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I am the owner of an African American bookstore in Sacramento, CA, called underground books. We recently hosted our fourth annual Sacramento Black Book Fair and had the pleasure of meeting Troy Johnson when he spoke at the event. The book fair features prominent African American authors and panel discussions on topics such as "Black Books Matter: The Truth of Our Many Selves," which was also our theme this year. Something we hear frequently from the attendees is how important having a Black Book Store in the community is. While it is a struggle to keep our business afloat at times, we feel that we offer a personalized service to our customers that can't be found elsewhere. We are constantly trying to add services that will improve both our bottom line and the customer experience. Walking into our bookstore and seeing thousands of books by our people and about our history and culture is such and important experience for the people of our community - especially our children! We now sell books online and regularly have book signings, art talks, a monthly event for neighborhood children, and panel discussions related to events in our community - you can't find that at Amazon!

Hello. My name is LaKesa Cox and I am interested in a book review for my young adult/teen novel, Mulatto Girl Aggie, 13: Name on the Ledger. The ISBN13 number is 978-1-61296-853-7. The publication date: April 12, 2017. Synopsis: What happens when The Wizard of Oz meets 12 Years a Slave? You get Mulatto Girl Aggie, 13: Name on the Ledger. This story takes you into the life of a precocious, spoiled and bratty 12-year-old named Aggie Lucas. Aggie is your typical 7th grader who loves her cell phone, social media and designer sneakers. Eager to celebrate her 13th birthday, Aggie is disappointed when her parents break their promise to her by not giving her the gift she really wanted. Mad at the world, Aggie goes to school and is sent to detention hall for disrespecting her teacher. Aggie accidentally falls and bumps her head, then wakes up in a dream where she is transported back to the year 1816 as a slave on a plantation in Goochland, Virginia. As a slave, Aggie is forced to adapt but not before learning some valuable and very harsh lessons in life. Thank you. LaKesa Cox

http://www.npr.org/sections/therecord/2017/06/27/534409838/geri-allen-pianist-composer-and-educator-dies-at-60

Oh my... Sorry to read that... LOL Excellent perspective, because sex is definitely a head game... I can say, I've never had sex with an ignorant man in my life... If you "stupid" that's a huge-a turn off for me. We can't even be friends let alone engage in sex. It's frustrating to have awful sex.. a huge let down... so wanting to punch someone in the face is for wasting my time...

I would venture to say that when it comes to a man, sex can be fulfilling with any woman under any circumstances because he's going get his "cookies" no matter what. No one can force him into sex and when an opportunity presents itself, he can take it or leave it and he presumably wouldn't take it if he found a woman repulsive. With a woman, finding a man with whom you are sexually compatible ain't that easy. If you're lucky enough to find someone with whom you share a mutual attraction and who is the complete package, - well-endowed, good skills and staying power, affectionate and romantic, and who appeals to you above and beyond his bedroom skills, then who needs the alternative of auditioning an ongoing parade of men to prove that "variety" rather than "fulfillment" is the spice of life? And, yes, my personal preference would be the same way every time, face-to-face positions with no doggie-style or anal penetration. If marriage/commitment is not your goal then I'd say that friends with benefits and maintenance sex is the way to go if you find a good "bootie-call" partner. Recreational sex with multiple persons is not my cup of tea. I'd rather have an intellectual orgy in the company of smart, interesting, personable people. I admit to being rather conservative and if i were a young woman out there in the singles scene in the year 2017, my thinking might be different.

Is this possible to make love any other way? do you mean sexual intercourse using different holes -mouth, anus, vagina? Or meaning a variety of people i.e. menage a trois? BDSM ? same-sex? If you are referring to sexual intercourse - do you mean same wo/man in both situations or different man for the first and same man for the latter or combination for both... If you're referring to opposite sex - sexual intercourse .. then Same/different man fabulous sex but the same every time is a yes for my lifetime. I've once had sex with a man and our first time it was freakin' amazing. I mean, so mind-blowing I had to write a blog post about how good we were together... and then the next few times it was different but never measured up to our first time together. A lifetime can be too long to have "different " sexual intercourse that makes me want to punch someone in the face

I always do. I purchase books once a month from a black owned bookstore.

Albert “Prodigy” Johnson (November 2, 1974 – June 20, 2017) partners with Akashic Books to create the Infamous Books Imprint. Their first release, in July of 2013, was the novella H.N.I.C., a story of loyalty, vengeance, and greed which was also written by Johnson. Prodigy first book was the critically acclaimed autobiography My Infamous Life which was published in 2011. Infamous also published the works of JaQuavis Coleman, Mazaradi Fox, Miasha, Shannon Holmes, and others I meet "The Infamous Don P" in this context. He was a very chill, down to earth Brother. I liked him. I learned he had sickle cell the first time I saw him at a local library, but I never really considered how serious the condition really is.. I know the man died over a week ago, but I only learned of this a few hours ago.

Mother Rose! Thanks so much for sharing your thoughts here. Underground Books sets the standard as one of the finest indie bookstores in the country. I just added your store's website to my database of bookseller websites: https://aalbc.com/booksites/index.php?store_name=Underground Books Does you website have its own domain? Something undegrounboostore.com. If so please provide it, I used http://underground-books9.mybigcommerce.com/

Yes, of course I can show you. As I build out the facility to order books I'll create a video to demonstrate the tag manager. The problem with Tag Manager, is that it is too technical for the average person to use. The geniuses at Google think it is simple, but the average person can't make heads or tails out of it. It is worth mentioning but it should probably be a standalone session. I'll work through this as I build out my ordering system. But anyone can do it as long as they have a google account.

Back in March of 2011 I wrote a article attempting to raise awareness about the struggles Black Book Websites. This was in direct reaction to the unexpected and total beat down Google just gave us. as I described in this forum. I did not mention the abrupt and dramatic drop in AALBC.com's traffic from Google search because I did not yet understand that it was not my fault, and I was ashamed of my perceived failure. Again, I'd brought into the assumption that if you fail at SEO (search engine optimization) or SMM (social media Marketing) that the problem was with you. I understand today that this is not true and that excellent businesses are penalized by Google simply because they are Google's competition (this is essence of the $2.7B fine the EU levied against Google). The article, Black Book Websites Need Love Too argues about the importance of Black book websites. For over 15 years, I've maintained and shared list of other Black book websites I was a very labor intensive to publish the information because I had to look up the new information, resort the information on the webpage; it took a few hours. As a result, months would go by between updates. I was shocked when I noticed during the update I performed in March 2011 that 20% of the websites had gone away! I wrote; "... I feel it is time to emphasize why websites dedicated to Black books are just as important as physical stores. If these websites are taken for granted they too will disappear, and we will have lost another important platform for celebrating and showcasing books by and about people of African descent." The websites pictured in the graphic above were some of the most prominent Black book websites. Unfortunately my words did not seem to have much of impact. By October of 2015 I was prompted to post an article on this discussion forum, Black Book Websites Going, Going.... (Note: By 2015 I know Google subordinated my discussion forum posts to Blog posts in search engine ranking, but I wanted to leverage the power of my community. I was really very interested in working on removing our collective dependency on Google. Today, sadly, I know that goal was unrealistic, but I still have not given up--hence articles like this one to raise awareness). I updated the graphic from 4 years earlier and greyed out the all of the sites that had shut down. Fully 25% of the websites I'd been tracking had shut down including the majority of the most prominent ones I identifies 4 years earlier. Exasperated I wrote, "...I feel like I'm the only nut running around complaining. Turning into an old curmudgeon, bitching about the way things used to be... Of course I appreciate that I run one of these websites so I'm far more sensitive to this issue than most. But there are still readers out there right? Don't they miss these websites? I know I do." Today, because of the AALBC.com's upgrade, my list list of Black book websites is stored in a database and updates can actually be performed automatically, saving me hours of effort, and publishing the information in virtually realtime. I execute the process manually to check the output and look for bugs. When I ran the update yesterday (6/27/2017) I noticed that the list of sites was starting to grow thin because too many were failing to meet my minimal criteria for inclusion, which was to have an Alexa rank. Alexa (owned by Amazon), is an imperfect way to rank website. I say imperfect because unless you volunteer to give them your traffic data they can only estimate your site's traffic (I do not give them my traffic stats). I used Alexa long before Amazon purchased them to essentially capture the site that were essentially working hard enough to get the minimal amount of traffic to earn an Alexa ranking. I did not want to indiscriminately share every website the Alexa ranking also gave me an easy way to rank the websites. Previously (before 6/27/17) sites without an Alexa rank were excluded from my list. Because the list was starting to get short and because the additional exposure and link from AALBC.com might might these sites. I decided to remove the Alexa ranking restriction which resulting in the additional of more than 20 new sites to the webpage. SItes without an Alexa rank are assigned a rank of 30,000,000 (I think Alexa ranks on the top 30 million websites). I quickly discovered more than half of these newly added sites were no longer active! As far as I'm concerned we are in a crisis situation as far as our representation on the web. Now I know some people, new to the web, might say this can't be true look at the impact of "Black Twitter." If you know how to work social media you can bring attention to yourself. People who believe this have no clue what we've lost. If they believe Facebook pages are a better alternative to what had we've ve lost more culturally than I can explain... One day I hope to be able to write about how Black book websites and physical stores are thriving not just through the support from our community by through the support of those outside the community interested in learning and even supporting our culture. Check out the websites on my list, and consider placing an order from them. Sure you may need to pay a bit more, or wait a little longer to get the product than you would if you purchased it via Amazon, but you'll be making an investment in a businesses that support you, your culture and community. AALBC.com currently sells books through affiliate relationships; selling books whose orders are fulfilled by of all the major retailers, independents, and even directly through publishers and authors. AALBC.com generates commissions through most of these sales. So if you've discovered a book you think you like here please purchase it through our site. Authors, you must buy your books from indie booksellers (read this article). The more you support us the more we can (and would want) to support you. That's a no brainer right? In 2017 Black book website need lover more than ever.