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A recent post about a book on Black Unity prompted this question. Here is the setup for the question: One of the most significant changes I've made to AALBC.com is that I've designed the site so that I can send readers to any site to purchase a book. Right now, by default, I send readers to Abe Books, Amazon, Books-A-Million, BarensandNoble.com, and Indiebound (a consortium of independent booksellers). I even provide a link to one's local library. I also direct readers other Black owned booksellers; right now, for example, MahoganyBooks is running a sale on Kimberla Lawson Roby's new book, Sin of a Woman. For some publishers, I send readers to the publisher's website. Check out any of "Buy" links for the books published by Black Classic Press, or Just Us Books. Of course, it should be obvious by now that I can also sell books directly. Well, the way it would work is that I would collect payment and have the book shipped directly from the distributor. The problem is that people only buy from Amazon. Sure, some people buy from B&N link but the numbers of B&N sales are so small--I don't even factor those sales into my bestsellers list. and no one by from the other retailers I link to...not a single person ever. Now if you thnk this is only because Amazon has the best prices--think again. Amazon does not aways offer best prices (always price shop). I've offered a popular book for sale directly, that was autographed and priced LOWER than Amazon. Amazon did not have autographed copied and I beat them on price., but still people still bought the books from Amazon! This was before Amazon offered their Prime service, so getting sales away from Amazon is today is exceedingly difficult. The result is that Black owned booksellers, both online and in physical world must fight against Amazon's dominance. I'm afraid we are losing the battle. But it is not a battle we can wage alone. Readers must join us in the fight. I argue it is a fight we must wage because what we have gained in terms of low prices and same day shipping does not make up for what we will lose. Keep in mind, there is also no guarantee that Amazon will continue selling books at a loss once all of their competition has been eliminated or marginalized into obscurity. What is the benefit of an Indie bookseller? The personalized service, curated selection, and passion for books offered by independent booksellers simply can‘t be replicated by an algorithm. Someone who knows you, understands your culture, maybe even your financial position is not available at Amazon.com. I've actually sold books to people on credit--told to send me the money when they got it, because I knew the book I was giving them was something they needed. I took their word they would pay me. Of course, I've given away countless number books too--thought I probably should be selling more of these. I visit books store all over the country. As a bookseller, I'm always amazed to discover a writer or book I was previously unfamiliar with. These books are simply undiscoverable on Amazon, their algorithms don't work that way. Amazon is designed to extract as much money from you as possible. In business school well called that "maximizing shareholder wealth." Independent booksellers are mission driven and have a passion for what they do. Mine is celebrating Black culture. We are also keenly interested in helping you to be as entertained, enriched, and informed from the books we recommend. As a bookseller, my biggest joy is not how much money I make off the reader, but hearing from them how much they enjoyed a book I turned them on to. Readers typically value this service, but I don't they truly appreciate how close we are to losing it Today we have far fewer bookstores and websites than we did 10 years ago. Many of the ones that remain are struggling. Even AALBC.com is in a constant state of fighting for survival. As a result, my ability to sell books and maintain this website is greatly constrained. Obviously, the services provided by indie booksellers don‘t come without a cost. But unlike Amazon, we are not bolstered by Wall Street investors who don't mind us selling books at a loss to gain market share. We must actually generate a profit from the sale of books, collect sales taxes, and do all the other thing you'd expect business to do. It is not unrealistic to envision a time, in the near future, that Amazon will be the only place to buy a book written by a Black person. We already know B&N shelves are not overflowing with books written by Black writers. Many people simply do live near a Black bookstore (there are less than 80 Black owned bookstores in the US). If Amazon owns Black book sales we will not be exposed to the best books; We'll be exposed to the books that make the most money for Amazon. Perhaps it will be the books that Amazon published and are promoting, or maybe it is the book with the largest marking budget. If we allow Amazon to be the only place we can buy a Black book, we will be severely underserved, if not harmed culturally. We simply can not allow a fantastically wealthy and powerful corporation, which is solely motived by money, to control our stories, our history, our very culture. Question: If you truly value the services provided by indie booksellers Are you willing to support us by paying the full retail price, traveling to our stores, or waiting a few days it to have it delivered?

I always try to buy directly from authors or independent book sellers. Additionally, I think part of the problem is black authors ONLY selling their books through Amazon or B&N (all the big names) with no options to sell directly through their website with the monies going directly to their bank account, no one taking a cut. Not only do authors need to sell through their websites, but readers need to buy directly from authors and independent black book sellers. If authors don't stop going to Amazon to sell their books, readers won't either. There needs to be this sort of simultaneous action that allows for the change to happen. Readers and authors are far too trusting when it comes to Amazon, which, like you pointed out, doesn't always give the best price for books.

Black-owned airline (is it in Africa?), please share the link here too! If you organize it Mel, I'll be happy to promote it and to go in with you 50-50% We can discuss the details it that sound interesting to you. I'm sure you have as many good ideas as I do

This is exactly what I noticed too - as soon as I syndicated my blog posts to facebook - wordpress sent me a message and said my page views were booming, more than the whole time I've had the website.. Speaking of which, because of your advice, I do everything from my website now ...I even use the portfolio feature for my consulting business... I really think that you should host a webinar (paid or introductory) that includes your social media findings and how advantageous it is to have a personal website for community news and to extend our personal brand.. I rarely "share" articles - I now press and discuss them on my website, along with the books I read. This way it strengthens my brand; promotes other black media (getting ready to promote an amsterdam news article that did a feature on a black-owned airline) And I hope retains the power of our voice in media. You are the champion of this cause and I support you!

Mel I too noticed that $10 coupon today, but I could not take advantage of it either, by the time I sorted things out it never returned. I agree with you on the level of personal page engagement versus the business side. I noticed that many of my friends using Facebook just to share photos get much more engagement that I do on my business page--and I have well over 20K fans on my business page. Facebook has locked down organic reach on the business side. Google has made it much easier to track engagement from other sites like Facebook with their Tag Manager service. I'm kicking myself for not implementing this years ago, because it is so my better that using the old Google Analytics code. but that is a subject for another post. I don;t honestly believe that Facebook was ever the advertising juggernaut the claimed to be. Now I know they had a lot of revenue, but it is hard to tell, beyond my own site, how effective they were for brands relative to other advertising platforms. I never heard of txt.fyi before now cute That was a crazy story and speaks to the shiestiness of Facebook--image serving ads to dead pages.

Hey @harry brown , I just read an excerpt from Black Unity: The Total Solution to Financial Independence and Happiness by Terrance Amen, which came out back in December of 2011. I just read the excerpt. The idea is that Black folks would form an organization in which we would pool our resources, provide our own education, use our own services and keep the money within our own community. Our spending power is more than many nations and if we simply choose to wield it in an organized fashion we would all be much better off. Of course, this sounds great in theory but would be virtually impossible in practice. Harry I'm not sure if you've noticed but the handful of folks who post here regularly can have profound disagreements on a wide variety of topics. We've willing to talk about and understand the nature of our differences (at least I think we are) but most people are not nearly so open. We also have the another problem; the hope for the American Dream, which often means a nice corporate gig, a home in a nice white neighborhood replete with white-run schools and business, and for some a nice white spouse. This lifestyle choice is perfectly rational, in an American context. White neighborhoods are provided with better services and the families in them enjoy better outcomes; less crime, better schools, higher property values, nicer stores, better parks, etc, etc. It would be entirely unrealistic to expect large nubers of families to give up a relatively comfortable life to struggle with the masses. People tend to do what they feel is in their best interest. The tremendous buying power of Black folks largely belongs to people who are fairly secure, and not likely to direct resources and support. People will support their local Church, maybe a Greek letter organization, or some other social club, but supporting some unformed organization with the grandiose goal of unifying all Black people globally--forget about it... I, for example, could not have run AALBC.com full time before reaching middle age. I needed money, I wanted to travel, raise a family and have a comfortable life. I could not have done that with the money I earn from AALBC.com. A significant part of the reason is a lack of support from Black folk. I have trouble getting folks to pay full retail price for a book when buying it directly from AALBC.com--instead, they choose to support the white-owned Amazon. Again I understand the reasoning. Why pay full price from me, when Amazon will sell them the book for 40% off and get it to you the next day (same day in NYC) with free shipping? That is a rational decision, right? Maybe. I say maybe because AALBC provides services that Amazon does not. As more people support Amazon rather than an AALBC.com, AALBC.com growth is constrained. The upgrade which will take two years could have been done 5 years ago in less that 3 months with more resources. This is exactly why we have fewer book sites today than we had 10 years ago and all the ones still active struggle. I envied some of those sites that no longer exist because they were doing great things, but readers will never enjoy those sites because they are gone now and were never able to realize their full potential. Now I can explain to people that Amazon is supported by Wall Street investors who gives them money to grow. This allows Amazon to sell books at a loss, kill competition, and dominate a market. This is uninteresting-they just want cheap books. Meanwhile, I have to actually cover my expenses--no one is just giving me money to AALBC.com grow (well a few people are but not nearly enough). That is just one example. Now extend this across the entire landscape of products and services, and you begin to see how challenging a proposition it would be to get a critical mass of Black folks to support Black business.

Pioneer, and Troy: Obama, your favorite scapegoat, motivated and inspired about 20 million black men to march to the polls and vote for him for president and the result he got was that he won. Yet you continue to harp on all that he didn't do for black folks, in spite of the fact that he did do some things that were beneficial to them.This is also a man who inspired and endeared himself to and lifted the morale of millions of disillusioned black women because he married and cherished a sista and elevated her to the highest female position in the land, enabling her to be a great role model for black females. Yet, you say he did nothing for black women. i am not a rabid fan of the Obamas but what i said about them is "indisputable". So if you don't want Farrakhan put in perspective then stfu about Obama when trying to aggrandize your hero. I previously said that "Farrakhan's accomplishments obviously don't extend beyond the boundaries of his ministry. And i stand by that.

@CDBurns, it looks like I missed this comment. That is a good way to measure the impact of social media; as a function of the fans and followers you've earned versus traffic. For a noncelebrity, the number of your fans/followers is a function of the effort you put into increasing them it whether it is through paid or active engagement on the platform. The size of your fan base is a good proxy for your engagement (paid and organic) on social media. Best Metric for Evaluating Social Media Traffic If your goal is to acquire traffic from social platforms then what better metric is there? I wish I had my data. Google Analytics free information going back that far is just a rough estimate and social media platforms do not provide the number of fans and followers over time at least not going back as far as I need. Of course, the platforms themselves have the data and benefit greatly from it...we, in turn, are at a disadvantage flying blind. Results of Social Media Boycott After 3.5 Months Three and a half months into my planned 6-month boycott, I've learned a lot. An increasing number of people use social media as their primary web presence--even if they have their own website. This means: Social media is becoming the only way to reach people for whom you don't have contact information. People who share photos and videos of you often only share this information in social media. To show appreciation requires social media engagement. When I research an author, bookstore, or related business, social media is the only often the only place where information is available. Often I have to resort to social media, because the website is inadequate as the site's information stale or missing altogether. People often reach out to me on social media rather than through my website or email. Unless they are highly motivated people use the tools that are most convenient to themselves, which is often social media. Social Media Use Can't Reasonably be Avoided Basically, I can't effectively run AALBC.com without logging onto a social media platform for the reasons mention above. But these platforms are largely limited to Facebook and Twitter. Today Twitter and Facebook make up 93% of all of my social media traffic (13% and 80% respectively). Five years ago it was 67% (10% for Twitter and 57% for Facebook). Again this growth in share of social media traffic occurred during a period when I've largely abandoned use of these platforms. Twitter visitors are more engaged with AALBC.com than Facebook visitors. Twitter users look at more pages and stay on the website longer. But again, Facebook drives much more traffic. Albeit the amount of traffic has not been proportional to the growth in Fan and followers over time. Facebook and Twitter Dominate, No Use for Snapchat and Instagram I have discovered no reason for me to use social media platforms like Instagram or Snapshat, despite the fact that these platforms are wildly successful and are increasingly dominating a higher percentage of Internet activity of handheld users. Globally handheld devices have already surpassed desktop devices in terms of the number of users, which is why Google has penalized non-mobile optimized websites. Almost 46% of my traffic, in 2017, came from handheld or tablet devices. Only 5 years ago it was less than 16%. If someone is aware of a way for me to effectively utilize Snapchat or Instagram to drive traffic to AALBC.com without spending a ton of money or time I'm all ears. Right now Facebook appears to be the best game in town for driving traffic to AALBC.com. I also have zero interest in using those platforms which poses another challenge. Traffic is Much Higher, Growth Due Largely to Traffic from Search Engines Resulting from Website Upgrade Google Analytics has defined 26 other social media sites that have driven traffic to AALBC.com. rounding out the top 10 are Pinterest, Google+, Goodreads, YouTube, Linkedin, Instagram, Disqus, and Reddit. Of these only Pinterest, Google+, and Goodreads have shown and growth in the past year; the others are have suffered a sharp decline. I can not explain the growth of Pinterest, Google+, and Goodreads this year. I have accounts on all these platforms, but I simply do not use them very much, nor I I plan to. Today social media traffic is higher than it was 5 years ago, but this is because of social media is a smaller piece of a much larger pie. Pages views are up over 200% compared to 5 years ago. This is largely due to the website's redesign. Of the top 5 most frequently visited web pages 4 did not exist 5 years ago. These 4 pages were only possible because of the website's new database. Organic Search (someone visiting the site by clicking a link on a search result) is 71.69%% of AALBC.com traffic year to date 2017, Social media is 4.51% For the same period in 2016 Organic Search and was 64.63% and social media traffic was 8.62% What am I Gonna Do? I'll update this shortly...