Troy

I use Madmimi to manage my email list. Out newsletter has just under 14,000 subscribers about 1% are paid subscribers (thought it is probably higher as we got a lot of support recently I have not counted in months). Open rate are at least 25%. If 30% opens a newsletter, I'm pretty satisfied. It is impossible to track all opens, so this number is conservative. The list has been as high as 35K, but I now purge the list annually to remove people who have not opened an email in the prior 6 month, so it is a very clean list. Bad email address are removed at each send. I also drop names because having a list 10 times the size might feel good, but it is super expensive to maintain and if most never open an email it is a colossal waste of money. I previously used Constant Contact but they became so expensive I had to find another vendor. I been using Madmimi for years. They were purchased by GoDaddy, which I'm not exactly pleased by. Madmimi was a small company willing to work with you and who had great customer service. Godaddy is just another corporation and not I'm a faceless customer. BigCommerce who I use for my shopping cart, and this discussion forum, both can be used to maintain a mailing lists and email folks, but I don't use either systems for that feature. I just pull those email address into madmimi if they buy something. That said Madmimi does a good job at a relatively fair price -- but I have not shopped around in years, so my knowledge is stale There are more sophisticated systems, with sales funnels, more robust data collection etc. I could probably benefit from this, but I have not made the time.

Yes. The video Delano posted. I never heard this before. But it would not be the first time you or Pioneer, for that matter, have presented concepts and ideas that were previously alien to me. Again Colorism is a different conversation as it deals with people within the same ethnic group (or race as you understand it). In American slavery it was ALL about "race." I never said it wasn't. what you are missing is that it did not start out that way. White supremacy justified the American style of slavery which was novel at the time. White people were equal opportunity conquerors. You know this. Do you think is Aryans of 20th century Germany cared that Jews, or Russians, or most of the American they fought were you understand as "white?" This statement tells me you have less than a superficial knowledge if India's caste system. I can't go there with you...

@daniellegfny AALBC sells Audiobooks, but as an affiliate of Libro.fm. I send readers to an AALBC page on Libro.fm who actually collect payment and manage the audiobook files, handle DR, etc. Libro is not just an alternative to Audible, I'd argue they are a superior alternative. That said: Check out Libro's page for authors Libro currently work with a couple partners to make it possible to sell audiobooks through AALBC and roughly 1,200 bookstores. If you'd like to produce your own audiobooks, the best way to get them on Libro.fm is to partner with Authors Republic If they need help with production, check out Findaway Voices Libro also works with Ingram CoreSource Plus and Zebralution

Monday, August 10, 2020 at 8:00 p.m. (Est) Zoom In On A F.R.E.S.H. Conversation presents and evening with Mr. Troy Johnson, the founder and webmaster of AALBC.com (The African American Literature Book Club), and President of AALBC.com, LLC. He started AALBC.com in October of 1997, and today it is the oldest, largest, and most frequently visited website dedicated to books written by or about people of African descent. . Join us as we discuss literature, literacy, marketing and strategies for succeeding during this time of COVID 19. Follow the Zoom link credentials below. Need additional information? Please email afreshconversation@gmail.com Join Zoom Meeting: https://bit.ly/troyfresh

@Chevdove to better respond I need to understand the distinction you are making between racism and white supremacy. White supremacy is created from racism. Without racism the could be no white supremacy. Get it? Lets leave colorism out of the conversation, because while it too is born of racism, it is some BS Black people engage amongst ourselves. Cool? I just watched the video. Europeans dominated the world because they were exceedingly violent. Genocide, torture, enslavement, rape, pillage, plunder no crime was beneath those people. It is that simple. Africans though technologically far superior to the Europeans, was not nearly as violent to others.

Yeah I didn't know there was one until i just mentioned it. I need to write down somewhere on the site. Sorry I was not questioning that. What I was trying to highlight was the fact that authors, collectively, do a lot to promote Amazon and comparatively little to promote Black-owned booksellers. I was hoping that would help you appreciate why it is easier for white businesses than Black ones. Of course the reason are much more profound than just "the white nans jce being colder" including access to investors, capital, media coverage, etc. The "wider audience" is a selffilling prophesy. I will not contribute to it; this is why I boycott Amazon.

You'll have to study history, because there is clearly nothing I can write to convince you otherwise. @Chevdove, racism, colorism and white supremacy are relatively new concepts; slavery is much, much older. Racism and its spawn white supremacy justified the American "peculiar institution." It was "peculiar" because of the racist component.

Share Ghoul-gull's definition if CTR. That might help. Is the number of link clicks higher than the number of people on your mailing list?

Read our FAQ,questin #8 https://aalbc.com/faq/

That is because you judge people largely on how they look; which is probably why you are so fixated on people's skin color. I just wanna punch Candice in her smug liitle mouth. Dude because people were closeted, ashamed, it was all hidden. Just because you didn't see it does not mean it did not exist. We used to hide the mentally ill in asylums. Today they sleep on the sidewalks next to the impoverished. No, of course not. Gansta rap proliferated because it was profitable. Dr. Dre is a 9-figga-nigga as a result. If it did not make any money white people wouldn't have shit to do with it.

(a) or (b) ... Damn, SMH... I know you can't help yourself @Pioneer1 it ain't your fault. Your honor (@Delano), no more questions. The prosecution rests.

Since I find Candice revolting I probably will not watch this video. Presumably Maj Toure believe we should all be caring guns, so I have no interest in hearing what he has to say either. Was the main take-away here; That "Hip Hop was used as a tool to help change the image of Black culture for the worse." "Tool" implies it was designed to serve a purpose. If the implication was that it was designed to damage Black culture. I do not believe that. Hip Hop was cooped by non-Black people to generate wealth for non-Black people. As a tool for wealth generation Hop Hip has been wildly successful. Any influence on "Black culture," for better or worse, is purely incidental.

@Pioneer1 here is a simple question for you, that might help you understand my reasoning. Simply select (a) or (b), don't belabor me with more of conspiracy theories. Can you do that? Which came first? (a) Racism (b) Slavery

Guys no hyperlinks to Amazon or their sites (Goodreads, Audible, etc) please. Yes consider me the "Amazon Nazi" 🙂 Side Bar: @daniellegfny How many times have you gone to Goodreads interacted with someone there, read their book, then came to AALBC posted a review and went back to Goodreads to tell people there to visited AALBC to read the great review you wrote? When you talk about Black business succeeding you never consider the environment that we operate in. See Amazon never has to tell you not to link back to AALBC, because Amazon does not hyperlinks. One would think it is common courtesy not to go to a bookseller's site and direct readers to a competitor's site. Now you linked to other Black-owned site I would not mind it, but you are linking and actively supporting a Black-book-site-killer. Now I get it; I actively supported Amazon for years -- even after I knew better. Today, however, I will not allow anyone to use this platform to actively support and promote Amazon or their websites. Goodreads has people climbing over each other to post reviews. Why? I had a reviewer who asked to work with AALBC. I published every book review he sent, but he never stopped posting them on Goodreads -- it was like he was being paid by goodreads. Had he continued posting the reviews here I would be paying him now. SMH

@O.W. The interaction rate exceeds 100%, so I'm not clear what it is measuring, but I'm confident it is not measuring click through rate (CTR). CTR is the percentage of people who received the email that clicked a hyperlink. Again, it is exceedingly rare for this number to be anywhere near 100% and should not be more than 100%. It looks like the the metric may be describing the percentage of interactions (how does the system define "interaction"?) with your email as a function of the number of people who received it (or opened it maybe).

100 New Audio Books You’ll ♥ When I started my boycott of Amazon over a year ago. I was fully prepared to completely give up my stream of income from selling books online. The boycott forced me to consider other options and that was one of the top 3 things I ever did with this website! I not only did selling books directly dramatically increase my revenue through online book sales, I also get my customer information which Amazon kept for themselves -- never sharing with affiliates. Sure, it is much more labor intensive physically, and administratively, selling books directly, but the revenue, from book sales, is an order of magnitude higher -- more sales and larger orders. I've hired someone to do the extra work. I'm able to sell audiobooks through a partnership with Libro.fm. I've already made more money with Libro.fm, in less than 6 months, than I did selling Amazon's Audbile ebooks and subscriptions in the past decade! Libro.fm shares customer information with their partners too! I recently started working with Hummingbird to sell ebooks. Unlike Amazon's ebooks, which you can only read on a Kindle; you can read your hummingbird's ebooks on ANY platform -- including the Kindle. Libro.fm may begin selling eBooks too. If they do, I will like switch over to them. As far as buying books that are not showcased on AALBC, you can always use Bookshop.org. They share 10% of the book's price with AALBC. You do not need Amazon. Boycott them for your book buying needs and improve the book ecosystem -- especially for Black books. Look, the pandemic is going to kill some Black-owned bookstores. A miracle occurred in late May, and white folks flooded Black owned bookstores, like AALBC, with record levels of sales. Some stores, overwhelmed, could not handle the surge, and did not benefit from the store-saving business. To be clear we will still lose some Black owned books stores, due to the pandemic. Bookshop.org helped some stores by giving them a platform to sell books on the web, but those sales do not benefit the stores nearly as much as being able to sell books directly. Unfortunately, most Black-owned bookstores do not have the ability to sell books on the web, if they do, they don't have the ability to scale. Over the long term Black-owned book stores and websites like AALBC continue to need your business not just to survive but to grow. The last 12 month has been phenomenal for AALBC. Records in every measurable category: traffic, book sales, and advertising -- during a global pandemic no less! This is ONLY because some of you have chosen AALBC over Amazon -- full stop! This has allowed AALBC to improve tremendously! Readers, authors, and publishers all benefit for having an additional platform celebrating Black literature.

Why? Because I borderline find Candice repulsive. Of course that is true. However, the initial motivation behind question was to find out from others how I, the founder of this site, would be perceived if I married a white woman. Would i be condidered a sellout or hypocrite who forsaked Black women. Or just someone who married someone he loved and thought he'd be happy with.

From the independent book review publisher and bookseller side. Most indie authors aren't gonna bother with ARCs and I rarely see galleys from them. If you are trying to get prepublication publicity in the form of reviews in long lead publications who don't review "old" books. You print up galley usually these are edited though maybe not proofed. I don't think indie authors needs to incur the expense of galley's. The finished book in advance of the pub date is more than adequate. Now especially during the pandemic, egalleys are gaining traction. I much prefer phyical galleys to electronic ones.

You have a narrow and limited perspective on the history of racism and slavery. Your view is restricted to a short period here in the U.S. and your understanding is limited as a result. The fact that white people were enslaved both here and Europe for all of recorded history means nothing to you... I'm glad you grew in a nice community. Im sure my housing complex was larger than the entire neighborhood you are fondly reminiscent of. With your background @Pioneer1 why aren't you wearing a MAGA hat? Bring back the good old days when women knew their place and homos were in the closet right? My kids and I had it FAR better off. Than my parents and I. The average Black person is better off today (pandemic aside). However the wealth gap bewteen Black and white people is larger. Right that comes from within. Here is part if the abstract of the paper @Delano shared: "...Corporate slavery is proposed to encompass such practices as prison labor, sweatshops, and human trafficking and forced migrant labor, which will be discussed and evaluated from both legal and ethical perspectives. We also provide an overview of the potential remedies and change factors surrounding these questionable labor practices."

Of course slavery is about economics (wealth), what else was it about? They were victims of genocide, but the people living here did not claim "ownership" of the entirely of the Americas. That claim is hyperbolic. You are CLEARLY too young (or privileged) to remember the crime ridden, under served urban ghettos of the 70s and 80s in places like NYC, Newark, DC, Philly, ... to make that statement.

We don't allow links to Amazon @Falabaleem

I always believed the opposite was true ... doing something you hate will send you to an early grave. Perhaps the converse is true too. While I never spent much time stressing, doing things that I do not enjoy, I suspect my appearance is more a function of genetics.

This is the opinion I hold as well. Racism is a weapon of class warfare.

I'm a strong advocate for email, in addition to what @O.W. wrote no comoany has a monopoly on email and they can be read on virtually any device. Generally however is a cost with maintaining large mailing lists. O.W., That is unheard of -- unless your list is very small and the subscribers are new. I say that because the vast majority of others will not get 100% open rates -- let alone click through rates.