Troy

Hey @TSegal are you principally involved with https://blackizbeautiful.com/ or https://ubuntufam.com/ ?

@Delano, true and Black folks are not part of the group that defines morality. On this point my beliefs are more inline with @Pioneer1's

I put Dabiri's book into the newsletter as a recommended read, it got a lot of clicks and a lot of people watched the video, which is not surprising. @Pioneer1, as you well know "caucasian controlled media" is responsible for any person who represents what you call "Afroamericans." Black people no longer wield that kind of power.

Yeah, pretty much.

In Costco yesterday the woman checking ids at the entrance was wearing a crocheted mask. Is that really better than nothing? Florida is opening back up.

@O.W. Showe, I had an ongoing relationship with Amazon for the better part of two decades before I really understood what was happening. I floated a survey, several years ago in an effort to understand the pros and cons of boycotting Amazon. The reactions of those who would not boycott Amazon, where enough for me to decide not to boycott them at the time. Today, none of those reasons are compelling enough for me to continue doing business with Amazon. In fact, many of the reasons provided are actually reasons NOT to do business with Amazon. Here is the bottom line: you can not support Amazon and support independent booksellers at the same time. The two are mutually exclusive activities. Authors and readers have to chose, they can do only one. Look, even I as the most ardent supporter of indie bookstores I know, I did not appreciate that I was doing indie book sellers -- and even AALBC -- a disservice buy sending readers to Amazon to buy books posted here. If I had the time, and talent, I would write a book to explain to all authors why dealing with Amazon exclusively is a bad deal not just for them, but Black books collectively. One thing I have seen over and over is the fact that any benefit an individual may derive from Amazon (or any website with a monopoly) is that benefit typically short lived. The chart below shows affiliate commission I earned from Amazon over the last two months. Yes, I know I said I'm boycotting Amazon, but AALBC is a massive site while I've dropped 99%+ of links to Amazon some persist. Sales of advertisers also link to Amazon. The charts shows commission earned from 63 books of various formats. The amount of the retail sales and commissions earned. First you'll notice that the average sales price of a book is $4.98 (this is the price the author shares a percentage of and that by itself should be alarming). My average commission is 22 cents -- yes I earned less than a quarter for every book sold. Here is why: Amazon aggressively pushes ebooks, a product they enjoy effectively monopoly. While some ebooks sell for $9.99 or more, most sell for 99 cents (or are even given away). Amazon pays 4% commission on ebooks, so I made $7.84 on the sale of 49 ebooks or roughly 16 cents for each ebook sold. The value of the traffic I sent to Amazon is worth FAR more than what I was getting in return. So I stopped sending them traffic. You can readily see that with a sales mix like this even with a sales volume two full orders of magnitude more commissions from Amazon are paltry. Revenue to authors and publishers are much lower as well. There are many myths Amazon benefits from. Here are just a few Amazon Gives Authors Distribution No, not really. Sure you can find the book in Ingram database (the world's largest distributor), but the terms are horrendous. No returnable (usually a nonstarter) and the discounts are too low. Whenever I see a book with a 15% discount from Ingram I know it is an Amazon published book. Not bookseller is gong stock titles with these terms -- they are not even profitable for me to sell on the web. The increases the Discoverability of Books Bullshit, I learned about the books I was interested in discovering much more easily when I could rely on a number of large Black book sites. Few memain today, and none are as extensive as AALBC -- and I'm a team of one. But still others are great sources of information looking for quality books for children -- The Brown Bookshelf is great. I still rely on sources like the New York Times Book Review, Publishers Weekly, word of Mouth, and information provided directly from publishers, publicists, and authors. Amazon is great when you know exactly what you are looking for, but not to discover something that has been truly vetted Amazon has the Best Prices for Books First, aside from eBooks the majority of physical books I sold on Amazon were fulfilled by 3rd parties. Often these 3rd parties sold used books as new (the authors does not get paid). Sometimes books were pirated (obviously authors does not get paid). Sure Amazon famously discounts really popular titles like Michelle Obama's book -- indeed selling it at a loss. The majority of our bookare are not discounted and frequently as you might expect. Amazon is recent years is focuses on their ebooks sales and making money pushing orders to 3rd parties and taking a cut of those sales. Amazon does not lose in the scenario so they can afford to use popular books as a loss leader. I could go on... There is definitely an opportunity for booksellers, but we have to improve, but we can't improve without the support of readers and authors. Wall Street will not fund us for a decade or more, as we lose money building a monopoly by undercutting competitors. In return authors will have more platforms where books can be discovered and readers will have more choice. Authors and publishers will make more money. No one, other than Amazon, benefits, from Amazon's monopoly. On a personal note: I have long since learned that Amazon was not the cheapest place to buy products, so I don't need to give them $120 for the privilege of buying something from their website. If there is a Amazon original show -- I can do without watching it. So cancelling Amazon Prime was a no brainer, a low hanging fruit way to save 10 bucks a month 🙂 Sorry for any typos I'm pressed for time...

When Fox is viewed as an organ of the republican party, MSNBC is viewed as the mouthpiece of the democratic party, and local journalism is all but dead, I hold little hope that the government will do anything about FOX "News." People could stop watching it, but that seems unlikely too... I think we have a better chance of launching a boycott of Amazon than a boycott of Fox News.

It is a good thing I clicked the link @Mel Hopkins I initially thought you were referencing Black Voices the site that AOL took over and the Huff Post ultimately killed (if memory serves). I do track Black Voice News here on AALBC. Sure get the money while the getting is good. But I can't ignore the fact that journalism is increasingly dependent upon the largess of the very entities that help destroy it. Facebook's platforms are almost single handedly responsible for propagating the 5G WIFI, Black people are immune, created in a lab, and God know what other Covid conspiracy theories. How many lives were lost as a result? Will a 100 million dollar cut of their profits -- which be will reduce their tax liability -- makeup for the havoc they caused? I do not think so. Sure take their money, but lets be clear, it is blood money.

... and that is exactly what is happening. There was an interesting issues on On The Media which spoke to the impact of the of local journalism. It describes how politicians are just doing crazy things because no one is watching them. The old business model no longer supports local news reporting. All the advertising dollars that used to go to local newspapers is going to Facebook and Google, obviously those two companies are not covering what goes on in city hall. It is a very serious problem and... ...people are getting run over.

In its day, the Harlem Book Fair 2000, was arguably the premier Black book fair. It certainly was 20 years ago. Read more about that particular book fair. In the past decade, not so much. I missed the last couple of years and I lived in Harlem at the time! A book could, and I believe should, be written about the Black books in the 21st century. If would be a tale of unfulfilled potential and promise, a story of the hope for agency and the ability to write and record our own history and stories. Maybe even the development and growth of more institutions like Johnson Publishing rather than the loss of them. The story is far from over and I think the pandemic is forcing people to reevaluate what is important to them and change their behaviors accordingly. If anything good comes of this pandemic that will be it. Over the past couple of days. I've been sharing photos of events AALBC has covered and participated in 20 years ago. I'm been trying to help people appreciate that by giving Amazon all of our business that platforms like AALBC will die, or never emerge. If that happens who will chronicle our stories, record our events? Amazon will never do it. We have already lost many websites with valuable information. There are two that immediately come to mind, sites whose articles and reviews are likely lost forever. I have always argued that the web is a less rich place because of Amazon and other massive corporate sites. In a recent interview on the Brown Bookshelf, I offered the following tips, "Three Tips for Children’s Book Creators and Lovers to Make a Difference." The tips apply to all authors and book lovers: Tip #1: Authors, When Telling Readers Where They Can Buy Your Book, Recommend an Independent Book Store Everyone knows you can buy a book from Amazon, but Amazon is not your best cheerleader. Indie bookstores are your most loyal supporters and we love authors who recognize this and return the love. Now if you are afraid of playing favorites, you’ll never go wrong by saying, “Buy at your favorite independent bookstore,” or “Buy wherever books are sold.” Now if your book is only available via Amazon, understand that you have effectively cut ties with your most ardent supporters. Tip #2: Readers, Buy Your Books From an Independent Bookseller I do not know a single bookseller who sells books to get rich. We sell books because we want to uplift our culture. The books we curate and put on our shelves (virtual and physical shelves) are there because we feel they are important. I’m not saying that indie booksellers do not have a profit motive – of course we do, but it is not our only motive. Stores that are purely profit driven have never served the Black community in the long term, they only extract wealth without ever contributing back into the community. Tip #3: Authors and Readers: Social Media is Good, but the Rest of the World Web is Great Visit some other sites that are related to your books. Join in the conversation and share their content with others. Sites like The Brown Bookshelf are a gift that cannot be replicated on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, or any of the most popular social media platforms social media platforms. Over the past decade we have lost countless book sites (related article: Black Book Websites Need Love Too). Again these site are the best promoters of children’s literature, they write the critical reviews, they interview the authors, they host and cover events, they identify and sell you the books you are most likely to enjoy. These sites are not driven by algorithms optimized to extract the most wealth from you, but by people who are about both the books and the people who read them. FYI: The photos are small and low resolution because 20 years ago, big images took too long to download. Harlem Book Fair 2000 National Black Writers Conference 2000 The National African American Cultural Expo Philadelphia 1999

We are all learning @O.W. Showe thanks for sharing part of your story here!

I think the answer to your own question is embedded in your analysis. Lying is natural we all have done it for a variety of reasons, often to hide something -- like who we'd had sex with. Yes it seems like that, but I think people find the "JOY" in sex and are only lying about it to keep from being out in the open. Of course! Many Black people, born in countries colonized by Europeans, hold on to the belief that sex is only to be engaged in by married people of the opposite gender -- everything else is a sin punishable by damnation! The crazy thing is that most of those colonizers, the English, the Dutch, dispensed with those beliefs long ago. Obviously, the actual behavior of most people files in the face with the culturally held belief of lifelong monogamy. People are not interested in parading their heathen ways for others to judge so they lie and sneak around.

Yeah I would not link to the website either. Honestly, I wouldn't even worry about the one star review I doubt many people will read it as the site does not get very much traffic. I would focus on the positive reviews written by platforms that have an audience. The orange hump in traffic was due to paid advertising. Don't be swayed by the large number of backlinks 95% of them come from a single website!

Now when @Pioneer1 and I said the things this sister is saying in the book. We were excoriated as being mansplainers and clueless about Black beauty and women's hair. So I learned to just keep my mouth shut on the subject. I did not know that Beyonce was also known as the "Queen of the Weave." Again, if a Brother said that he'd be dismissed as a sexist misogynist 😉 At any rate, I discovered this sister, Emma Dabiri ,through a book she has coming out next month, Twisted: The Tangled History of Black Hair Culture. Sure, the subject matter is well trod, and I'd be surprised of there are any revelations for Black women over 10, but it made me think of conversations on this forum. Perhaps it is written for white women... I dunno. Does Emma Dabiri's complexion, in contrast to the woman on the book's cover, say anything to you?

People in this camp consider themselves social liberals and fiscal conservatives. This seems to imply you are socially conservative as well. Seriously, most of the views you express here are pretty conservative Pioneer. Have you ever considered that?

I hope this is not true., for a lot more people will die as this means there is effectively no immunity. You just have to subject yourself to whatever is out there and hope for the best...

Technically Jeff Bezos owns it, but that is mincing words. Perhaps. Hell if I know. I guess the critics are concerned with the optics, sending false or mixed messages. My local Costco was handing out free masks last week as they now require people to wear them in the store, meanwhile restaurants are opening up across the city at 25% capacity I believe. The cloth and surgical masks, as I'm sure you have read, do not protect the wearer from contracting the virus. You need an N95 mask for that. It does however help prevent a carrier from infecting others, but the masks have to be worn properly, people need to wash their hands and stay away from others. We have to do all of it, but we can't because people are suffering -- not from the virus -- but shitty living conditions exacerbated by the pandemic.

For the sake of ease of visitors, @O.W. Showe, I decided to embed your "review of your review " below. Having published more than 1,000 books reviews over the years I have published my fair share of unfavorable book reviews. Some authors react as if I have murdered their first child there are a couple of authors who give me shade for an unfavorable review I published -- though they never admit it (I could be wrong but I doubt it). One guy took a negative review I published and ran with it. Used it to draw more attention to his work. Now if I were to review, your review, of your review. It would be helpful to know where the review was published. Embedding youtube video shared above (for the same reasons). I like the Youtube version better 🙂

Welcome To America How are things down under Del? Are y'all on lock down?

Poem, “Wanda Why Aren’t You Dead“ from Wicked Enchantment: Selected Poems by Wanda Coleman:

There were three books written by or about Black people that won Pulitzer Prizes last week. There was one book written by a brother of european descent which looks very interesting. I was unfamiliar with Sweet Taste of Liberty. The other two books, especially Whitehead's, has gotten a ton of attention both here on AALBC and the mainstream media (who just love him to death).

#WTA

@Pioneer1 you can't kill something that is not alive... you can kill the host, but that sort of defeats the purpose. All we need is for this thing to start changing up like the seasonal flu and it game over.

@Pioneer1 I'm meant the word "Afro-Latinx." I just never saw it written. I took enough Spanish to know what you are talking about. I prefer Latino and Latina over Latinx, which now requires you to write or say more words communicate gender, it is less efficient. The real pressure for the change came from those who reject the binary gender designations. However making words less clear is not a good solution.

Pioneer AALBC reps Black People no matter where the come from. Most recently, I had an intern profile some Afro-Latinx (did I just make that word up) writers who are prominent in their respective communities or countries but not well known widely Poet, Juan Boria Jesus Colon, Writer, Activist, Father of the Nuyorican Carolina Maria de Jesus, Writer Novelist, Playwright, Enrique A. Laguerre Nuyorican Poet, Tato Laviera Paulo Lins, Writer Author, Poet, Mayra Santos-Febres Historian, Writer & Activist, Arturo Alfonso Schomburg Author, Poet, Piri Thomas Of course there are many others here. I could not listen to the interview. After Charlamne told the Amara she should have offered to suck that guys d-ck I just moved on. It was frustrating to hear them expound on ignorance. I'm positive they know better but they were playing dumb to appeal to the masses. There aren't huge platforms owned for Black people in any country run by Europeans.