the ready. Facebook is a simple and easy distraction with multiple streams of information which is why it is engaging people. Our websites literally have to supply the same sort of potential for engagement. Something people can log in and look at pictures, post a comment or read information. It's becoming harder to get click throughs because people are used to scrolling now. This is why Flipboard technology is becoming more popular as well. A swipe of the fingers and new content is exposed. I agree that authors don't need Facebook, but author's are not earning any money from books which means that they aren't even interested in doing blogs and writing about other things. This is one of the reasons I remained amazed at my lack of success (although I am not seriously promoting my work). If a person discovers my books, they discover my site. I have over a 100 categories on this site with about 90% of the content written by me. The content is all over the place, but gives a solid example of my writing and I know for a fact that I'm a good writer. That's not to brag or gloat, but I've read a lot and still do, and naturally I look at the books and always say to myself, I just don't understand why people haven't at least stumbled across my stuff. I guess this goes back to our original topic of whether Facebook helps. It doesn't. While it has allowed me to engage with other people, my page saw little interaction even with over 300 visitors. Those 300+ visitors equaled 2 books sold, both downloads. Last year a local Black bookstore got me to actually print books. They even set up one book signing. It went well, but all of the women were distracted throughout the event with their phones and they were tired from work. It felt forced and many of them hadn't finished the book at all. This is the world we live in. A distracted world that relies on simple access to entertainment. Thoughtless interaction. This is not the fault of Facebook, it is the continued lack of understanding by us. I'm still not restarting my Facebook page, but honestly until I make a real concerted effort to engage readers, I honestly don't know what to do beyond what we are doing right now. Oh, on Facebook all of our posts would be too long and people would stop reading.

One day I left home and it took me ten years to get back. No, I did not get lost. What happened was even worse. I was arrested, convicted and sentenced to prison for a crime I did not commit. Even though there were five people, including a prominent, black lawyer who could vouch for my whereabouts at the time of the robbery, it did not matter. I was black, so I was guilty. This is not a new occurrence and it is now a part of an even wider conspiracy to lock up black males. Last year, a well-known judge in Pennsylvania was convicted in the so-called "Cash 4 Kids" program where judges would send black youth to prison in exchange for money. It did not matter if they were guilty of any crime. And this particular judge was not the only one caught up in this scheme. The private prison industry is a booming business and what they need in order to make their investment in building prisons profitable is to fill those prison with inmates. Judges eagerly joined in this conspiracy and sent countless, young, black males into these dungeons. What may be unknown to most of the public is that corporations such as Victoria's Secret, Hewlitt-Packard, Texas Instruments, and many more have established plants inside of prisons and they are only concerned about fattening their bottom line which means the prisons are strapped with the obligation to keep these plants filled with workers.The prisons, in turn, reached out to Judges to do the dirty work of filling the beds. Millions of dollars were made by individual judges who sent black youth to prison is staggering numbers. At present, thousands of cases are being reviewed to see if the judges involved were part of the Cash 4 Kids programs. There is a very real danger to black males. One in every four black males born in this country will eventually go to prison, and there is a government conspiracy to put them there. Read the frightening new book, WHEN I SAY JUMP, which is a novel about this judicial travesty. WHEN I SAY JUMP is about a black, female lawyer who stumbles upon this conspiracy and her efforts to expose it at the threat of both her sanity and physical welfare. READ IT NOW. The book may be fiction, but the threat is real! Mothers, do you know where your sons are? http://amzn.to/whenisay

Great discussion. Right along the lines of what Amiri Baraka proclaimed a long time ago in regard to the GDP of Black folks and the lack of power we have with such a huge GDP. I actually had my students when I was teaching analyze it and write essays about this problem. These were high school students. If we don't have teachers teaching students how to think like this, then the wheel keeps rolling. Check out this essay: http://www.cbpublish.com/redefining-the-labyrinth-track-3/ and this one: http://www.cbpublish.com/redefining-the-labyrinth-track-13/

Yes traditional houses did assume the responsibility, but for writer's who didn't fit into a certain genre traditional houses did a very poor job of publishing "different" books and even then Black author's had to assume the risk of book tours and setting up their own events. Amazon is definitely gangsta. Nike is gangsta, Facebook is gangsta, but gangstas only exist because we allow them to exist. Which goes back to all of our original discussions. There should be more people on this thread discussing how to remove the power from Amazon. If Mahogony is a solid distribution network, I should be able to sign up for an affiliate program of some type. I could then add those links right under or in place of the Amazon Ads on my own site. If they don't have that option, then it becomes tougher to be seen. We have enough young coders who could develop an affiliate program for them so the next question is, do they have one? As I was writing this, I went back up to click on the Mahogany link and discovered that they do have a program. I signed up and I am awaiting approval to carry the ads on CB Publishing. This is the power of sharing information and it allows for us to move away from working for the Gangstas. Honestly, Troy, maybe your time should be spent developing an advertising program for authors. A program that operates like Google Adsense. I know this is a large project, but hell you pulled together Huria. Huria already has the search element, although not enough people have written articles about it. I did. If when writers and website owners visited Huria and could sign up for Huria Ads, you now have the information needed to sell big marketers on creating that same profit sharing that has made Amazon, Google and Yahoo, what they are. Someone has to become the media mogul for Blacks. There isn't one. I can't think of one Adshare program generated by a Black company. As of right now, Amazon has simplified the method of publishing and creating content. In the article it talked about how they are looking to literally control the publishing of content as well as selling the content. I can't blame them. That's business, but until someone can offer a different product and get people to buy into it, the conglomerates will roll. It's like I keep saying about sneakers. When I made my first running shoe I called local mom and pop stores and asked them to carry the shoes. They ignored and basically didn't give me the time of day. You know why? Nike will not allow them to give any shelf space to a competitor. While they can't prevent a store from carrying Adidas or New Balance, if they perceive that the store is carrying too many brands, they will pull their accounts. Nike tends to be the bread and butter for most stores because people have been so thoroughly convinced that Nike is the greatest shoe company on the planet that the non runners (insert non-readers) who are needed to keep a store afloat will not buy any other brands, until after they realize Nike makes their feet hurt. By then the small companies have left the idea of getting into a store alone. We resort to building stores on Amazon since the buyers are there already and are looking for the "best" deal. It's a difficult thing to approach, but discussion creates ideas. Maybe we are working towards a real answer.