Troy

Not a very informative video. The guy asked if they have plans to go back to Sirius?!

Again your sources fail to support your allegations. Ni mention of racist white militia. Seemingly Black on Black crime.

I don't know but y'all can reader her book. Stacey also has a new novel coming out next year 🙂 If fact if you send me $25 I'll ship the book to you USPS 2 or 3 day at no extra charge! This is a special price not available on the website

Welcome to the forums @Author Brian Nelson. We are losing control of the fight for Black minds because we are losing platforms. There are some excellent bocks doing well in the Black community that should be more widely known, but our readers flock to Amazon for information about books and only discover the books that Amazon's profit driven algorithm pushes to them. This increases the incentives for more books like the ones that do well on Amazon to be made. Which also increase demand for books to be sold on Amazon and the downward spiral ensues, and Black folks lose. We all do, but my focus is on Black people.

You can leave off the "digital," and I'd agree with the statement. A book with a good, well executed, marketing plan with always be more successful that a one without one. Defining success by the number of people who learn about a book and read it. Keeping other factors constant like the author's name recognition, book cover design, format, price, etc.

You're a powerful advocate @Gibran, thanks again!

@Delano, told "you" to be the change, he did not say anything about him being the change 😉 Of course this too is a broad generalization, but I hate to say I've seen too many parallels in life to completely discount it. It goes back to the "white man's ice is colder" cliché." Van Jones crying for Biden's win, but nary a tear for all the things @harry brown mentioned. Folks buying everything from Amazon, but overlooking Black stores -- even the ones in their own neighborhoods....

😆 I have to use that one LOL! I dunno man, weeping because Biden won strikes me as way too sensitive. Maybe I'm just not built that way and can not relate to that emotional reaction to this situation. Any record of him crying with Obama won too, or are his tears reserved for the great white savior?

Yes that was it! It did not see the video, but I did listen to enough of it to know it was what I heard - See what Google is feeding me hanging around you 🙂 Can you send me a link from a news source describing white militia men killing a Black person, on the 4th July.

Crying? A grown Black man crying on national TV beside Biden won, really? OK you peaked my interest ... against my better judgement LOL! This Brother deserves an academy award! Were there actually tears? I dunno ... maybe I'm too cynical. Again this is why I simply do not watch these programs. It is all theater all of the coverage all of the nail biting drama. Whether you view jones' performance as sickening or sincere it does not matter. What matter is what Biden administration actually accomplishes, and that remains to be seen. All the other stuff Jones was crying about is of no consequence.

On my cell phone yesterday a YouTube video started play all by itself. Sort of like a butt dial. It was not a video I'd selected it was a video YouTube decided to auto play. I must have trigger the play button while my phone was in my pocket. At any rate there was a Brother (apparently, because it was just audio) on the YouTube channel espousing the same rhetoric Pioneer has about. The video was from the summer and the Brother was warning of the listener about an eminent assault being planned by white supremacists. This was based upon an "increase in chatter" on the various white supremacist's platforms. The speaker felt that a massacre would occur on the 4th of July. Obviously nothing happened, but he cautioned us, as Pioneer has, that we ignore his warning at out own peril. I think YouTube is even worse than Facebook or Twitter at spreading conspiracy theories.

5. Sell books on this site. This raised another problem with the Black Book Ecosystem and that is; distribution. I pull this conversation into the #ReadingBlack club. I'm thinking about restricting access and making it private. We have to use our platforms places to communicate, Facebook can not be our home base.

FAS create an account I'm too busy to have to chase around your posts to approve them -- especially if you are going to accuse me of deliberately NOT approving. Nope my work is done. The post above is the last one I'm approving for FAS. Really, I'm fully pegged right now, and given FAS's attitude I'm can't be bothered.

Hi @LaShelle Turner, please free to link to you website and post your book's ISBN.

Don't even try it FAS, if I missed approving any of your messages that is YOUR FAULT. Create and account; I'm not your personal secretary ...

First awarded in 2014, The Kirkus Prize is one of the richest literary awards in the world, with a prize of $50,000. Black writers sweep for the 2nd year in a row! #readingblack

@Maurice is the resident Mayfield expert, but I believe for the song to really resonate, unless you are super empathic, you have to have grown up in a ghetto. What do you think? Think about all the Black on Black crime in the ghettos, how we rob each -- even from their own families. The lessons learned in the home is different that the ones learned on the street. The default is distrust, that was called being "street smart." In the wider world it is paranoia, for most people are not going to rob you as you walk down the street. Moving through life distrusting everyone is stressful, carrying that mentality into the wider world, where it is not necessary is just as stressful. It prevents you from really engaging with the world.

This song, "The Other Side of Town," by Curtis Mayfield is one of my favorite songs from one of my favorite artists. It came out in 1970, but I was an adult before I first heard it -- if I heard it before them I probably could not appreciate it. It is a very sad song in many was. It reminds my of the lives, and contributions to society, that were lost because people grew up impoverished. It also make me think of the comments @Gibran and @Pioneer1 made in earlier conversation where people do something dumb because some negative remnant of their upbringing presents itself. Know know folks who have completely derailed their lives because -- they let the ghetto comes out of them. I'm not immune to it either, but I've been lucky (relatively speaking).

It just occurred to I never deleted my Bookshop page. I went to bookshop to delete it and realized you can't do it on your own. I guess they never figured anyone would ever want to delete their page. I emailed support requesting that they remove my page on their website. In the meantime I updated my page to indicate that I'm boycotting their business. Let see how long it takes them to delete the page now https://bookshop.org/shop/aalbc 😉 I just did some more research into bookshop and discovered the state of Black-owned bookstore ecommerce is atrocious. The dependence we have on Bookshop is depressing. Many of the Black-owned stores including the ones getting the most attention in the media don't operate ecommerce sites -- bookshop is their website! These websites share precious sales figures and customer data. These sites also completely give up on advertising revenue which for a popular website can easily exceed book revenue. I get it, it took 2 decades for AALBC to ween itself off of Amazon's teat, wasting precious years of lost revenue. Sure bookshop gives these stores 30% on each sale -- which is almost as much as what a store would make if they, did all the work and fulfilled the books orders themselves, so we know the 30% share will not stand very long. Like Amazon taking a loss on the way to building a monopoly is a winning strategy. Like Amazon they will continue this until they taken control of ecommerce for indie booksellers. The only difference is rather than taking the loss with the consumer on low prices, bookshop shop is taking the loss with the Bookstore on the affiliate commission. With Amazon the consumer was happy with the low prices, but the booksellers were pissed. With Bookshop the bookstores are happy (save the ones who can see the con) with the high revenues AND the consumers are also happy believing they are supporting indie bookstores. By the time some independent bookstore wise up Bookshop's hustle they will have made Bookshop dominant and it will be too late to do anything meaningful on the web. It is not enough just to not use these sites. You have to be "anti-Bookshop" and "anti-Amazon." More to come...

🙂

Sorry, Dave those sold out quickly.

I have not read the article yet. But maybe it was difficult to read, because the writer was not very good or did not have sufficient command of the material to relate the material very well. Why did you read the article? What were you trying to learn?

Committing a hands on double homicide at 83, that has to be highly unusual. Maybe he was protecting himself?

Take a deep breath, and get a sense a humor. You rabid Trump supporters are wound way too tight. When was the last time you got some?😊

Yeah @daniellegfny that is the nature of discussion forums, conversations in general...