Troy

The “Black Book Ecosystem” refers to the independent Black professionals responsible for getting books into the hands for readers. This includes independent writers, editors, designers, marketers, distributors, printers, reviewers, and booksellers. As Amazon expands their dominance of the publishing industry, even mainstream publishers are adversely impacted. Needless to say, the impact on Black independents is worse. For many Black authors Amazon controls everything--from production to sales and profits qute handsomely. For many authors Amazon even serves as the author's primary web presence. Now many will argue that Amazon has made it possible for any author to publish a book, when this may not have been possible before. The fact of the matter Amazon is not the only option and I'd argue they may even be the most expensive option as they profit from every step in the process and assume no risk. For Amazon, the production of books is purely a monetary transaction. Amazon is motivated solely by maximizing revenue. The professionals in the Black Book Ecosystem, which AALBC.com is part of, are motivated by revenue too, but we are primarily mission driven. We recognize that books are not merely commodities to generate profit or to crush our "competition." Books hold the cultural legacy of our community. They relate our history and stories. We simply can not allow a single profit driven corporation to own our cultural legacy and to be the only entity to profit from the business. I'm not limiting this appeal to just Black folks I'm reaching out to anyone who cares about books. If you agree, would you consider no longer buying your books from Amazon or using any of their book related services? Please fill out the form below and let me know what you think. I'm going to reach out beyond the Black community, because Amazon effect the entire book ecosystem. The Survey has now completed. Review the result here.

You compliment women's butts, 45 grabs vaginas. Lewdness is in the eye of the beholder. Again I know both tactics work. It depends on the people and situation. I'm sure some, perhaps most, of the women Harvey Weinstein got sleezy with took him up on his offer. Weinstein's lewdness worked for him until it didn't.

Wow that was some post. Thanks for sharing such an insporing story!

I truly appreciate your thoughtful comments RCG1. Hopefully you'll create an account and comment here more frequently. Allow me to introduce you to AALBC.com. I started the website 20 years ago and it has been my passion ever since. I run the entire website by myself and it has been my livelihood for the last 8 years. What started out as a site to sell books as an BarnesandNoble affiliate has grown to be much more. I celebrate Black culture through books. However, over the years I've noticed that independent Black booksellers both online and off faced many challenges much of it having to do with a lack of visibility, so I made it my mission to "shine a little light where it's actually needed." This is an aspect of the site you appear to have missed here are some examples I think you'll appreciate. I have maintained list of all the books website you make an effort to sell Black books: https://aalbc.com/booksites/ I also keep track of Black owned book stores (including stores that sell Black books, but are not Black owned): https://aalbc.com/bookstores/ Some might argue that it makes no sense to provide free promotion to one's competitors. But these business are not my competitors are family and we are engaged in the same battle. I need to them to be stronger. Now you are not going to read about the booksellers in Black Enterprise, you are not to hear Oprah talk about them. Over the years I've reporting on how many of these business are dying and what it means to our culture: https://aalbc.com/blog/index.php/2014/03/31/54-black-owned-bookstores-remain-america/ I also noticed the same thing happening to Black owned newspapers: https://aalbc.com/newspapers/ and other Black content providers. I even created a search engine that searched hundreds of Black websites: https://aalbc.com/huria/ all of this in an effort to uplift and support OTHER websites. You said that my list overlooks sites not in the top 50, but you missed that page where in link to 300 more stes: https://aalbc.com/top_black_websites/top_black_sites_list.php all of these site are in my database I maintain and they are regularly montiored. I even maintain a section of the site where I categorize Black Blogs: https://aalbc.com/blogs/blog-category.php?category=Academics AALBC.com links to thousands of other websites. That is not hyperbolic it is a fact. Again I do it because we ALL need support, and no one else is going to do it. I try to lead by example, but know going in the support will not be reciprocated. I sacrifice time and energy that can into activities that would directly improving my own business, but it is absolutely imperative that we support each other. The most popular post in the Black literature section of this discussion forum is "The 10 Best Damn Black Websites Period!" It has been viewed over 100K times. Part of the reason is that virtually no one is talking about Black websites (another reason may be the clickbaity title). Now in the early days of the web we did this, but not today. Now that post was rather weak from a content perspective, so I improved it: creating the Top 50 Black-Owned Websites section of the website that your are already familiar with. I'm not aware of another site doing as much to promote other Black-owned website. Today a Black websites do a lot to drive traffic to social media. They mention their social media platforms before they even mention their own websites. They published so much content on social media that their social media sites come up before their own sites--deservedly so, because their own websites are subordinate to their social media presences. For many authors their social media presence is their only web presence--they have completely abandoned have their own websites! In fact I started offering a service where I'll host an author's primary web presence--usually for free! https://aalbc.com/authors/mydomain.html Speaking of authors I can't tell you how many times I've recorded an author to promote their work and when asked where their book can be purchased they will always say Amazon--as if no knows book can be purchased their. I now explicitly ask them to simply tell be the name of a Black owned bookseller you like: I hope this helps folks better understand the effort placed into uplifting other Black owned websites, the challenges faced into doing and hopefully why it is important. Do we really want the world wide web to be run by Facebook owned websites? In terms of getting consumers to be more Afrocentric in their selection of vendors I think this will start to happen as people start to push back on the dominance and the control exerted by these monopolies. The lack of choice and options that these corporations provide will create a desire for black folks to support smaller less powerful Independent organizations and companies. This is what fueled the explosion in books written by black people in the 1990s. Black folks found a need and met it. Authors like E Lynn Harris and Terry McMillan Who Sold books out the proverbial trunk of their cars are prime examples. Today it would be harder for an independent author to emerge in the same fashion; for we now publish our books through Amazon and even give them exclusivity for the book's sales. Black folks really have very little say in determining if an author is relevant or derives commercial success. We have allowed large corporations to take that control from us. I'm trying to remedy that situation.

Sure that is true Pioneer, but we need to prioritize things. If a guy comes into an emergency room bleeding profusely from multiple gun shot wounds and has a really bad cavity and is at risk of losing the tooth. Are you going to threat the cavity and gunshot wounds with the same urgency? A normal Dr. would completely ignore the tooth decay in the situation. You see my point?

Cynique, you obviously surround yourself with good people. Pioneer I guess lewdness is in the eye of the beholder. I never comment on a woman's physique to a woman, at least I don't recall ever doing it. There are a myriad of ways for that conversation to go south. That is why the "does my butt look big?" question is such a good opener to so many jokes

Check out the Chicago Crusader's coverage of this event Third World Press Foundation writers and poets gather at Betty Shabazz Academy to participate in 50th anniversary events. The historic gathering included Askia Toure, Dr. Eugene Redmond, Dr. Maulana Karenga, TWPF founder Dr. Haki R. Madhubuti, Dr. Sonia Sanchez, Kalamu ya Salaam, and Dr. Aminifu R. Harvey. (Photos by Raynard Graves)

@Pioneer1, there is no need for you to preface a comment you make with "This is gonna sound waaaaaay out there but..." I hear you though. Of course I don't buy in the the Black people are dumber part. Speaking of our African Brothers, if you look at some of the sites with the most traffic like Worldstarhiphop and Mediatakeout. They are run by people or are, or whose parents are, from Africa. These African's drink the same fluoridated water I do. I think I'm smarter than the average white boy (test scores, educational attainment, work experience, etc). Again fluoride is not the issue Our problem when it comes to ownership of media is complex but boils down to two main things; It is exceedingly difficult to compete against a monopoly People, in the pursuit of happiness do what everyone else is doing One of the draws of Facebook, for example, is that everyone else is on it. I think Instagram will be the next thing, but Facebook owns that too so Facebook are a very powerful force to compete against. The most popular restaurants and clubs are the ones with lines. The most popular plays or concerts are the ones where tickets the hardest to get. We are slaves to fashion and programmed to have the latest version of the iPhone. Of course we all know that the best plays, restaurants, clubs, shoes, whatever are not the ones that the most people are after. The value comes from the perception of desirability. Red Rooster is the hottest restaurant in Harlem. It owner chef Marcus Samuelsson is world-renown. He was able to get #2 above because he got the white co-sign, which increased demand for his restaurant. However, the food is overpriced and mediocre. The service is average and the atmosphere is noisy and busy. There are better restaurants in Harlem, but since this is the one everyone has heard about and it has #2 people really desire to go there. Some people, after experiencing the restaurant, will come to the conclusion I did and simply patronize better restaurants. Others will convince themselves that Red Roosters fried chicken is great (mine is MUCH better) and they will go back and tell their friends--especially the ones that have never been how amazing it was. They will post photos on Facebook of the food. They'll share photos of themselves in the restaurant sharing this "great experience." Those with the wherewithal to go will do so at the first opportunity and the others will wish that they could and be disappointed that they can't. The power of #2 can't be understated. The power is #1 is self-evident.

Again, I feel you Pioneer. Cynique, men use the lewd approach, because they are crude, and don't know any no better, but it works from time to time. So the tactic persists. I have never used the approach; It is just not my style, but again I know it works for many guys.

@Pioneer1, I think you will find a higher correlation between the quality of education and test scores that with fluoridated water. There are poor communities with poor educational options and unfluoridated water and what you will find are poor undereducated people with very bad teeth. Bad teeth leas to all sorts of other heath issues. I don't think fluoridated water is the most pressing issue facing the Black community, if fact it is a distraction...

You were fortunate @Delano, to be encouraged to think for yourself at an early age. Most of us are not. The culture is designed for us to seek conformity and to do what everyone else is doing. This is in my mind is why most people are not happy. They never purse what makes them happy, or even bother to try to discover what it is that makes them happy. Our corporate driven culture tells us that consuming more things will make us happy, because they profit from propagating this belief... I read somewhere that the racist Troll married a Brother. I did not try to find the source; I saw it in passing somewhere on the web.

OK Is see now the Basketville theme you are using has a button at the bottom of the page to show older posts. Did I miss that the first time or did you just invoke that? At any rate that is probably adequate, unless you really want people to find your older content more easily.

Mel we are taught to consume media that way. In fact we are taught to produce media in that fashion for the web. I took a week long course that Stanford University gave on publishing for the web. We were taught to "webify" our content. I called it dumbing down; Basically reducing the complexity of sentences, lowering the vocabulary level, and shortening paragraphs etc. The idea is to optimize content for consumption on the web. There are application that will dumb down you content. I know I have encountered a good article when I feel compelled to print it out. The trend has only increased today. It is big pictures, graphics, and short video that have substituted for depth. We are expected to be able to communicate complex ideas with memes optimized for delivery on Instagram. They say a picture is worth a thousands words, this is true but those words are different depending on the person. One reason we fail to communicate a coherent consistent message is that we do it in a webified or dumbed down manner which is less clear and open to interpretation Sometimes complex ideas take many words to relate. The economic of the web, driven by social media is not optimized for log form content. Many of us are simply not accustomed to consuming the type of content, so we don't. Education is key.

I would say that people were best served by the internet perhaps during the first 10 years it became commercially available roughly before 2005. We emerged from a period, not unlike today, when corporations like AOL and Compuserve controlled everything. When the web emerged we were liberated. Anyone could establish a website and create a unique platform that catered to the needs of an audience. For Black folks this was particularly good news because we were underserved by corporations. Most importantly it created economic opportunities for folks to create business or just earn money r just earn extra money on the side. Today we have completely regressed. This economic opportunities are largely out of reach today and we are back to paying corporations for access. If we are not paying them cash we are paying them with all of our personal data. Black cultural content is not back in the hands for corporations, largely run by white men motivated by greed. Today, on social media, information that is made up crowds out journalism, so people are woefully completely misinformed. This is worse than being ignorant in my view.

No problem Mel. Here is your link. Yes I used the search feature on your site to find the article because I knew that the content existed. Google still has the pages indexed. but again, how does a visitor to the site discover any of your older Blog posts? None of the blog posts are listed--unless I'm just missing them? You are better off hosting a Wordpress site with Wordpress. I would not move it to Godaddy. I use a plugin "SEO Ultimate" to handle the SEO stuff I described for the wordpress sites I run. I read the article about VSB. The reasoning does not make sense to me. The former owner said the site had 2 million unique visitors a month. That is a lot of traffic. There is nothing in the data that I have access to that suggests get or ever got that many visitors. Here is the information I've collected on their site prior to removing them from the top 50 Black-owned website page (they are still in my database). AALBC Score: 4.99 Domain Created: Feb 13, 2001 (9 Years, 8 Months) SEMrush Rank: 44,400 Alexa Rank: 105,360 MOZ Domain Authority: 48 Most telling is VSB's data from SEMRush, that data alone shows that VSB gets less traffic than AALBC.com, and I don't get any where near 2 Million unique visitors a month. While SEMRush does not have access to VSB server logs their information is quote good. If you believe the 2M number (I don't), then you have to ask yourself why weren't these Very Smart Brothers able to monetize that much traffic to pay writers and provide a good living for themselves. Did Gizmodo buy VSB or just give these guys jobs--jobs they should not have needed with 2M unique visitors.

Yes @Mel Hopkins, your site, https://melhopkins.com would qualify as having domain; it is just hosted by Wordpress. This site is hosted by GoDaddy. Here is some of the information I pulled on your domain: AALBC Score: N/A Domain Created: Mar 01, 2001 (16 Years, 8 Months) SEMrush Rank: 39,200,000 Alexa Rank: N/A MOZ Domain Authority: 22 I've decided to restrict not to add any new sites to track to my database unless they had an Alexa ranking. There however are some sites without an Alexa ranking in my database and I'm not going to delete them. I'll add your since you got it like that Since I have my webmaster hat on now; it is good that your site is using SSL (https), because Google uses this a ranking signal and they are going to start displaying warning messages in their browsers to sites that don't use it. This will hurt a lot of sites. It is also good that you are using a response design, so your site will display well on a mobile device. This is a ranking signal for Google as well. This is one aspect of webdesign that really hurt a lot sites in search. What happened to your old content? I ran some queries and see that it is still on the site, but I cant find a way to browse it directly the old stuff--at least the stuff I looked for. For example, how does one browse to this page: https://melhopkins.com/2016/06/09/aalbc-the-african-american-media-clearinghouse-wifotit/ If there is no way to browse to this page (no direct link to it on your site), the page an others like it will be hurt in search because they are unrecoverable without a direct link Digging a bit deeper. I would be more descriptive in your description meta tags. This is the text used when people share you site on social media. Google would not use it because it is too short and they pull text from the page. So should control this by being more descriptive. I'm not sure how you do this now, but there are plugins that make optimizing for SEO easy. <meta property="og:description" content="Actuate | Thought Into Action" /> I would also make the site's title (not on the title on the page but in meta tag), clearer. It should always be different that what is in the title tag <title>Mel Hopkins &#8211; Actuate | Thought Into Action</title> You should create a customized 404 error page. You know that page that comes up when someone types a bogus URL on your website like https://aalbc.com/bousurl.html Today SEO (optimizing for Google's search engine) is probably more important than a site's content--especially for Black owned sites because we don't usually have the benefit of larger platforms to support us. I know that is more than you asked for, but I hope it is helpful

You know I have no idea what Krispy Kream Jelly Beans are. Are they like really small donut holes?

Pharmaceuticals are growing wealthy as a direct result of this epidemic. The sale of these narcotics has exploded. But corporate greed knows no color, save green.

Dr. Jawanza Kunjufu is this site's #2 all time best selling author. His books, as quiet as it is seeming kept, are extremely important particularly as it related to educating Black boys.

Hi @Mel Hopkins, I missed your reply initially. Your questions are answered below: 1) what qualifies as a website? A web presence with it's own domain. In fact, I use domain's age as part of my calculus to derive the AALBC Score. 2) Does a website with an owner's domain hosted on wordpress.com (DOT COM) or blogger.com qualify for ranking? No, a site hosted on another site does not qualify, as it is just a portion of the other site. However if the entity registered a domain and mapped to their Wordpress or Blogger presence, then it could be considered a site as long as it functions as a standalone site. 3) Or do you need to build on wordpress.org (DOT ORG) website with separate hosting. I think the responses to the first 2 questions answer this. Do you have a specific case in mind? 4) What if it's a blog with a static page plus a single entry per day... Yes, blogs are websites. I don't make a distinction between blogs or any other type of website. Right now my only conditions for adding to the list of websites and consideration for monitoring for potential inclusion on the Top 50 Black Owned Website List are; The site has it's own domain as described a above The site be Black-owned, or if publicly the management team must be majority Black That the site has enough traffic to have an Alexa rank (any rank) Let me know if there is anything else. I just ran a couple hundred blogs through my ranking process and 10 blogs were added to my Top 50 Black Websites. Right now I have 49 sites which meet my minimum criteria for inclusion in the top 50. I'm sure I'll find enough sites to round out my top 50. Some of the sites that I'm monitoring now may ultimately make the list or replace a site already on it. As I discover more than 50 sites to meet my criteria, I'll adjust the minimum requirement to keep the list at 50. I'm actually still confirming site ownership for some of the sites. I just deleted Carol's Daughter which I just learned is no longer Black owned; it is owned by L'Oreal (I was wondering why the store on 125th Street was closed). The site was not strong enough to make the top 50. I also just deleted Very Smart Brothers, which was in the top 50, but is not Black owned...I guess the Brothers ain't so smart after all. This list, like the rest of AALBC.com is a work in progress. But this is the first serious attempt, that I'm aware of, to identity the top Black websites and to maintain and share this information on an ongoing basis. Back in the late 1990's Earthlink maintained and published a list and only lasted a couple of years. Pew Research also published a list as part of their reporting on African American Media, that that list has not been consistently maintained and many of the sites listed are not Black owned. There are have been a variety of other lists published over the years, but none are nearly as formal or objective.

@Cynique, I hear your points I really do, but you are over looking two of my major points as if they do not matter: Black people are not profiting from the great wealth generated on the web Black people have no agency on the web--corporations have taken it from us I argue that monopolistic corporations are to blame. They have perverted the internet for VAST wealth, and have GREATLY constrained creativity, independence, diversity, and much more on the web. This was simply not the case 10 years ago. You feel the conversations held by Black people has not been changed by corporate ownership of the platforms on which we communicate. Of course it has been; think about the conversations that took place here, on this forum back in it's heyday-- has that in any way been replicated on Twitter or Facebook? And if you somehow think that is has, who is profiting from it? Now image that scenario being replicated thousands and thousands of times over. Does this make sense? Does it not bother you that another for-profit, Black-owned, book site can not emerge and generate enough revenue to provide someone a living? What this means is that the quality Black books are MUCH less discoverable on the web today than ever before. There are very few platforms even reviewing books by Black writers and those that are don't have platforms large enough for those book reviews to be read by anyone. Many have run to social media as an alternative platform, but it is a poor substitute. I no longer use my Facebook page, because Facebook now charges you to have your posts seen. It makes no sense for me to pay them when my platform is so much better for presenting and disseminating information. I have a long history on the WWW that predates social media, so I'm keenly aware of what we have lost and are losing. I also understand that the reason this is not being discussed more widely in the Black community is reflective of this very problem. The Times article I referenced above made a great point: “In addition to their power, tech companies have a tool that other powerful industries don’t: the generally benign feeling of the public” This is our biggest roadblock to fixing this problem.

Well @Cynique, if history is any indication then we KNOW white corporations will mislead black people, telling lies, control our narrative, not representing what's authentic, and be a negative, destructive force in the black community. Helping to share our truths and our stories is why I started selling books. No corporate lying is nothing new, nor is it limited to hurting Black folks. We all stand to suffer. It is just that Black folks are not talking about this and we stand to suffer the most. Black folks are behind the curve. We are still naively talking, without reservation, about how great Facebook and Amazon are... A few minutes ago, I finished a brilliant article in the the Sunday New York Times, "Silicon Valley Is Not Your Friend." An online version I found is behind a paywall (I read the print version). The author, Noam Cohen, described the problem, much more skillfully than I can. There was only one number in the entire article. Noam also wrote a book: The Know-It-Alls: The Rise of Silicon Valley as a Political Powerhouse and Social Wrecking Ball I think the article, and perhaps the book, would speak directly to this issue in a way that you can appreciate @Cynique (note: the book does not come out until November, I see now the Times piece was a great marketing tactic, but the article was still good!)

My buddy, Ron Kavanaugh, who runs the Literary Freedom Project, has just launched a Kickstarter campaign for his upcoming literary conference. Support Mosaic Literary Conferences’s Fundraiser Ron actually started a website dedicated to Black book before AALBC.com launched. He discontinued his website in 2014, for all the reasons reason I've lamented over the years. We met each other back in 1998 at a now defunct bookstore Nkiru Books in Brooklyn. One of the store's booksellers introduced us, because he was aware of both of our websites. Ron actually went to the same high school and graduated the same year I did, but we did not know each other in school (it was a big school). Interestingly, our friend, @Mel Hopkins, was also a member of that class (it was also great school).

The feedback from this mailing was very illuminating. I'm going to craft a part 2 message in a few weeks taking into account some new insights: Alexa Rank Requirement I made a having an Alexa ranking a requirement to be added to the list of sites that I would monitor. About half of the suggested sites I received today for consideration did not have an Alexa rank. I suspect the person complaining about my use of Alexa had a site without an Alexa ranking. While they did not say this was the reason, I can now understand now why someone would react the way they did. Now an Alexa ranking is a very low threshold to meet but the fact is 20% of the 300 sites I have evaluated so far did not have an Alexa Rank. In fact they are still on my list of sites: https://aalbc.com/top_black_websites/top_black_sites_list.php But I have to draw a line somewhere and the Alexa rank is as good a place as any; Right now the Alexa Ranks for sites in the Top 50 range from 1,026 to 470,817 (lower is better, Google's Alexa Rank is 1, Facebook's is 3). The worst Alexa rank, for the sites with a ranking, in my database is 19,987,545. I have never see a ranking worse than 30,000,000. Having an Alexa rank is generous cutoff, but I'm open to suggestions for alternatives. While I'm the only one handling this here will need to be a cut off. I have a booksite to run after all. “I've Never Heard of Most of These Sites” This is the most common comment I've received. Indeed it is the point of this entire effort. There will be some sites you've never heard of that has produced something you will truly appreciate but never see, because it could not be found on Facebook. Facebook “Likes” Are Powerful Facebook likes are very, very powerful--for Facebook. People measure the effectiveness of their ad spend and engagement on Facebook by the number of likes they get. If does not matter if the likes do not translate in getting an email address, a sale, visitors to a website, or improved branding. Likes are the measurement tool. They are readily visible and have the added benefit of providing an ego boost. Facebook is known to holdback likes so that they are timed for maximum impact. There is i ample reason to believe that many of those Facebook Likes are fake, and one should always measure the effectiveness of those paid visitors, you might find as I did they are not very engaged visitors. Most Users Don't Visit Websites I suspect that the majority of new internet users are mobile users using social media. These types of users are much less likely to visit a website. When these users run a Google search they don't leave the Google search results page, because Google will pull answers from websites, most often Wikipedia, and present the response on the page or read it aloud. For these types of users the social media/google/Wikipedia/amazon is the internet. Demographically this is where the growth appears to be. But there is a category of users (like anyone reading this message), who wants deeper information. Like readers of books, the types of users of the web are in the minority. But like readers of books, there are enough of these types of internet users to enable independent Black owned websites to thrive. Finally Don't Forget Email In the four hours since I sent this email, several hundred extra people have visited the pages linked in my mailing. There is nothing I have ever done that has generated as much traffic as quickly from social media. Now I've had some content go "viral" and that brought thousands of additional visitors from Facebook primarily during the same period of time. But I can not ln which post will go viral and they are very rare occurrence anyway. Nothing, I've shared this year went viral, but 2017 will be the year this site see the most page views ever.