Troy

Thanks @Maurice! I just ordered the document.

In the 22 years of running a discussion forum. I have never had two outages which have lasted more a day in three month period. The Details On Saturday afternoon while waiting for a flight I decided to upgrade the discussion forum's website software using my cell phone. Now a few years ago this would have been unthinkable, but today I can do quite a bit from my cell phone -- even some development. Unfortunately, during the upgrade my firewall halted the upgrade because it did not recognize my IP Address -- a great security measure, which requires me to whitelist the IP address I'm currently using. The problem is my cell phone, for some reason, would not properly display the screen which would allow me to whitelist the ip address I was currently using, so the upgrade could not be completed until I got back home and get technical support from the vendor. Sometimes I feel like the effort to keep this forum running is really not worth it... most people really do prefer the big corporate social media sites. I see successful forums like Lipstick Alley doing well so it gives me hope.

Hi @Andi I see the kickstarter campaign has now ended, and it received one $1 pledge. I am interested in what yiu think abiut that mode of fundraising. Seems these crowd funding sites are not nearly as popular as they once were.

Im not sure how I missed this post.

@Delano this post, despite the engagement does not help AALBC at all. The whole benefit goes to Facebook, because as of this morning only 37 people visited this link from Facebook and none of the visitors commented here. As of this morning only 39 people watched the youtube video clip. Essentially all of the engagement benefited facebook. Again, this is why I believe Facebook should compensated people who create the engagement on their platform I may have also harmed by brand; one of the commenters said that they almost unfollowed the site. I thought about replying, but decided against it. If someone would consider rejecting everything that I have done, because I shared a quote from one person, that they disagreed with, that person should not be following AALBC anyway. I read more of the comments. Someone wrote where were are all of Obama's critics like West and Smiley, why are they not criticizing Trump? People liked the statement? Tavis basically lost his platform and West has as been hyper-critical of Trump to suggest that West was only critical of Obama is just stupid and ignorant. Nowadays, I share a couple of links per week on Facebook. Facebook does not give those posts much visibility. It is funny Facebook showed this post 10 times more than my average post (see chart below). Facebook knew this post would stoke an emotional reaction encouraging engagement on their website, so they showed it to more people. You see the problem with the way Facebook works? Content producers see the nature of the of the posts that get the most engagement, then they create more content like it. Over time social media becomes biased to toward content like this. Not one person agreed with Anderson's quote or was even sympathetic to it. This creates the impression that all of my followers are rabid Obama worshipers. Anyone familiar with just discussion forum knows some people, including myself, has been critical of Obama. People make demonstrably false statements about Anderson, then others react to the false statements as if they were true, which makes the lie true -- this is how fake news is born No one probed deeper in the the statement or tried to understand why it was made. Facebook makes it easy not to do this

This was one of the responses posted on twitter. I read an article that Black people are disproportionately represented on twitter. That is too bad. I'm not sure what I need to do to get people to engage on this site; 65 people have visited this post in the last hour, but no one has commented. In the past hour 191 people on Facebook have followed the link, commented, shared, or liked/loved a comment. On twitter the engagement was far less 106 Impressions, 2 and 1 of each of the following (Replies, Retweets, Likes, and Detail expands). Both platforms are prompting me to pay to promote the posts. I don't paid to promote on social anymore -- I'm sure they hold back on showing my posts to my followers, holding my posts hostage, in an effort to bribe me to pay so that more of my followers can see the links I've shared...

One of the books that was suggested (via Facebook, SMH) was Other People’s Skin: Four Novellas by Tracy Price-Thompson and Taressa Stovall. Elizabeth Atkins, a contributor to the book, said colorism is more of an issue for Women, because women are judged more on their appearance than men. That is probably true, but I bet a dark skinned Black man -- especially a big one -- would probably disagree. These Brothers in just treated worse on every level -- especially by the criminal justice system.

“Barack Obama Didn’t Do a Darn Thing For Black People.” —Dr. Claud Anderson Cornel West expressed this sentiment throughout Obama’s Presidency despite aggressively campaigning for Obama. Black folks vilified West for his unrelenting critique of Obama. I wonder how history will record Obama's presidency vis-a-vis Black Americans. You can watch the complete interview here.

While researching this subject I found this video which discusses Wallace Thurman's novel The Blacker the Berry. It is interesting how Black families -- like my own -- where family members are all colors of the human skin color spectrum from passing for white to being blue black. The video below discusses Thurman's novel and colorism in general.

I'm building content around the issue of colorism and am looking for more books on the subject. Please reply with any books you might know about. Are there any books that discuss this issue from a Black man's perspective? Surely there must be some.

@Mel Hopkins, I watched the video and read the article -- an interesting story. So much talent went into the GPS project over a period of decades. Today our best and brightest go to Facebook and Goldman Sachs; what a waste of talent, but I digress... I like your advise because, you wrote, "Marketing doesn't dictate WHAT an author should write. It's just that the author should have a group in mind when they do." An author has to, otherwise they won't sell many books because they won't know who the audience is or how to reach them. Don't believe your family will buy your book in droves -- many will want the "hook up" 😉 Of course many writers only write books demanded by the market, and that is perfectly fine. Publishers often want to publish specific types of books because they have a particular aesthetic, sensiblity, mission, or are simply chasing percieved consumer demand. They then look for wrters to fit the bill. Strife between writers and publishers arise when there is disagreement between what an author writes and perceived consumer demand. The impacts everthing from cover design, the book's title, and the editing process. Somtimes the publisher is right, but they often get it wrong -- especially when it comes to Black books. Which is why we need more culturally Black publishers, editors, and booksellers.

Those were fine words; I hope they turn out to be true @Delano. I find sense a change for the better. I see Aubrey Doris is a numerologist, do you know him?

Thanks Mel!

I just finished listening to Donny Hathaway's Everything is Everything. It just just good tune builds up a tension and releases it. The lyric, "I hear voices" makes me think Hathaway was yelling us something.

Very concise! I wanna read this book! Was one actually written om this subject or was this just example?

The principals of Kwanza are sound, but principals alone are insufficient to effect change. Shoot, the Golden Rule would work if people would adhere to it.

Speaking of "authority" check out this book coming out next month:

@Word Lovers Is this a print publication? What is the deadline? Where can I send people to check the last issue out?

Hey @Delano, will there be any numerological significance to these days next year. 02/02/2020 02/20/2020 02/22/2020 I can image a lot of folks will plan significant event one them. February 2nd is a palindrome (assuming you can apply the term to numbers). How about people who turn 2, 20, or 22 on these dates on those days dates and live in the 202 area code? 🙂

Marketers in publishing houses tend to use social media for online promotion. This is easy, but it is not the best way to reach Black readers -- shoot it isn't even the best way to reach me and I can't promote book I don't know about. I can't tell you how many people discover a book, I thought was popular, for the first time on AALBC.com or through my newsletter. Brilliant.

Hey @Marion Hill here is a link to all the event on the "Circuit" that I'm aware of: https://aalbc.com/events/list.php/ The list also includes the festivals of many types around the world, but you have no problem identifying the event on the "Circuit." 😉 @Mel Hopkins I'm unsure too, but perhaps you are right.

Honestly, don't know if these are the oldest Black-owned websites. They are the oldest ones in my database of 300+ websites, which by my reckoning, is as good a source as any for this information. Of course it you are aware of a site I've missed please be sure to tell me. I'm mostly interested in larger content rich websites, not the site of an individual blogger, but if there is a Black blogger out there who has been be producing content for 20, 25 years or longer, on the same domain, I'm DEFINITELY interested in that writer. That said Howard University sites will be 30 years old next year -- that is ancient by web standards. Today I teach a college course in web design, most of my students were born after I started AALBC -- Howard's site is 8 years older than AALBC! Howard's domain was created a year before the web was made commercially available, so as a university they have an unfair advantage when comparing domain age to commercial entities. The Source is the oldest commercial website and is currently 26 Years, 1 Months). I'm actually trying to determine if the site is Black owned. I know the magazine was started by two white kids while students at Harvard, but the site appears to be owned by the Northstar Group whose owner ship is unclear to me. I've reached out to them to confirm ownership. The Network Journal's 25 year old website is the oldest confirmed-Black-owned, continuously running, website that I know of -- if is even older than the NY Times website. I know the owner of this site. In addition to running a website for 25 years they have been published a Magazine even longer. The Brother, Aziz Gueye Adetimirin, president of The Network Journal Communication, is a keen businessman!

For years I've been maintaining a list of the most popular Black-owned websites. That list of 50 websites is actually derived from a much longer list of over 300 websites. The idea was to track the web's largest Black-owned websites who attracted the most visitors. Again, I started the list years ago and expected it to grow, but to a point where it would be difficult to manage. Despite the pages being one of the most popular on the website, the list has actually been shrinking! I have to review the list periodically to check for websites that are no longer active. Usually the domains are quickly snapped up by other, often unrelated, websites trying to take advantage of the traffic obtained from backlinks from sites like mine or links lead to nowhere and are broken. In any event I have to check the links from time to time. This time I was disheartened to see many sites that I really liked disappear. I removed 20 websites from the list including, ChickenBones: A Journal, which was started in 2001, by Rudolph Lewis. We became friendly over the years as we started a few years apparty (AALBC started in 1997) and published similar content. His content will be a great loss to the web. I already reached out to him to avoid this. Another site I removed from the list, is MelaNet not because the domain is down, but the site has simply not updated in years and is full of broken links. Launched in 1997 MelaNet was one of the first Black websites that I can remember. It was also exciting to see because it produced content that I simply was not exposed to before the web was created -- it was as pro-Black and afrocentric as you could get. One of the better book sites on the web APOOO (A Place of Our Own), was started in 2008 and was in a class of book websites you do not see very much today. These sites were popular, well done, and driven my passionate readers. They provided reviews and interviews. Some of these sites migrated to social media, but those platforms are so restrictive and are a poor facsimile of the former websites. I could go on and on. I always lament the fact that the Web is a far less rich place due to the lost of indie websites. Even the indie websites that have survived that last 10 or 20 years are not as good as they can be. Clearly the average person on the web has no clue what has been lost -- otherwise there would be some outrage. I point to the corporate domination (ownership really) of the World Wide Web as the cause. I described in the past how Google, in a single day, took about 75% of my traffic (along with other Black owned book sites, newspapers and other entities). It took my site over 5 years to recover. Many of the other websites just folded or failed to recover. For many people today, the World Wide Web is comprised solely of Amazon, Google, and a few social media sites. There are still some good and potentially great websites. All we have to do it is take advantage of them.

Hey @Mitchell Z please complete the following forms one for an author profile and the other for your book's information -- thanks. @everyfebruary would you mind completing the same author profile I'll publish your review on AALBC bok reviews section -- thanks for sharing your thoughts with us.

Here is a banner I stumbled upon researching information on another author. I met this author at a “Chitlin Circuit” event, Black Authors and Readers Rock back in October. Yeah, three Amazon properties are promoted in the banner, but — and this is a big but — the author, Tamiya Davis, also promotes two Black owned booksellers; AALBC and Mahogany Books (who was also at the event)! This is the first time that I've even seen an author actively highlight two Black owned booksellers as a place where one can buy her book, which chronicles her near-death experience, From Fatal to Fierce. Now Tamiya never sent me this banner, but it is obvious I'd be more inclined to support author's who do this. I'm sure my friends at Mahogany Books feel the same 🙂 @B.D.C., the only silly question is the one not asked.