Troy

Hi @Mel Hopkins, I asked about the customized thank you page for your PayPal transactions, not because of customer service, but because it give me a place where I can have you drop some code to actually track the source of a transaction, alternatively you can use Google's Tag Manager on your website. Please send me the URL of your thank you page. My goal is to allow both the bookseller and the publisher/author to know when a sale takes place--unlike Amazon where you have to trust what they tell you. Mel I can handle your printing needs. The sweet spot would be about 200 books in terms of bang for your buck, but I do fewer at a very competitive price plus you get a finished book to review before your job is started, so the results are guaranteed--no production snags: https://aalbcprintsbooks.com/ Me That may be because you are not that type of book buyer. For example, I'm not a "shopper." I never go to the mall and look around to see if something strikes my fancy. When I go to the mall I do so because I need something, and when I find it I'm out. Some readers are this way. Others may go to the store with just a general idea or not idea at all. I've purchased many books because they were sold to me by a book seller. I in turn have sold that same book to many others. I'd bet money Penguin had salespeople who pitched books to distributors to sell to stores. I discover more books through Ingram than I do through publicists.

@Mel Hopkins, I currently have code on the site which allows me to link directly to authors site for buying a book, as I have for your new book: So You Want to Be a Flight Attendant: A Memoir. I'm going to update the code so that all other options to buy the book are removed so that only the author's link is an option Ultimately I'm going to reach out to you and anyone else I do this for to create an affiliate programs so that I (or any other bookseller) can be paid for the sale. Right now I'm think about keeping it easy and cheap, say a $1 a sale. What do you think about that? It is FAR less than what Amazon takes, and can be scaled across all other websites. I'm working with an author I know to work out the process, so that the work on the author's end is trivial--otherwise no one will do it. Mel, when someone buys your book they are sent to PayPal, have you created a customized thank you page? I'm thinking about showing others how they can track where sales come from. Basically you'd just pay AALBC.com (or anyone who sells you book) a $1 for each tracked sale. I can set it up so that we both see this in real time. Let me know if this is something you are interested in doing? Also what is your wholesale discount? If indie authors and publishers boycott Amazon by themselves without the support of readers, I'm afraid readers will just buy other books. Only the indie author/publisher will be hurt and Amazon will be un effected. Reader really have to be part of the effort. I know at least 50 people have filled out the questionnaire from this afternoon, but I have not looked the results yet. Those results will determine if I move forward with this effort.

New York submitted several locations to Amazon. No one thinks these things through. I considered trying to boycott all of Amazon but figured no one would be willing to sacrifice that. I thought by just boycotting the bookstore everyone who is affected by this might consider at least doing that. I heard the NAACP was motivated to this action because some celebrity was booted from first class...SMH I'm sure American Airlines won't be affected in the least bit. They'll offer the obligatory empty apology-- if they haven't already so and promise to put in procedures to avoid any recurrences in the future...yawn.

Power is not always in the form of job title. Men might have power over women because of age; one and can exploit younger less experienced women. Men can exert power over women with lower self esteems. Of course men are physically more powerful than most women, etc. So you flirt with women in a higher position @Pioneer1? That is insubordination as well as harassment. In a corporate environment you might have been fired I was sexually harassed by a woman but she was low class--not poor, just common, and did not know any better. I ignored her the best I could for she was a contract employee and would not be around very long. Today, almost today 30 years later, I would have just shut her down--she was not attractive enough for me to sleep with. Sleeping with someone is a bad way to decide to promote someone. I prefer to make the decision based upon qualifications and merit. Beside you open yourself of for being used when you do that. It you don't get the promotion or the raise you have no recourse.

“(October 24, 2017) – The NAACP, the nation’s original and largest social justice advocacy organization, has released the following statement today announcing a travel advisory warning African Americans about their safety and well being when patronizing American Airlines or traveling on American Airlines flights: “The NAACP for several months now has been monitoring a pattern of disturbing incidents reported by African-American passengers, specific to American Airlines. In light of these confrontations, we have today taken the action of issuing national advisory alerting travelers—especially African Americans—to exercise caution, in that booking and boarding flights on American Airlines could subject them disrespectful, discriminatory or unsafe conditions. This travel advisory is in effect beginning today, October 24, 2017, until further notice.“ This reminds me of the last NAACP advisory to avoid MIssouri. One of the four examples to justify this action was the following: “An African-American woman and her infant child were removed from a flight from Atlanta to New York City when the woman (incidentally a Harvard Law School student) asked that her stroller be retrieved from checked baggage before she would disembark.“ The NAACP seems to be swifty careening into irrelevancy. Maybe I'm being too hard, but these two issues seems to be relatively minor ones to be preoccupied to be throwing the whole weight of the NAACP behind. All of these issues are thing that people can actually handle on their own. What the NAACP is asking us to do is something Black folks do anyway. We already know to exercise caution. I going to reach out to the NAACP and see if they will join in and support my proposed boycott of the Amazon's bookstore. I just wish they would stop issuing these toothless advisories. Like the boy who cried wolf no one will take these seriously--assuming anyone is taking them seriously now.

The New York Post reported yesterday; "Colin Kaepernick has inked a book deal worth just over $1 million with Random House imprint One World, Page Six has exclusively learned. One World’s headed by book world superstar Chris Jackson, who also publishes Jay-Z and Ta-Nehisi Coates. He launched One World last year." One World was founded in 1992 and was on the leading edge of imprints created to meet the demand of books dedicated to African Americans; a period which only lasted about a decade. One World has been relaunched, and Chris Jackson has been named Publisher and editor-in-chief of One World, which arguably makes him the most powerful Black man in mainstream publishing. It will be interesting to see how this book sells. It will probably make the NY TImes Bestsellers list because the publisher has the wherewithal to make that happen given the subject, but to earning out a million dollar advance will be a challenge. But even if the book does not earn out One World can still make a tidy sum. But time will tell. Maybe Chris can bring another dimension to the story; Colin being blacklisted from the NFL, how 45 changed the narrative, and how the coverage of football games has steered completely away from the National Anthem. Well if One World profits from this particular book, at least two Black men will benefit from Colin's protest.

The “Black Book Ecosystem” refers to the independent Black professionals responsible for getting books into the hands for readers. This includes independent writers, editors, designers, marketers, distributors, printers, reviewers, and booksellers. As Amazon expands their dominance of the publishing industry, even mainstream publishers are adversely impacted. Needless to say, the impact on Black independents is worse. For many Black authors Amazon controls everything--from production to sales and profits qute handsomely. For many authors Amazon even serves as the author's primary web presence. Now many will argue that Amazon has made it possible for any author to publish a book, when this may not have been possible before. The fact of the matter Amazon is not the only option and I'd argue they may even be the most expensive option as they profit from every step in the process and assume no risk. For Amazon, the production of books is purely a monetary transaction. Amazon is motivated solely by maximizing revenue. The professionals in the Black Book Ecosystem, which AALBC.com is part of, are motivated by revenue too, but we are primarily mission driven. We recognize that books are not merely commodities to generate profit or to crush our "competition." Books hold the cultural legacy of our community. They relate our history and stories. We simply can not allow a single profit driven corporation to own our cultural legacy and to be the only entity to profit from the business. I'm not limiting this appeal to just Black folks I'm reaching out to anyone who cares about books. If you agree, would you consider no longer buying your books from Amazon or using any of their book related services? Please fill out the form below and let me know what you think. I'm going to reach out beyond the Black community, because Amazon effect the entire book ecosystem. The Survey has now completed. Review the result here.

You compliment women's butts, 45 grabs vaginas. Lewdness is in the eye of the beholder. Again I know both tactics work. It depends on the people and situation. I'm sure some, perhaps most, of the women Harvey Weinstein got sleezy with took him up on his offer. Weinstein's lewdness worked for him until it didn't.

Wow that was some post. Thanks for sharing such an insporing story!

I truly appreciate your thoughtful comments RCG1. Hopefully you'll create an account and comment here more frequently. Allow me to introduce you to AALBC.com. I started the website 20 years ago and it has been my passion ever since. I run the entire website by myself and it has been my livelihood for the last 8 years. What started out as a site to sell books as an BarnesandNoble affiliate has grown to be much more. I celebrate Black culture through books. However, over the years I've noticed that independent Black booksellers both online and off faced many challenges much of it having to do with a lack of visibility, so I made it my mission to "shine a little light where it's actually needed." This is an aspect of the site you appear to have missed here are some examples I think you'll appreciate. I have maintained list of all the books website you make an effort to sell Black books: https://aalbc.com/booksites/ I also keep track of Black owned book stores (including stores that sell Black books, but are not Black owned): https://aalbc.com/bookstores/ Some might argue that it makes no sense to provide free promotion to one's competitors. But these business are not my competitors are family and we are engaged in the same battle. I need to them to be stronger. Now you are not going to read about the booksellers in Black Enterprise, you are not to hear Oprah talk about them. Over the years I've reporting on how many of these business are dying and what it means to our culture: https://aalbc.com/blog/index.php/2014/03/31/54-black-owned-bookstores-remain-america/ I also noticed the same thing happening to Black owned newspapers: https://aalbc.com/newspapers/ and other Black content providers. I even created a search engine that searched hundreds of Black websites: https://aalbc.com/huria/ all of this in an effort to uplift and support OTHER websites. You said that my list overlooks sites not in the top 50, but you missed that page where in link to 300 more stes: https://aalbc.com/top_black_websites/top_black_sites_list.php all of these site are in my database I maintain and they are regularly montiored. I even maintain a section of the site where I categorize Black Blogs: https://aalbc.com/blogs/blog-category.php?category=Academics AALBC.com links to thousands of other websites. That is not hyperbolic it is a fact. Again I do it because we ALL need support, and no one else is going to do it. I try to lead by example, but know going in the support will not be reciprocated. I sacrifice time and energy that can into activities that would directly improving my own business, but it is absolutely imperative that we support each other. The most popular post in the Black literature section of this discussion forum is "The 10 Best Damn Black Websites Period!" It has been viewed over 100K times. Part of the reason is that virtually no one is talking about Black websites (another reason may be the clickbaity title). Now in the early days of the web we did this, but not today. Now that post was rather weak from a content perspective, so I improved it: creating the Top 50 Black-Owned Websites section of the website that your are already familiar with. I'm not aware of another site doing as much to promote other Black-owned website. Today a Black websites do a lot to drive traffic to social media. They mention their social media platforms before they even mention their own websites. They published so much content on social media that their social media sites come up before their own sites--deservedly so, because their own websites are subordinate to their social media presences. For many authors their social media presence is their only web presence--they have completely abandoned have their own websites! In fact I started offering a service where I'll host an author's primary web presence--usually for free! https://aalbc.com/authors/mydomain.html Speaking of authors I can't tell you how many times I've recorded an author to promote their work and when asked where their book can be purchased they will always say Amazon--as if no knows book can be purchased their. I now explicitly ask them to simply tell be the name of a Black owned bookseller you like: I hope this helps folks better understand the effort placed into uplifting other Black owned websites, the challenges faced into doing and hopefully why it is important. Do we really want the world wide web to be run by Facebook owned websites? In terms of getting consumers to be more Afrocentric in their selection of vendors I think this will start to happen as people start to push back on the dominance and the control exerted by these monopolies. The lack of choice and options that these corporations provide will create a desire for black folks to support smaller less powerful Independent organizations and companies. This is what fueled the explosion in books written by black people in the 1990s. Black folks found a need and met it. Authors like E Lynn Harris and Terry McMillan Who Sold books out the proverbial trunk of their cars are prime examples. Today it would be harder for an independent author to emerge in the same fashion; for we now publish our books through Amazon and even give them exclusivity for the book's sales. Black folks really have very little say in determining if an author is relevant or derives commercial success. We have allowed large corporations to take that control from us. I'm trying to remedy that situation.

Sure that is true Pioneer, but we need to prioritize things. If a guy comes into an emergency room bleeding profusely from multiple gun shot wounds and has a really bad cavity and is at risk of losing the tooth. Are you going to threat the cavity and gunshot wounds with the same urgency? A normal Dr. would completely ignore the tooth decay in the situation. You see my point?

Cynique, you obviously surround yourself with good people. Pioneer I guess lewdness is in the eye of the beholder. I never comment on a woman's physique to a woman, at least I don't recall ever doing it. There are a myriad of ways for that conversation to go south. That is why the "does my butt look big?" question is such a good opener to so many jokes

Check out the Chicago Crusader's coverage of this event Third World Press Foundation writers and poets gather at Betty Shabazz Academy to participate in 50th anniversary events. The historic gathering included Askia Toure, Dr. Eugene Redmond, Dr. Maulana Karenga, TWPF founder Dr. Haki R. Madhubuti, Dr. Sonia Sanchez, Kalamu ya Salaam, and Dr. Aminifu R. Harvey. (Photos by Raynard Graves)

@Pioneer1, there is no need for you to preface a comment you make with "This is gonna sound waaaaaay out there but..." I hear you though. Of course I don't buy in the the Black people are dumber part. Speaking of our African Brothers, if you look at some of the sites with the most traffic like Worldstarhiphop and Mediatakeout. They are run by people or are, or whose parents are, from Africa. These African's drink the same fluoridated water I do. I think I'm smarter than the average white boy (test scores, educational attainment, work experience, etc). Again fluoride is not the issue Our problem when it comes to ownership of media is complex but boils down to two main things; It is exceedingly difficult to compete against a monopoly People, in the pursuit of happiness do what everyone else is doing One of the draws of Facebook, for example, is that everyone else is on it. I think Instagram will be the next thing, but Facebook owns that too so Facebook are a very powerful force to compete against. The most popular restaurants and clubs are the ones with lines. The most popular plays or concerts are the ones where tickets the hardest to get. We are slaves to fashion and programmed to have the latest version of the iPhone. Of course we all know that the best plays, restaurants, clubs, shoes, whatever are not the ones that the most people are after. The value comes from the perception of desirability. Red Rooster is the hottest restaurant in Harlem. It owner chef Marcus Samuelsson is world-renown. He was able to get #2 above because he got the white co-sign, which increased demand for his restaurant. However, the food is overpriced and mediocre. The service is average and the atmosphere is noisy and busy. There are better restaurants in Harlem, but since this is the one everyone has heard about and it has #2 people really desire to go there. Some people, after experiencing the restaurant, will come to the conclusion I did and simply patronize better restaurants. Others will convince themselves that Red Roosters fried chicken is great (mine is MUCH better) and they will go back and tell their friends--especially the ones that have never been how amazing it was. They will post photos on Facebook of the food. They'll share photos of themselves in the restaurant sharing this "great experience." Those with the wherewithal to go will do so at the first opportunity and the others will wish that they could and be disappointed that they can't. The power of #2 can't be understated. The power is #1 is self-evident.

Again, I feel you Pioneer. Cynique, men use the lewd approach, because they are crude, and don't know any no better, but it works from time to time. So the tactic persists. I have never used the approach; It is just not my style, but again I know it works for many guys.

@Pioneer1, I think you will find a higher correlation between the quality of education and test scores that with fluoridated water. There are poor communities with poor educational options and unfluoridated water and what you will find are poor undereducated people with very bad teeth. Bad teeth leas to all sorts of other heath issues. I don't think fluoridated water is the most pressing issue facing the Black community, if fact it is a distraction...

You were fortunate @Delano, to be encouraged to think for yourself at an early age. Most of us are not. The culture is designed for us to seek conformity and to do what everyone else is doing. This is in my mind is why most people are not happy. They never purse what makes them happy, or even bother to try to discover what it is that makes them happy. Our corporate driven culture tells us that consuming more things will make us happy, because they profit from propagating this belief... I read somewhere that the racist Troll married a Brother. I did not try to find the source; I saw it in passing somewhere on the web.

OK Is see now the Basketville theme you are using has a button at the bottom of the page to show older posts. Did I miss that the first time or did you just invoke that? At any rate that is probably adequate, unless you really want people to find your older content more easily.

Mel we are taught to consume media that way. In fact we are taught to produce media in that fashion for the web. I took a week long course that Stanford University gave on publishing for the web. We were taught to "webify" our content. I called it dumbing down; Basically reducing the complexity of sentences, lowering the vocabulary level, and shortening paragraphs etc. The idea is to optimize content for consumption on the web. There are application that will dumb down you content. I know I have encountered a good article when I feel compelled to print it out. The trend has only increased today. It is big pictures, graphics, and short video that have substituted for depth. We are expected to be able to communicate complex ideas with memes optimized for delivery on Instagram. They say a picture is worth a thousands words, this is true but those words are different depending on the person. One reason we fail to communicate a coherent consistent message is that we do it in a webified or dumbed down manner which is less clear and open to interpretation Sometimes complex ideas take many words to relate. The economic of the web, driven by social media is not optimized for log form content. Many of us are simply not accustomed to consuming the type of content, so we don't. Education is key.

I would say that people were best served by the internet perhaps during the first 10 years it became commercially available roughly before 2005. We emerged from a period, not unlike today, when corporations like AOL and Compuserve controlled everything. When the web emerged we were liberated. Anyone could establish a website and create a unique platform that catered to the needs of an audience. For Black folks this was particularly good news because we were underserved by corporations. Most importantly it created economic opportunities for folks to create business or just earn money r just earn extra money on the side. Today we have completely regressed. This economic opportunities are largely out of reach today and we are back to paying corporations for access. If we are not paying them cash we are paying them with all of our personal data. Black cultural content is not back in the hands for corporations, largely run by white men motivated by greed. Today, on social media, information that is made up crowds out journalism, so people are woefully completely misinformed. This is worse than being ignorant in my view.

No problem Mel. Here is your link. Yes I used the search feature on your site to find the article because I knew that the content existed. Google still has the pages indexed. but again, how does a visitor to the site discover any of your older Blog posts? None of the blog posts are listed--unless I'm just missing them? You are better off hosting a Wordpress site with Wordpress. I would not move it to Godaddy. I use a plugin "SEO Ultimate" to handle the SEO stuff I described for the wordpress sites I run. I read the article about VSB. The reasoning does not make sense to me. The former owner said the site had 2 million unique visitors a month. That is a lot of traffic. There is nothing in the data that I have access to that suggests get or ever got that many visitors. Here is the information I've collected on their site prior to removing them from the top 50 Black-owned website page (they are still in my database). AALBC Score: 4.99 Domain Created: Feb 13, 2001 (9 Years, 8 Months) SEMrush Rank: 44,400 Alexa Rank: 105,360 MOZ Domain Authority: 48 Most telling is VSB's data from SEMRush, that data alone shows that VSB gets less traffic than AALBC.com, and I don't get any where near 2 Million unique visitors a month. While SEMRush does not have access to VSB server logs their information is quote good. If you believe the 2M number (I don't), then you have to ask yourself why weren't these Very Smart Brothers able to monetize that much traffic to pay writers and provide a good living for themselves. Did Gizmodo buy VSB or just give these guys jobs--jobs they should not have needed with 2M unique visitors.

Yes @Mel Hopkins, your site, https://melhopkins.com would qualify as having domain; it is just hosted by Wordpress. This site is hosted by GoDaddy. Here is some of the information I pulled on your domain: AALBC Score: N/A Domain Created: Mar 01, 2001 (16 Years, 8 Months) SEMrush Rank: 39,200,000 Alexa Rank: N/A MOZ Domain Authority: 22 I've decided to restrict not to add any new sites to track to my database unless they had an Alexa ranking. There however are some sites without an Alexa ranking in my database and I'm not going to delete them. I'll add your since you got it like that Since I have my webmaster hat on now; it is good that your site is using SSL (https), because Google uses this a ranking signal and they are going to start displaying warning messages in their browsers to sites that don't use it. This will hurt a lot of sites. It is also good that you are using a response design, so your site will display well on a mobile device. This is a ranking signal for Google as well. This is one aspect of webdesign that really hurt a lot sites in search. What happened to your old content? I ran some queries and see that it is still on the site, but I cant find a way to browse it directly the old stuff--at least the stuff I looked for. For example, how does one browse to this page: https://melhopkins.com/2016/06/09/aalbc-the-african-american-media-clearinghouse-wifotit/ If there is no way to browse to this page (no direct link to it on your site), the page an others like it will be hurt in search because they are unrecoverable without a direct link Digging a bit deeper. I would be more descriptive in your description meta tags. This is the text used when people share you site on social media. Google would not use it because it is too short and they pull text from the page. So should control this by being more descriptive. I'm not sure how you do this now, but there are plugins that make optimizing for SEO easy. <meta property="og:description" content="Actuate | Thought Into Action" /> I would also make the site's title (not on the title on the page but in meta tag), clearer. It should always be different that what is in the title tag <title>Mel Hopkins &#8211; Actuate | Thought Into Action</title> You should create a customized 404 error page. You know that page that comes up when someone types a bogus URL on your website like https://aalbc.com/bousurl.html Today SEO (optimizing for Google's search engine) is probably more important than a site's content--especially for Black owned sites because we don't usually have the benefit of larger platforms to support us. I know that is more than you asked for, but I hope it is helpful

You know I have no idea what Krispy Kream Jelly Beans are. Are they like really small donut holes?

Pharmaceuticals are growing wealthy as a direct result of this epidemic. The sale of these narcotics has exploded. But corporate greed knows no color, save green.