CDBurns

One again, my problem with the whole thing is that each of the most powerful men in the world you mentioned Clinton and Kennedy (and insert any other people you'd like into this equation) all were outed during their behavior (Kennedy was killed, Clinton was impeached... I'm not saying that their predatory sexual behavior is what did them in, but dang they were done in. Just like Oliver North and his lies in the 80s and any other person who did things so evil that the world knew about it). Are you telling me Bill Cosby is more powerful than all of the gangsters, presidents and killers and was able to hide his behavior for all of these years? Did some of these instances come up? Yes. Was he able to pay it away? Yes, but dang he was able to pay away over 25 women and now all of a sudden everyone is coming forward? As I said, logically that is beyond my comprehension that any Black man has the ability to be so evil and deviant and hide it for 40 years. To me this is one of the most amazing things ever which is why I just can't see it. I said above that I would feel this way about any Black man accused of these things at such a rate. It just so happens that this dude would have to be the most incredible actor and the most powerful man in the world. I don't think you can name me another man who committed such heinous crimes and got away with it for 40 years. Maybe Jack the Ripper, but this type of evil is impossible to keep quiet especially when a man has so much to lose during the height of his fame. This is not about conspiracy, but the reality that I've never seen any Black man get away with anything for that long. I just can't see it, but there is a first time for everything. Even OJ eventually went to jail so maybe in time we will see Cosby go to jail, but until then I don't buy it.

I've really avoided this whole convo because in my mind, being from the South and knowing what happened to Black men touching white women, there is no way in the entire hell that this dude did that all of that, all that damn time and it didn't gain any traction in a court of law and no stories gained steam. Cosby was not some untouchable superstar, he was doing Fat Albert and I Spy. He did Uptown with Poitier and then went through the entire 80s raping women while doing the Cosby Show and Ghost Dad? But he didn't touch any of the women on his show, or the girls and ladies on a Different World, and then the second Cosby Show on CBS? Then he went to Spelman on various occasions and donated money, but didn't touch any of the girls or women at Spelman. Did he only lose control around models and white actresses? Cosby is not Gotti, and hell even Gotti got busted. I just can't see a black dude getting away with raping that many women. I don't care how many women come out, until dude goes to court or gets convicted, I'm not buying any of it. This is not because he is Bill Cosby either... I just find it extremely hard to hold a facade/lie/charade for that damn long. I also find it impossible to think that of all of those women nothing ever made it to court. Bill Cosby is either the Godfather or he has more people on payroll than the mafia. You can't hold stories of that magnitude that long without blackmail or someone trying to get paid. A parent, or someone would have come out against dude. Like I said I avoided the dialogue, but I can't help but see some strange comparisons to Michael Jackson being pulled through the muck when he bought the Beatles catalog and wouldn't sell it back to Paul McCartney. In the same since from what I understand, Cosby was attempting to buy a network again and was also making a return to television. As much as say Hip-Hop changed things, Cosby changed things in the 80s. This dude single handedly saved the Black Colleges through funding and by promoting the Black College lifestyle at a time when people were moving away from going to the HBCUs. A Different World coincided with the high enrollment at HBCUs. I mean the only destruction of a Black man of such significance was during the Civil Rights Movement. Now one could argue that Cosby is not so significant today so these women don't have anything to gain by coming forward. They are making themselves look bad and bringing a horrible memory to the public for what purpose? Why would anyone want people to know something so horrible? I get that, but for me raping 22 plus women is one hell of a mask to wear all of those years. He would have to be a true psycho and people who tend to be that violent inevitably extend that type of behavior to murder. In other words, rape, like any form of control is an underlying factor in the majority of people who move towards more heinous acts. I'm kind of rambling here, but I find it hard to believe anyone has that level of charisma and power that they can get away with such serial behavior. Not even presidents can hide deviant behavior, but Bill Cosby can and none of these strong women around him said shit? Bill and Ted Bundy have raped the same amount of women except Bill didn't kill them like Ted Bundy did. My logic just can't buy that.

We have it really good in the states don't we? This type of passion/fanaticism is common in every part of the world. You would expect that this country would encounter more situations that are similar, but I guess our country being built on the foundation of servitude and Christianity has made the people more docile and prone to inaction. I do see a time in the very near future where our media will be attacked with the same vitrol by Christian fundamentalists and survivalists types as well as enlightened young Americans who are no longer blinded by their generation influenced attachment to religion. I'm not saying that these attacks will be good or bad, just that these events are going to begin hitting closer to home.

Her story is suspect as hell.

Kung fu not Saturday morning cartoons...dang kindle

I have yet to pick up any of his books because I have always felt some kind of way about the appropriation of the culture. While a lot of hip hop was influenced by Saturday morning cartoons the idea of Asians identifying with the struggle I don't buy. Like whites, when hip hop is no longer a novelty they can return to their culture and move away. The perception of who they are is not a collective identity. Good insight and honestly I shouldn't diss the cat when my own paper chase pulled me away from literature, but I am just a bit of a hypocrite in this one.

And BOOM! I understand exactly. For the last 19 years I've placed writing on the backburner and I was just happy with having written 5 books (7 if you count the two sitting in my harddrive). What happened with me was that I was writing all of these articles for my shoe company and shoe store and I realized that even when I was losing money and failing I gave the shoe store and business all of my attention and effort. I have never given writing an honest chance at all. I was like you. I just wanted people to find the books. One person would turn into three and then into 100 and then 10,000 and then 50,000 and then... you get the picture. My problem now is that all of the information that I've collected, all of the time that I've been watching books that weren't as good as advertised selling and people making a living from writing, has finally made me place all of that knowledge from shoes into books. It does take up all of your energy, so I don't blame you for being content with birthing the book. In all honesty, I don't know how long it will take for all of this info to create momentum, but I'm digging in. I will let you know how it goes from this end. If at the end of the year we both are in the same place, at least we will know we did it our way (and cue Sinatra, lol).

Cynique, Troy is doing a good thing by asking if you understood the articles. If you get those then you are halfway there. I have written so many articles on marketing and sales for my sneaker company, that I did what Troy said he should do. I wrote a book about it. In that book in chapters 11, 12 and 13, I actually breakdown in Workshop format how to do everything that Troy and I are talking about. What I never did though was take my own advice. I know I've shared these articles before, but I'm sharing them again because it talks about how last year I realized that I was doing a disservice to my fellow artists and small biz people by not getting the One Hour To Wealth book out there in the first link and the others go into more detail. http://www.cbpublish.com/business-why-you-shouldnt-worry-about-your-likes/ http://www.cbpublish.com/thats-not-what-its-for-another-facebook-article/ http://www.cbpublish.com/business-dont-be-that-guy/ http://www.cbpublish.com/more-marketing-advice-from-a-non-guru-unafraid-to-fail/ All of these articles only scratch the surface of what I've been writing on my ARCH website. Like I said though, I never pursued the writing because I've done so well with sneakers. But last August I knew if I was going to start getting the message that Troy and I have been sharing out there I had to prove that what I wrote works. Like I've said before, I know it works because I have the sneaker biz and I haven't worked for anyone or taught since 2012, but if I'm going to prove to people that I know what I'm saying, I have to make myself a brand. I say all of this to tell you that if you have Amazon Prime you can download it for free. I'd be interested in hearing what you think about it especially since you have a book/business that you could push. Troy, I think you need to collect all of your articles and put them into print. I don't think it would be a short book, and I think that it is seriously needed. My book is both motivational and a manual, yours would be a lot more analytically based and direct to the point for writers; maybe this is what would get people to buy into it. I will admit that how we are talking back and forth has jargon, but Cynique if you are using this message board you know everything we are saying. You know what it means to aggregate data. You know what Facebook is. You know what a blog is. You know what a website is. The only thing that may be a little cloudy are the stats, but in context you know stats provide: info. I think you get it because you are too smart not to. I think you are doing what a lot of people do and that is to say it's over your head so you don't have to deal with it, lol.

You're right and thank you for respecting my gangsta, lol! I guess the biggest issue is getting others to join in the conversation. I killed off my Tumblr and Facebook fan pages and it has freed up a ton of time in my day! I think I will drop my stats in here for you to analyze. Yesterday I told you that the majority of my traffic has always been direct. After "aggregating" my pages on Facebook and removing the random locations on social media that I had (Tumblr and Fancy) and only having Twitter and Facebook my Facebook Social Media engagement increased to - 8%. I feel an article coming on. Before it didn't matter what I did, my Facebook engagement was about 1.27%. I realize that this is only one day, but if you aren't a star, which we already know, Facebook engagement is pretty pitiful on "Fan" pages. It behooves a person like me who is looking at developing my writing career to get rid of my fan page, until my personal page has 5000 visitors and I'm forced to begin a fan page because then the interaction would be better. What I did find interesting is that through statcounter I can't see what keywords are triggering visits and I'm getting 20% of my visits from Search Engines right now. This article explains why Google took away the ability to monitor keywords: http://googleblog.blogspot.ie/2011/10/making-search-more-secure.html I guess overall, we both know that we can write and write and write, but until another author joins in on this discussion, then we will be sharing info and building our knowledge, but basically standing still. That sucks.

Okay, I've been working on using my own book to implement a path to selling more books and building my brand. The book is <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1502461757/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=1502461757&linkCode=as2&tag=cbpub-20&linkId=TPEXFMTB65BAG7KW">One Hour To Wealth: Your Great Idea is Valuable...Get Up and Write It Down!</a> In this book I talk about the path I took in moving away from bankruptcy and developing my shoe company. I also talk about everything we discuss. Every day, I spend 1 Hour building my CBP business. Why I'm bringing this up is because I've been analyzing my data and trying to best figure out how to aggregate the data. Since I realized that having three different Facebook pages only contributed 1.27% to my traffic for CBP and 2.14% for ARCH and 2.17% for ARCH Online Shop, I deleted my two "Fan" pages where there wasn't much interaction taking place. I hid my family on my primary Facebook page and now I only have the one Facebook page which no longer fractures my search in regard to Facebook. I think I am going to take the time to order copies of my book and offer them signed through my website as opposed to only linking to Amazon since they aren't selling anyway. I will then begin to build affiliate links for my books. It may take a moment for me to figure this one out since it is tech intensive, but once again we are moving in a direction that is critical for the survival of independent artists and websites. What do you think?

The idea that you seem to find opposition. I don't know you, so I can't say you aren't being attacked/opposed all of the time, but I see a lot of people who feel hated on or opposed and honestly no one is hating at all. People are simply finding a way to motivate themselves. I'm saying your feeling of being opposed is motivational tool. Could it be real? Of course, but most of the time people don't really have hatred or opposition.

You know if we simply spent our time requesting affiliate links to a lot of these sites, that might be a pretty good strategy and if these people don't have affiliate programs it might be a good startup to create a tech company that supplies ads for these websites. Hmmmmm great ideas come from articles like these and discussion boards. I am surprised it took him almost 15 years to get to this point. Especially since he is one of the more "enlightened" emcees, but at least he got it together. What intrigued me the most is the discussion about Gravitas and Fat Beats handling the distribution of his vinyl and cds for that independent project. I think there is where the real gem is. Who is the independent distributor of African American books? Oh, the video for Come Here is really interesting. I was wondering why there wasn't a "real" video. To hear that the people behind Miguel didn't want Miguel associated with a conscious emcee is crazy, but it doesn't surprise me at all. I definitely see the parallel in AALBC which is why as soon as I saw it, I immediately posted it here. I guess we are still at the same interaction after reading this, how do we get people to our sites? I have some new stats for you to analyze. Yesterday, I ended up interviewing Chris Cooper and Melinda Emerson on Paul C. Brunson's Mentor Monday Spreecast. I saw a significant increase in traffic on my website from this. I had an increase in my twitter followers and my site which usually has about 64% Direct traffic and 12% Social media fed traffic increased today to 22% Social Media with the majority of traffic from Twitter out of Social media. I also had an increase in Referring websites to 18% from around 15-16%. The interesting thing is Facebook's influence remained the same at about 1.27% before and after. What is interesting is that all of this new traffic has not created any books sold, but it may in the future. However the people pretty much arrived on the page and exited to the same page. They didn't stay and browse the site or read any other articles/blog posts. It's not only that people aren't buying music or books, they simply aren't browsing the web either. We both have a lot of work to do.

I'm linking this article because it speaks to a lot of the concerns we all have as writers and small biz people. Check this article out by Talib Kweli on why he became an independent artist. Really, I mean really good stuff! https://medium.com/cuepoint/why-i-left-the-major-label-system-a0ecfa06ae91

Real quick Troy, at the exact same time I ran my kickstarter another shoe company garnered 120,000 in 3 days. The difference was the guy was a professional athlete. One other shoe company raised 100,000 and then failed to deliver in a timely fashion and delivered a scrappy product. Both of those companies had slick, well produced videos. I think my grassroots video approach was a failure especially when I had a 4 year proven track record and those other campaigns didn't.

That Kickstarter was a real deal kick in the head. You think of all the people you interact with through the years and you automatically assume support will be given. I'm starting to realize though, people only have disposable income for popularity. I have a really strange approach to discussion. I tend to argue the losing side until I get something across and then I argue the opposite idea. It's confusing but it allows me to understand each position. Del I think the opposition you encounter is the same that we all encounter. It's a motivational construct that keeps the engine running.

Boyz n the hood aalbc style, lol. You're right. I guess the initial excitement of a book release pushes us to do this. Unfortunately these writers don't have any direction after the release and no base to reinforce the shots fired. You can tell it was dropped in hastily since the link isn't active. I guess being able to monetize visitors would be good, but I think everyone is just happy to get in print. On a different note I need to do some advertising finally.

Dang Salena dropped the post and disappeared, lol.

And this is why fighting to keep people engaged is so hard. I actually think all people are hedonistic in all they do. Some people simply fight to be selfless, but even then it's still all about "us". This comment though... is why Blacks are in the overall position that we are in. Instant gratification is the best drug in the world.

Man, I'm dying at this one... but Del definitely has a point. If you have frequent flyer mileage you are in a different class, LOL. Diversity is interesting. I taught at a school that had 100 dialects. It took 30 minutes to do the introduction at graduation! I think diversity overall encompasses Blacks, but very often Blacks are not in a position to be taken into account. This is de facto and de jure. It is a choice and not a choice. For instance, Memphis is almost 70% Black. I don't think any other city is as Black as Memphis... The school system here is controlled and operated by Blacks. However on the outskirts of the city the county schools are primarily run by Whites. This city has an unspoken policy of Self segregation and nepotism that dictates how diverse a business is. People want to be around people who look like them. It's a matter of comfort. I'm kind of rambling, but my point is diversity is a lie. Black people often don't want to identify and be with other cultures because it is seen as being less "Black". At the same time some Black people need to be accepted by Others because they associate this with "making it". While what I'm saying is a generalization it is a point of debate. Cynique is definitely right about this one. The melting pot has failed. I actually wrote that America is a potpourri pot. A lot of branches, twigs and flowers combined in a pot that masks the shitty smell of conflict and divisiveness.

LOL, okay I won't try to push that connection anymore. I will say that Okayafrica/okayplayer was one of the few outlets to push the documentary and promote it continuously. I will admit I was reaching a bit.

Notice the logo on the right side of the poster is okayplayer? Remember our long talk about the positive aspects of hip-hop? This movie was partially brought forward due to questlove and okp.

I've only published three books by other writers, but that's been by choice. My money maker has always been sports related so I devote most of my time to that. While Troy constantly reminds me that I can use this platform to promote, I just can't do it, lol. I don't promote those services publishing, web design, manufacturing, anywhere on here because I don't have the time to actually follow through since doing so would require a financial investment. I love reading and writing analyses of books and would definitely do so when time permits. The holidays and the upcoming tax season occupies my time with the online shop so I wouldn't get to it soon. I will try though. In regard to publishing all it takes is signing up with RR Bowker, purchasing ISBNs and formatting book covers and the text. It's not difficult, but the promotion is the problem. I haven't been willing to pay for promotion of my writers which makes me a crappy publisher, lol.

I guess because I am a small publishing imprint I look at Dogear or other self publishing places with the side eye. Lulu is pretty good and lightning source is also. If writers look at create space, lightning and lulu as book printers then they would gain a better understanding of what is available. I think everyone should attempt traditional publishing first and then go the self publishing route. I think the big issue is that there are so many people with information that it's hard to decipher. There aren't many people who quit their jobs writing, but it's hard to get people to pay for information. Which means that guys like Troy, or me, who can help people get published are overlooked because we request fees (maybe I'm wrong here.) The good thing is you have the book in print. Lulu does have some great services available for a fee. In order to get your book everywhere you will have to use a variety of services anyway so the easiest things is to go with what is comfortable. Create space won't get you into iBooks, screwpulp won't get you into Kindle and Ingram or dogear will charge you to put you everywhere. Most important is that if you don't get reviewed or read by someone important you don't sell any books anyway. Writing really is about loving the craft.

It is important. Cynique anytime you use free ISBN numbers the book is pretty much controlled and relegated to that platform. Troy people can buy direct from lulu but they are definitely missing out without an affiliate program. While the book is a bucket list project, you should at least create a createspace version... actually you cant because of the deal with lulu. This cuts you out of making an amazon author's page. You can submit the book to Ingram but I don't know if it can be done with a generated ISBN. I guess it's good to be in print, but it's also nice to maximize opportunities.

No Cynique he means Ingram. It's probably not Troy. Lulu is great for getting the book into print, but if you don't own your ISBN you can't get into Ingram and find further distribution. A better choice would have been lightning Source since they sign you up for Ingram when you publish. Actually the better situation would have been visiting RR Bowker and signing up to buy her own ISBNs and then the getting a Form TX and submitting a hard copy to the library of congress and then submitting the book to Ingram because they would have accepted it and instead of only being carried on Lulu the book would be available to any person who uses Ingram to buy books. Boom! A quick lesson in publishing, but more than likely you guys already new that, lol.