Troy

If the dollar is dropped from being the world's Reserve Currency @Delano it is a wrap for the U.S. Amazon had a humongous market cap before they made a penny in profit. Wall Street knew Amazon was an emerging monopoly. I was too naive to understand this and old my share years ago. I was focused on profits. Elon must have something similar brewing. When SpaceX goes public buy ... though all the insiders will be the ones to make the real money.

Hey Fatima! Thanks for joining us. There are a few titles which employ satire (identified as such by the publisher)

This is actually old news, as the Defender killed its printed newspaper in July of 2019. I just learned about it last week. I try to maintain a list of Black owned newspapers. The Chicago Defender, founded in 1905, was perhaps the most prominent Black newspaper in the country (to bad The Defender, was not a beneficiary of Google's largess)

Yeah I like the Guardian too. To clarify: There were almost certainly never 200 Black-owned books opened concurrently in America. The number open today is still closer to 50 than 100. I indicated this, in error, in the past. The Guardian did not reach out to me for comment. If they did I would have told them. (Hey @Mel Hopkins in Journalism's heyday would this have fallen into the purview of fact checking to confirm the quote attributed to me? Or it okay to just say that, "AALBC said, blah-blah-bal?" Is it OK to leave it up to the reader to determine if I actually said that, or if it is even factually accurate?) My list, includes stores that are not all Black owned and stores that have closed. Stores are MUCH more likely to email when they open or not on the list,, and never email when they close. Here is a link to Marcus Books funder rasier: https://www.gofundme.com/f/marcus-books-anniversary-fundraiser

This these guys were from my neighborhood. I'll add the book to the site during my next upload.

As a webmaster the I can't emphasize the damaged caused by that particular type of error. The crazy this is that a 404 Error is a trival problem to correct -- it is inexcusable It led me to remove prominent link on my site to there on one of the sites most prominent pages, just search for "top black owned websites." I'm glad they are both back up. But the top news stories on Jet's site are years old, the "news" on Ebony's site look like ads for celebrity products, and both site are celebrity and entertainment driven.

Yeah I recently described Marus as my favorite book store. They do not sell coffee and danish, but they had tables of books and people who were willing to talk about the books and culture. The books they carried were not in any of the chain store or white run independents. They were one of the few stores of the type left in the country. There are a number of stores with online campaigns. The local community needs to step up. -- they are the ones who will lose the most if these stores fail. @Mel Hopkins maybe Google will save them too 😉

Never? I'd say corruption usually it wins. Do I really need to run down a list of evil and corrupt people and business who have won? Of course, but stressed out, impoverished, poorly educated, people don't have the luxury time, energy and mental capacity to contemplate bias in news. They are trying survive and find enough cheap diversions to get through life... Short of a complete reboot this problem is almost unsolvable. If someone is not excited about Joe Biden, unwilling to vote for IQ 45, and decides not to risk their lives by standing in line to cast a paper ballot for someone they believe will not make a difference in their lives -- I get it. I don't agree but it is really hard for me to beat someone up over it. @Delano I hope I lose out next bet, but since they can harpon any democratic candidate by trotting out somebody with a sexual abuse allegation from decades ago things really don't look so good. The fact that the media has focused so much attention on this (to drive revenue) is just part of a intractable problem we have in this country.

@Mel Hopkins, I don't dispute the fact; I just don't like it. The CDC says cigarette smoke kills more and 400K a year in the United States. The largest of these murderers, Phillip Morris, donates millions around the world for disaster relief, education, whatever... Jeff Bezos saved the Washington Post newspaper from failure, and indications are that he has not abused his ownership. But the arrow is in his quiver whenever he needs it. Michael Bloomberg tells Bloomberg News not to cover him -- even during the presidential bid that he financed out of his own pocket. No, I don't like any of this. But I know it is the American way. Google of all business SHOULD pay for news. They copy content from news site post the results on the SERP, hijacking traffic from the news sites. Google's monopoly (with Facebook) has forced news sites to buy advertising from Google making matters even worse! Google is, in a large part, responsible for the demise of newspapers and journalism along with it. They should have been broken up long ago -- their donations is window dressing designed to fool people that they provide some societal good, meanwhile they have laid waste to numerous websites and their print publications. Some call this progress, but the death of local journalism is the exact opposite of progress.

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...