Troy

I don't want to suggest that acclaim by a broader audience isn't a worthy goal. But we can't place so much value on their acceptance that we feel diminished when they fail to recognize us. Nor can we afford marginalize the importance of celebrating ourselves.

SO you are saying the Black folks earning $10 an hour justifies enslaving people? That question might sound hyperbolic, but I mean it in all seriousness. To me that is like saying all the the enslaved african working in the big house, would lose their relative conform if we ended slavery. Well we don't need to take down the whole system, we just need to make it work better for more people. If Walmart were prevented from engaging in slavery, they would have to pay people for the work they do.

Cynique I have news for you it is the "best selling author or successful entrepreneur" who is LEAST likely to support and AALBC.com. Of course there are notable exceptions to this but the fact of the matter is that I survive thanks to the largess of individuals like yourself (and you done WAY more than you share to support AALBC.com). Rich authors don't need to buy ads from or otherwise directly support an AALBC.com. There are many reasons for this but I save that for a future post. But suffice it to say I get the support I need from folks like and Chris before I do from say a Toni Morrison or Walter Mosley... (this is not exactly true and here is why) @Cynique, do you think people in your personal sphere would recognize, or like your persona here? Do you think they would find her interesting? No one, as far as I know, from my personal world--even those in publishing, post here. Del and Mel are exceptions, but I have not seen either in a decade or longer. What we do here is an activity only a small percentage of the population can, will, or are interested it doing. This is why lurkers will always outnumber posters, that is just the nature of things.

When you say majority I assume you mean white folks. The fact of the matter is the folks our Black Monolith will need to rally against are a very small minority of folks. That technicality aside, there is no incentive for them to share anything. In fact, over the past 50 years they have increasingly shared less. The wealth disparity in the US. is off the freaking chain, comparable to the gilded age, worse than apartheid South Africa, and worse than most other industrialized nations. The Black Monolith does not have have to include all Black people in fact it does not need to include the majority of Black folks. We just need a critical mass of influencers, those with a platform to be on the same page. If we agree that Walmart, as an example, are engaged in slave labor (exploiting the free labor of incarcerated Black men), then we should be able to execute a boycott of Walmart. But right now many of our so called Black platforms are beholden to Walmart in the form of advertising, so they will not do anything to hurt an advertiser, even if they are enslaving other Black people.

At the moment I've decided to dedicate most of my resources to completing the web site upgrade and of course maintaining revenue generating activities, so I probably will not publish any new "free to the author" reviews until after the upgrade has been completed, early next year. But posting information about your book here was not a wasted effort. First, it does introduce your book to potential new readers. Second, an author who takes the time to post information about their book, in the fashion that you did, signals to me that this is someone serious about their work. This is why these are the only books I will consider reviewing. So even if your book is not reviewed, until next year, there is still a potential benefit to you. I know properly posting information about one's book here is a relatibvely low threshold to meet, but trust me, you'd be surprised a the caliber of requests I receive. You've demonstrated that you are already a cut above. I suspect your work reflects that as well. I am however continuing to publish commissioned book reviews. So if you want a book review published in 6 weeks or less. We have not stopped this service. You may learn more about it here: https://aalbc.com/reviews/reviewer_guidlines.htm#guaranteed

LOL. To be clear this is what I believe; we are all humans and race is a concept made up by racists. Blacks are not a monolith, any more than any other group, of more than a handful, of humans. Unfortunately, we live on a planet that marginalizes Black people. If we are to change this we have to work together, as if we were a monolith. Once we are treated was well as anyone else, we can go about our business doing our own thing.

Y'all know I don't do Facebook, but the way Facebook works you can't help but look at your wall. Facebook does a great job at showing me thing that would engage me, someones I can't resist, but most of the time I win the battle... Today I noticed a ton of arguing amongst the Black literati, you know the academics and writers of literature. Apparently some of them felt slighted over Bob Dylan winning a Nobel Prize—for literature no less. Much of the arguing centered around all the great Black talent that was surely overlooked in order to justify giving Dylan the award. It took a bit of restraint for me to not weigh in. I find it quite pathetic that we give europeans, so much power over defining who our important writers are. Yeah I know Dylan got $900K for the honor, but who gives a f-uck? If they honor our work fine, if not that is fine too. We define who is important to us not them.

Hi thanks again for the support. Sure I'm aware of Carl and actually shot video of her a few years ago:

Chris, expressing a fact or an idea that has negative implications does not make you negative. If that fact or idea is expressed to people who are unaware it, that actually makes you a positive. Yeah I guess the "crabs in the barrel" had to come from somewhere ans wasin't just pulled out of thin air. I just did not really see it in action myself until I started my business. Fortunatey there are enough people like you to allow AALBC.com survive. Like you, I try to help people and related business understand that by helping each other we help ourselves. I'm running another social media experient. I'm going to post photos of the top 100 bestselling authors on the site on social media This should be a point of pride for all of these authors, and should be a great selling point for their books for what are obvious reasons. I'm going to tag their photos on Facebook so that they will see the image. I will observe how many of the authors; Acknowledge the photo through a like or comment, Share the photo, and Use the accomplishment as a credential. For example by saying, "I'm a top 100 AALBC.com Bestselling Author." I know, from experience, the majority of authors will not take the first step, and virtually no one will take step number #3. #3 is actually the most important step, not just for AALBC.com but for everyone in the Black Book Ecosystem, because it acknowledges that we value and take pride our own institutions. This has been the Black book world's greatest failing. You see if the authors themselves say, "Hey I'm a top selling author on AALBC.com," this signals to the readers that they view it as an important accomplishment. If enough authors took this simple, and logical, step publishers, readers, and the media will take notice too. As Black owned institution are uplifted in the minds of the authors themselves the importance and our dependency upon european institutions for validation and acceptance becomes irrelevant.

I just started in earnest to begin the migration of all the older author pages to the website's new format, I've already done a bunch like Chris Burn's and Cynique's pages, but I still have over 700 more to do. Initially I'd planned to migrate the authors alphabetically, then I decided it would make much more sense to migrate them in order of prominence (and traffic), starting with the top selling authors. So I created a page which shows the top 100 bestselling authors. It is actually more than 100 because of ties, but all of these authors have made our bestseller's list at least 4 times. Right now there are 103 authors. I'm still working on the page, so I have not shared it with the outside public yet. There are actually a few more that have been excluded, like Willie Lynch (who never existed despite the book sales), and authors of European descent like E.L. James (who has plenty of platforms to celebrate her success). When I started the page I found the collection of photos displayed very compelling...beautiful if you ask me, so I decided to create of mosaic of the photos to be the default image of the 100 Bestselling author's page and to share via social media. It is just so interesting to me look at these photos. I took a good number of the shots myself over the years. I've met or interviewed most of the authors writers. I enjoyed many of their books, and some I will probably never read. Some have been super supportive of the website, others not so much. But at the end of the day I have sold a ton of their books--especially the top two rows of authors! These authors also skew to a period when Urban Fiction was the rage, which followed on the heals of the explosion of interest in Black literature. For example I don't sell as many of Zane's books as I used to, but because of the strength of sales of her books when Black literature was at it's peak, it seems unlikely anyone will ever pass her--she has made our bestsellers list 213 times! I actually uploaded this photo to Facebook, something have not done in close to a year. I did that so that I could tag all the authors, in the hope they will share the photo. I will create two more of these to include all 100+ authors and see which authors share the image.

Thanks fellas! I finished migrating all of the old book reviews, over 800 of 'em on Monday. It was pure drudgery , but I did get a chance to eliminate all the broken links to and improve the presentation of the book review and integrate them better with the rest of the websites content. Today I started migrating old author profiles to the new format. It is hard to estimate how long it will take but if I can get it done before thanksgiving I'll be happy. I started the current website upgrade almost exactly a year ago. Initially thought it would have about 6 months, it will take at least 18.

Chris I completely understand the difference between the two types of schools. I've sent kids to Syracuse University (SU) and The College of WIlliam and Mary (W&M), both schools have D1 football programs, both schools send athletes to the NFL. But the two program have insignificant differences: Tickets to an SU game can cost students over $100. Tickets to a W&M game are free for students. SU spends perhaps an order of magnitude more than W&M to maintain their program. SU, with there 50K seat domed arena, is analogous to a professional team in the region. I've seen high school with larger football stadiums than W&M's; W&M is more like an intramural program in comparison to SU. For these reasons and more I'll argue that W&M serves the Black student athlete better than SU, Yes, I'm talking about schools with the top programs. Because they have the best teams, are televised far more often, and are the programs most desired by high school athletes. I'm also talking about these school because they do the most damage, as the data shows. Yes! It is these schools, focused strongly on generating revenue, like an SU, that are the problems. I'm not talking about schools than don't give athletic scholarships, or run intramural programs, or don't otherwise exploit Black students. I'm not painting all college programs with the same broad brush. Can we draw that distinction here? I was a D1 athlete. I think athletics are great when it is not exploitive, as the top football programs in the country are. I prefer to use outside sources when looking at this subject. The NCAA's information is propaganda, generated to make itself look good--naturally. In fact Chris, you pointed out some differences in the way the NCAA tracks graduation rates. Of course this differences tend to make graduation rate look better and mask the problems I'm pointing out. But after reading what you wrote as far regarding the BCS schools, and they being the minor league for the NFL, I see we are on agreement for these programs. Players in the de facto minor leagues should be financially compensated--especially if they are not going to be educated. The Message Board This might sound like a jacked up thing to say, but if I depended upon the support of my family and friends for the success of this site, I would not have a business. But while I'm sure some of it is because of "hate," I think most of it is due to a simple lack of interest in Black literature or books in general. Now could more of my family and friends could go out their way to promote the site to those that might have an interest in the site's subject--even though they have no interest themselves, of course. Some do, but the vast majority don't. Are those that don;t haters? I dunno...maybe. Maybe they are just lazy. Some suggest that I should tell my family or friends, more frequently, or aggressively, what they need to do to support the site if they care anything about me. But making the that kind of appeal, to my family and friends, more than once, is not in my nature. @CDBurns how supportive of your businesses have you family and friends been? Do you find the kind of hate that you feel plagues me? FORTUNATELY, I do get a great deal of support from folks who I don't know, for from people I'm only acquainted with, or from people I've discovered through the site. You, Cynique, Pioneer and Harry, for example, have been for more supportive of this site than anyone outside my nuclear family. And you have all been for more supportive of this discussion forums than ANY of y family and friends. You still make these forums interesting, and by extension you help make the discussion forums possible--which benefits other writers and readers in ways Ihe may describe in more detail in another post. The ability to aggregate support from those outside the immediate influence of family and friends is what makes the web so powerful, and it sadly is a power we largely choose not to use.

Chris I'm not dwelling on the negative, I'm pointing it out. As you know much of what I do highlights the great many things Black folks have accomplished. I'm with you on your points #1 and #2, point #3 regarding solutions warrants deeper consideration. You can't develop a solution to fix something if aren't even aware anything is broken. I submit one of the main reasons things don't get better for most of us is that we simply don't know that something is wrong.. If we happen to know something is wrong, we have no clue what the causes are. Even after knowing there is a problem and what the causes are, people may still choose not to do anything about it because implementing a solution might be hard, uncomfortable, or require sacrifice... Like the problem of addressing global warming. If the victims of the lottery, tobacco companies, predatory lenders, college athletics, and the Huffington Post, don't recognize they are being victimized, then things can only get worse... much worse. Of course I recognize not everyone will die from cancer or heart disease from smoking but this fact does not make cigarette smoking a good thing. Now the NCAA, who is responsible for ensuring that Black boys continue to be victimized, is a propaganda machine, plain and simple. Chris a couple of studies have shown (I quoted figures in an earlier above) a far less rosy picture than what NCAA does. One of the conclusions of from the study I linked to says “Perhaps nowhere in higher education is the disenfranchisement of Black male students more insidious than in college athletics” So the fact of the matter is Black student athletes at the most desireable programs graduate at a lower rate than Black non-student athletes. Again, we can't even begin to deal with this problems without recognizing that there is indeed a problem. The fact that this is a serious problem shouldn't even be up for debate, but again most people are oblivious to what is going on.

This is definitely a subject visitors to this site find important. There is another title, The Tithing Hoax, which is the #4 all time bestselling book on this website--and this was without promotion. In fact, I discovered the book based upon sales alone.

I hear you Chris and I too celebrate our successes, but if we ignore the reality of how we are being exploited we will continue to be exploited. Black boys, among the top 25 BCS schools, are 3% their school's student bodies, but 60% of the football players. Only 1/2 of these students will gradate in 6 years. The figures at many HBCUs are far worse. I have only anecdotal data to support this but I suspect most of the degrees awarded do not serve these boys very well. We also know many of these students take no show classes; and are given degrees that are essentially worthless. Despite the propaganda the NCAA propagates. Meanwhile, these young men make millions for their "schools" and their coaches earn exorbitant salaries often taking home more than the school's chancellor. This is not a matter of seeing the glass half full or half empty. This is objectively a bad situation for black student athletes collectively, and this is how we have to treat it Anything less is a disservice. But I guess we enjoy rooting for our home team so much we really don't care about our own exploitation. I won't even go into the physical toll and brain damage many of these boys will suffer. A handful widely successful pros or a free "education," does not justify this exploitation. This is one reason students athletes must be paid for their service in additional to being properly educated. Again, this is no different than the argument I make against the huffington posts model of exploiting writers, or how Amazon, Google, and Facebook, lift content from wikipedia and use it for for profit--content that people have written for free. The real cost of this is everything we will loose as a result this exploitative environment dominated by a handful of corporations. The student athlete that would have graduated with a meaningful degree, the terrific website we will never see, or the great discussion forums that will never launch. We think what we have is good, but it could be so much better... especially for us.

Oh OK. I just did a search on this site for info on the Seminole Wars, and the only results point back to the conversations we had here. I did a quick search on Amazon for books on the subject and they all a appear to be written by white men. When I get a chance I'll research a good book on the subject and add it to the website. It is too important an aspect of Black history not to have a book on the subject here on the site.

OK, Facebook got me today. Every time I log in to Facebook to reply to responses to my posts, I see photos posted from several years ago; from a time when I actively shared personal shots on the platform, appear at the top of my wall. The two images below were there this morning: Both shots were taken in a brownstone (a large townhouse, attached on both sides) I owned in Harlem for about 10 years. During that time I hosted a number of events. I held film screenings in my backyard, a reading series called the Brownstone Series, and for over a year I hosted a photography exhibit. The image on the left is me giving a tour of the photo exhibit of Black writers. The image on the right was taken about 7 years ago, but it could have been taken 15 years ago or today. My morning routine is largely unchanged; a cup of coffee, the newspaper, and me parked behind the screen of a computer. I've sacrificed the brownstone, a well-paying corporate gig, to be able to run AALBC.com full time, so I don't host events now. Money from a good paying job, hosting events, and a big home are nice too but these would be sufficient to motivate me to dedicate the time and energy needed to run an AALBC.com. For the past year, I've probably put in 60 hours a week or more to upgrading the website. I would never have done this for a corporation. While I've had some interesting corporate gigs over the years, I've never cared enough about any of them to put in the amount of energy I put into AALBC.com. I know part of my motivation is freedom. Since I've been running AALBC.com I have pretty much-done anything I wanted to do. In recent years this has meant some financial pressures. But what is the alternative? To get another 9 to 5? One could make a good argument that would be a great idea and that I'm spoiled. No one has ever said that to me; it is an internal battle. The culture judges folks not by what they do, but how much money they have. Over the course of running AALBC.com, I've met many brilliant people who were close to being impoverished. I know brilliance is not a function of the amount of money one has amassed, but being part of the corporate world for over two decades, this is a mentality that I've fought hard get rid of over the years. I also know how much one makes is definitely not a function of the relative value they provide. Indeed many, particularly in financial services, cause great damage while reaping tremendous personal wealth. Still, people are judged on wealth regardless of how it was acquired. More importantly, money is also a source of power, without it, you can't accomplish much. Money has to be a function of what I do, but again it is not the driver. I also know I'm motivated by doing something that is positive for Black folks. I know some Black folks like to say, "Black people are not a monolith." To me, that person is trying to communicate that they are not part of larger Black community, that they are somehow different, better perhaps. Meanwhile Black owned business disappear and the opportunities for poor Black to escape their situation go the same route. Black folks have to be a monolith if we are ever going to do something for not just ourselves, but the most impoverished amongst us. Hmmm... all I intended to do was post a couple of photos and keep it moving, but looking at them conjures up these thoughts and more. If you've read this far thanks for indulging me.

You are welcome Dee, and I'm glad you accepted my unprofessional opinion in the spirit that it was intended. You can a post that is quite feature rich, including videos. While there is a limit no the size, no one has ever exceeded it. If you create an account you can copy and paste from a formatted document, like MS Word, and most of the formatting will be preserved. Thanks for sharing.

Chris I would be very careful in confusing what we practice here in the United States with capitalism. What we have is an oligarchy; in which a handful of people control everything. This is not capitalism, nor is it democratic. Our friends at Google can put me out of business tomorrow. But worse there is NOTHING that any other Black person, or group of Black people, who would do to stop it. Of course this does not have to be the case, but we lack the desire to control our own destinies. So for now, I serve at the largess of Google. Also, and please consider this carefully, when you write, "... in small pockets their [sic] are extraordinary success stories and they are becoming more common." This is a myth. Yes there are some successes, but they exist to create the illusion that success is possible, which is necessary to keep the ponzi scheme going. It is worse than the myth of professional sports, where Black kids in schools across the nation believe they have a chance to become a professional football player. Sure there is a chance, but it extremely slim and even if they make it they'll last on average 2.5 years. The result is that so much talent that could have been used in other ways is wasted in pursuit of something that is unlikely. The kid who wasted their time pursuing football would have been better off doing something with their brain... The same goes for musicians it is fall less likely for a musician to make a good living today than it was in 1990. Again, there are successes we can all point to but the reality is that there are a great many very talented musician who will stuck struggling with the dream of making it. The same goes for webmasters of Black book websites. This is no different the lottery, sure someone will win, but the VAST majority of us will loose. It makes no financial sense for anyone to play the lottery given the odds. But again the marketing and promotion of it dupes us into believing that it makes perfect sense to play. Indeed I'm sure someone reading this is thinking what harm does the lottery cause--and that is my point. The amount of wealth the lottery extracts from poor communities is staggering! Nothing is returned to the community as a result--except for a pipe dream. We aren't even the ones who profit from the sales of lottery tickets in most cases! You know you are in a poor community when you go into a grocery store, run by someone not black, and the most prominent thing you see is a lottery machine and cigarettes. We are in a battle for the very minds of our people. Our biggest problem is we don't even recognize who our opponent is...

On October 10th, we in the Black community, celebrate Dr. Ivan Van Sertima. His master work, THEY CAME BEFORE COLUMBUS, is required reading in our community. It should be read by all Americans. Ivan Van Sertima builds a pyramid of evidence to support his claim of an African presence in the New World centuries before Columbus. Combining impressive scholarship with a novelist s gift for storytelling, Van Sertima re-creates some of the most powerful scenes of human history: the launching of the great ships of Mali in 1310 (two hundred master boats and two hundred supply boats), the sea expedition of the Mandingo king in 1311, and many others. In They Came Before Columbus, we see clearly the unmistakable face and handprint of black Africans in pre-Columbian America, and their overwhelming impact on the civilizations they encountered.

"Unrelenting" LOL! The other stuff seems pretty insightful, I don't know how accurate it is, but if it was right on the money, I would not be surprised at all. If Sara did write a book on the seminole wars, it defies logic that she never posted information about it here. It wasn't that Sara wanted to put a positive spin on all things Chicago, it had to be the positive spin her way. This is what made it literally impossible for me to dialog with her. Recall I wrote Chicago, not Harlem, should be considered the Black capital I sited things like Ebony, Third World Press, etc, and Sara disputed and shot down my reasoning by citing some inconsequential mural, as if I was unfamiliar with either city. Still I learned some things as a result of Sara posting if not directly, indirectly; while I was familiar with the seminole wars, I was promoted to look into it more as a result of Sara's posts, and learned more about them as a result. President Jackson was a busy and wicked little devil... I think the Sara experience also helped me become a better moderator too

It took me 17 years to create the first 1,00 author profiles, but just 8 months to create the next 1,500. Of course the profiles are at varying degrees of completeness at this point, but the scope, and potential of the website has increased by orders of magnitude in recent months Of course I'm at the mercy of big websites like Google and the support of my target audience, but things look promising!

Hi Dee, Thanks for contributing your poetry. I'm far from a poet critic but here are my comments. How the poem appears of the page matters I've guessed at how the poem should look and have pasted it below. The poem is quite literal, but for me it makes me think about the whole issue of "no" means "No" as it related to rape. You defy the political correctness of the cast-in-stone, "No means no" with the more realistic and nuanced; No can mean really mean yes depending on the timing . What sentiment did you intend to convey? Timing is everything when 'No' means 'Yes' No means yes when he places his lips on the left side of her neck, just below her ear gently places his hands on the small of her back and presses her body against his so close that she can hear his every breath and she tingles from the full body workout. Timing is everything when 'No' means 'Yes' No means yes when she moans in delight as his tongue gently surveys the inside of her mouth in search of her 'spot' and she submits to the pleasure. Timing is everything when 'No' means 'Yes'. No means yes when he places her body on top of his, and SHE takes control placing his hands over his head, looks into his eyes and say 'It's time'.

…“gossiping over the back fence or dishing dirt at the beauty shop, solving the world's problems in the barbershop or shootin the bull at a pool hall, praisin the lord in church or fellow shipping with friends, bringing snapshots to work or sharing favorite dishes, having a heated conversation at a cocktail party or an argument with your brother-in-law at Thanksgiving dinner” That's it Cynique! I have a buddy that makes this argument and as result embraces social media--he is all in. Again the problem I have is that social media has monetized this natural human activity that you've described so well. They have monetized it to the point that all other indie site must struggle and fight to survive. Again Black sites must fight harder than any others, because we lack the supportive infrastructure that majority run indies run have. This is why I have opted out, for the most part, of social media for personal use and I limit my activity for business matters to posting links to my website (btw thanks for sharing ). I simply refuse to contribute to my own demise... Still, I don't assume Facebook will continue to be as popular as it is today, next year, or in five years. Now I know the typical Facebook user does not care about this stuff but, we know Facebook's reach for publishers is down; this article calculates by 42%. Facebook has one significant difference than the other massive websites like Amazon or Google: I have only paid Facebook, while I have gotten a check from Amazon and Google every month for well over a decade. Plus Google drives more traffic to AALBC.com than Facebook ever will. Companies like Facebook are like Ponzi schemes; they can't continue forever, extracting wealth from people and return nothing in return. Now if Facebook starts paying people in some fashion I'll feel differently. Until then we will continue to be taken to taken to the cleaners.

New Film Review: MAYA ANGELOU: AND STILL I RISE An Intimate Look at the Life of Iconic Poet, Writer, and Activist: