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INSPIRATION . . . Inspiration to Better Health My Inspiration: Allyson Felix It amazes me when I watch her run and sometimes I think back to the time when Flo Jo was the champion and this young lady was only about three (3) years old at the time! And, she wasn’t even born when, in 1985 the East German relay team set a record that she and her teammates broke in 2012. In fact, Allyson was born about a month later. IMO, she doesn’t even look like she would be a sprinter! And then when I was reading her biography, I saw this statement, LOL: I don't have a sprinter's body. Allyson Felix Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/authors/allyson_felix There is something about Allyson Felix that really inspires me to want to do better for myself. Running has never been my sport, but it still ranks pretty high in my quest to physical fitness. However, due to my past job injury, I may have to seek other ways to be physically fit such as swimming. Nevertheless, track events give me the motivation. In fact, I have many other favorites in this sport such as Carmelita Jeter and Pocket Rocket (ie. Shelley Ann Frazier-Pryce) from Jamaica and more. IMO, this is the true Beauty Pageant. And for today, Ms. Felix is ‘Doves’ Beauty of the Day’! There are many videos of her go into a full sprint, but a 2007 video would be one of my favorites. WOW—Powerful! What Spirit! Mind Blowing! She is so fast that the slow-motion playback really captures her power. So, at the 6:14 minute mark in this video, would be at the point to watch Felix go full throttle. ___________________________________________________ Try to think of working out and healthy eating as a lifestyle. Rather than go on a diet or try a crazy exercise routine, try making them something ou do every day. Allyson Felix Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/authors/allyson_felix 6:14 minute point-- SLOW MOTION https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1AKeinJ4qU

@Mel Hopkins You know your suggestions for the missing information is really important. I'm thinking about writing an article for the minimum set of information an author should provide when sharing information about their book with booksellers, readers, reviewers, news sources, etc. From personal experience if I have to take extra steps to find the required missing information, if there is not other compelling reason for me to do it, I simply won't. The hashtags you provided could also be described a keywords. Ernest provided the ISBN13, which is perhaps the single most important piece of information to me. There is a hot topic in publishing surrounding all of the information regarding a book and it is called metadata; it sounds more technical that need be, so I suspect authors don't think about it very much. This has always been important to me, and has become increasingly important since AALBC is now database driven. I spend a lot of time cleaning up bad or supplementing missing metadata for a book. Here is an example. A publisher uploads a book's, title, series name and series number into the title field when uploading information to Amazon or some other database, This information should be uploaded the 3 fields provided for this information. Not only does this make the book title wrong, it looks sloppy. When I retrieve this information from Amazon I have to manually parse it out and I only do this for paid clients. Amazon does not care, they just take what the author uploads. Another common problem I see on Amazon's site is ISBN13 in the ISBN10 fields. This matter to me because I have a process that pulls this information from Amazon (sadly many author give exclusive rights to sell their books Amazon, so it is the only place the information is available). I so when I pull the ISBN10 but it is actually an ISBN13 -- it srews up the book's record in my database. More importantly is many authors don't make proper use of the BISAC codes. This is a list of almost 5,000 categories in which a book is associated. I just added a new feature to the website that will list books by these categories, which make it so much easier for readers to discover the books they are interested it (this also help search engines as well) For example Mel Sleeping with a D-Man: An Urban Fantasy Novel BISAC category is "Fiction / Romance / Fantasy" and "Fiction / Science Fiction / General." Now visitors to the website can discover all of the books written by Black writers which fall into these categories -- no other site is doing this! If a customer is a paying client I'll apply the BISAC codes that are appropriate for the title -- not other sites does this either 😉 I have 9,300 more books for which these codes need to be applied. I will then update my top 10 lists to be based upon these codes -- making my life so much easier, while improving the discoverability of books 🙂 Metadata matters!

You just did and it was fabulous! All that’s missing are the tags #memoirs #biographies #baseball! And how we can buy it. Thank you for sharing!

Hello Troy, Forgive me for responding so late. Thank you for your applaud. I use affiliate codes whenever possible in posts and on my website where I sell my books, blog, and post my simplydilsa podcasts. I'm so excited about The Sperling Chronicles, my trilogy about deceit, love, and fear, that I have decided to turn it into a television series. I will be checking out AALBC more often for tips.

The current government got rid of the minimum corporate tax. Gave a massive tax cut to the wealthy and to fill the gap. is once again raiding Social Security. Which is paid by workers and business. They may be elected by the people but they are working for the corporations.

Dilsa I most applaud you. Since because you used an affiliate code in your hyperlink to Amazon. The vast majority of authors don't do this. I used to point this out to each author who failed to do it, but got tired of doing it... Do you have a website, or is your Amazon page your primary web presence? Congrats on your completing your three book series!