Troy

@Sara, I could be wrong, but I think you are the first person to ever elicit a direct response from @harry brown

@Sara not I did not read the entire conversation, but I skimmed it and did see where Chris said something about you and PTSD and I saw your exchange with Cynique, but did not attempt to determine what prompted all of this. Often these things started from other conversations and trying to sort this out is very tedious and time consuming. Honestly, I'm a little shell shocked by trolls nowadays. I tend to use a heavy handed approach and favor long time participants and am more suspicious of newer folks. I much rather folks sort these things out themselves. Judging from everyone's responses it looks I'm going to let the entire conversation stand as is. @Cynique, in hindsight Kola turned out to be very destructive to the boards. Her posts got the entire Thumper's Corner domain banned from being able to post google ads (the primary reason I moved the discussion forum to AALBC.com). She also was largely responsible for running Thumper away from Thumper's Corner, even giving Kola her own forum was not enough to corral her "energy." I'll not saying Kola was a troll in the pure sense, but she had troll like tendencies that ended up having the same impact on the forums. I let her continue because the most active participants actually wanted her here, while many lurkers found her obscene and divisive. But as far as forums go while lurkers are important posters are more important and Kola despite her ultimately adverse impact on the forums as the most prolific poster we ever had. Damage done, Kola no longer posts and I don't even know if Thumper is alive (seriously). Cynique you have been active on these forums since the first generation (pre-January 2004). So if I have anything to do with it, Cynique's Corner will outlive both of us. @Sara email me troy@aalbc.com your ISBN13's so that I can make sure you are on the website: http://aalbc.org/authors/authors.php

Yes the Nkiru effort is far less significant in terms of scale and depth, but that does not matter. The most popular content on the website (produced by Black folks, for Black folks) tends to be rather shallow. I'm not saying the Nkiru books online is a shallow effort; I just saying celebrity trumps depth every day of the week. Chris, as you know, it is impossible for a celebrity to engage with the vast majority of people who engage them on social media. Plus social media platform presents what will encourage engagement. When I looked at Talib's post from my wife's computer I saw a completely different set up top responses--she didn't even see our exchange. Plus just the sheer volume of responses make this impossible, if not impractical. Again, unless we are conscious and strategic about how we use social media we will never benefit from it. With about 100 more of us, in the book space, working together we can make a difference.

Hey Chris I just watched the video as an Amazon Affiliate I earn only 4% on Kindle related products including ebooks. If I sell an eBook priced at 99¢ I earn less than 4¢. Obviously, there is no incentive for me to promote a 99¢ product, because I can't generate any revenue selling it. Of course if an author chooses to purchase an advertisement that promotes a 99¢ ebook, then I'm good with it. That fact should be considered when deciding to price a book at 99 cents. Because promotion by online booksellers helps drive eBook sales. Needles to say there are other factors including the author's platform, perceived value of the book, the book target audience, the revenue goals of the author, the production costs of the book, etc. If you are an unknown, first-time, author who put together a book that required no research, little effort, or minimal expense in the way of production, 99¢ works. Indeed it may be your only option as few would probably pay much more for such a book. Now if you are a well known author with a loyal following, you don't need to consider this pricing strategy as readers would be willing to pay much more to read your book. Mainstream publishers think it is bad because they can't generate much sufficient revenue with 99¢ books to cover their overhead. Much more goes into the creation of a book than printing, shipping and storage. You have editorial, marketing (including advertising a publicity), and of course the author needs to be paid. Needless to say African-American authors, published by mainstream publishers suffer the most—fewer deals, smaller advances, and less promotional support. This of course adversely impacts the entire Black Book Ecosystem including booksellers like AALBC.com. The bazillions of 99¢ books (and don't forget the free eBooks) published by independent authors, have not impacted the Black book ecosystem in a positive way. Sure there may have been some individual successes, however modest, but collectively the net result has been adverse. @CDBurns, I also noticed you just put the link to the video, rather than embedding it? Was this deliberate or are you unable to embed the video?

Whoa what the heck happened here? One of the things that discouraged participation on these discussion forums was when they devolved into this type of exchange. Previously, I pretty much let anything go. But I've learned that if I allowed complete freedom of speech, that tended to take the whole board down to the point there was no speech. I decided I would more actively monitor these forums to prevent this sort of conversations that include calling someone else here a "Potty mouthed old biotch," But realistically I don't have the time or resources to do this. I was away from the forum for two days and completely missed the devolution of this exchange. Last time I was here Nelson and Chris were going at it but it seemed to converge into some more productive--which is great. Now I do know that I have to remove and ban actual "rolls." A troll is someone whose goal is to simply create conflict for the sake a creating conflict, they are devils who get their kicks crapping on discussion forums, like this one. Our pal Unkle Ruckus was one such troll. He started out merely as controversial, but ultimately revealed himself for the troll that he was and I had to ban him and remove all of his posts. My question to all of you on this conversation. Do I need to take action here? Are we cool? Happy New Year!

Nkiru Books @Kwelickub @CDBurns, hey man thanks so much for shouting out AALBC.com in the comments of Talib's post. It really does not cease to amaze me what celebrity can do. The single post was liked by 24K people, shared by 6,500 and generated over 700 comments in less than 24 hours! Now I don't know if they paid to promote the post, and I don't read anything on Facebook that I have not generated or been tagged on, but this is definitely one of the most popular posts I've seen in a long time. Forgive me for not posting a link to the post; I have a personal policy against linking directly to Facebook. I honestly don't think the viral reaction to Talib's post has anything to do with books and supporting bookstores; but is much more about Talib's celebrity and how easy it is to show support on Facebook. It is so easy to click "like," but an entirely different thing to support a store by buying a book. Nkiru was truly an iconic bookstore. I lived a couple of blocks away from the store and patronized it long before AALBC.com was invented. I actually highlighted Nkiru Books in my article, "Death of the Black Owned, Independent Bookstore," back in 2012. Talib's mother, Dr. Brenda Greene is a professor at Medgar Evers College and runs the Center for Black Literature. The Center also hosts the National Black Writers Conference, who I've worked with for over a decade. Dr. Greene is super supportive of AALBC.com. Chris I also appreciate you suggesting that Talib reach out so that we may work together. First, given the sheer number of responses I doubt he will even see it. But even if he read the suggestion I would be very shocked if he took you up on that offer. You know the reason why, as you explained it very well on your post about YouTube subscribers. The fact of the matter is that while I link to and promote every online or physical bookstore, that I'm aware of, other bookstores rarely return the favor. In fact, I'm so accustomed the lack of reciprocated support I receive from other bookstores it no longer bothers or surprises me. So, I'll promote Nkiru Bookstore Online as I supported Nkiru Books' physical bookstore (even before Talib brought the store from Ms. Miller). On a related note, I purchased Talib's album Gravitas; I brought it not so much because I was interested in the music, but because I wanted to support him. He wrote about the importance of independence and musicians making money from their work. That resonated with me, for obvious reasons, so I purchased the music files and downloaded the liner notes.

Chris I should have mentioned that I completely agree with your assessment (your December 6th post) of the current state of the web, and a strategy for dealing with it. I'm still 235 subscribers short of my goal. I have gained 153 subscribers in the past month. Given that is about 40 more than I gained the entire 12 months prior, I guess this effort was successful. I'll make another push in the new year. I'm not sure I ever mentioned why I wanted to reach 1,000 subscribers. I'm not just trying to get subscribers to boost this number. I need a minimum number of subscribers to be able to provide visitors with video they can have to pay to watch; Paid Content. During the National Black Writers Conference, at Medgar Ever this spring, I will be hosting a seminar on book publishing featuring industry professionals. I was thinking about filming the event and charging people to view it on Youtube. In order to be able to charge people to view content you need 1,000 subscribers to your channel.

...I'm back this was very interesting-- far more interesting that the exchange could have possibly been on Twitter. Thanks @Nelson for popping in and everyone else for making such greats comments. Why is it that so many Black people cite Jewish people as the standard for enlightened culture, or a culture that Black should strive to be like in some way? It is always stricking to encounter "afro-centric" folks who, on the massive corporate sites, like Twitter, question the consciousness of another Black man they know nothing about. As far as I'm concerned, all this does is diminish ourselves while enriching the owners of those platforms. There are plenty of writers who write about Kemet and plenty who write about West Africa, who are highlighted on this website. I learned about the Dogon, from Saul Williams, and read even more about them in Tananarive Due's and Evelyn Coleman's novels. Some believe the Dogon in the West came from East Africans, Egyptians. Our course John Henrik Clarke, and many others highlighted here write about all of this in great detail. At the end of the day, we can not recapture and restore a culture that ended thousands of years ago--those days are over. The best we can do is learn as much as we can from it, incorporate it what we know today, and move on. This is natural, the way cultures evolve over time. Nelson as far as the action items 1-7 above, there is nothing wrong with them, per se. Needless to say, no one individual can do all of them and many of us can't, or won't do, any of them. The vast majority of people produce nothing, no books, no youtube videos, no DVD's not seminars, nothing. In a practical sense few will ever do items 2-6. The best you can hope for are people who support the ones that do produce these things--which is itself a tall order. Action items 1 and 7 are essentially the same, and that is to study. Again getting folks--event students in school--to study is difficult. So the question really is how do you get people to do the things you suggest or at least support the efforts of those that do? I mean it is not even clear you have done them yourself. Chris asked you about your YouTube channel and even offered to support it, but your response was, "Sorry brother I have no time and I am not interested in debate." This makes no sense to me if you are actually believe what you are saying. Finally, if your recommendations are not open to critique, or debate, then what good are they? You can't shove an ideology down someone's throat and expect them to comply blindly. Your recommendations are not religion that people are expected to blindly accept. I guess it is far easier to snipe at someone in 140 characters or less. Challenging and examining one's own ideas is much more difficult.

OK I still have not watched this video, and I've only watched two episodes of Empire so I trust y'all's judgement that Daniels stole from Dutton. So I'd imagine given the success of the series Dutton will seek just compensation compensation. Sara to embedd a youtube video you just post the URL to the video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wBEn84TOdZg and it will automatically embed. The URL you was was a shortened version, and I noticed those don't embed. Here is the Youtube version below

Hey Del I guess you ave to actually read the National Geographic article. Also I would be very careful about using Wikipedia as a source of anything. It might be a good starting point, The best approach would be to access the actual source documents directly and see what they actually say. I not in a position to debate the subject as it boils down to whose information one believes. The National Geographic information was very compelling. If you want to say they are lying or otherwise factually in accurate, I can't debate you on that as I have neither the data or the intellect to do so I do however trust the scientists, journalists and reporters at National Geographic over anything in Wikipedia.

Guest (Nelson), most educated people know the stories in the Bible, the resurrection, the flood, etc did not originate in the Bible. I don't know about 10,000 years BC, but Gilgamesh predates the Bible by 2,000 years... Also don't conflate Santa Claus, Christmas Tree, secular festivities with the Christian religious observations. They are two completely different things. So while I appreciate that you may have issue with both, don't mix them up. Your argument here addresses the religious aspects. But I presume what prompted you message me on Twitter was the Santa hat on my cartoon avatar. Also most of my audience, not all, but a majority are African American. Most of us, along with most of the Black people throughout the diaspora, including many in Africa--had EVERY cultural aspect taken away through the transatlantic slave trade or through imperialism. Again, most people already know this. You are fluent in English, why is that? Look I'm not about to give anyone grief for celebrating a holiday they that they have been celebrating for generations, any more than I would get on them for speaking English. You wrote, "Black people are celebrating a culture that was created after their own culture was destroyed." But the culture you are criticizing us of celebrating IS OUR culture. We were robbed of our culture and have created a brand new one; it is the culture that birthed Jazz and Hip-hop, it is the culture that took scraps of food and made a cuisine. For some of us that culture includes Santa and/or Kwanzaa. Our Santa will be Black and it has nothing to do with worshiping europeans. We are adapting, and all thing considered I think we are adapting exceeding well in a very hostile environment. Sure the food we eat is garbage, but again we live in an environment run by corporations that will poison us it with was profitable.... I gotta run.

It looks like the source of the story was a cocofab, one of those gossipy celebrity sites for women. The story is a year old and there appears to be no follow up. Are you sure it is true? THE OFFICIAL "MUST BE THE MUSIC" MOVIE TRAILER from Qpeezy on Vimeo.

Some asked me to explain this on Twitter. Rather than go back and forth on Twitter. I invited the brother to debate me here. Who knows maybe he will say something to change my thinking on the matter.

Interesting, but a Nairobi man pretty much pretty much summed up the impact; "Seven days is nothing, I can wait a year." I think the only people to be hurt in this campaign will be sex workers--assuming they decide to join the effort. Otherwise it will be a windfall for them. In all seriousness, this is a rather sexist ploy as if men are the only ones who want to have sex. Plus Hannah and her 5 sisters never say no

Apparently this works on a principle called "cognitive load." Solving math problems in your head increases cognitive load, causing to respond more predictably. So, when asked to give a response answers are what people tend to say on average. When you’re not under cognitive load your mind can wander and you are more likely to say something completely different. When I took the task I was by myself, watching the youtube video on my TV and followed the instructions closely. Later I had my wife and kids do the test in the room with me together one came up with a different answer and the other two hadn't even come up with a response. So the conditions you take the test seem to matter.

I watched this video followed the instructions as was absolutely floored by the results. Not many things impress me but this thing did. Give it a try and see if you get the same reaction it only takes a minute.

Oh with the Popcorn I'm sure we hit $90 too, but my oldest brought the popcorn so I don'y know what she spent but I'm sure it was close to 2 bucks. Man I wanted to escape too and was open to shutting of my brain to enjoy a bit of escapist entertainment, but it ust did not work for me. It seemed like the film was created for children, not adults. The new characters are uninteresting to me and I felt zero nostalgia seeing Luke Sky Walker again. I stark contrast I thoroughly enjoyed the Star Trek reboot film. Maybe because the characters were more familiar, maybe because the story line and execution was superior, maybe the actors were better. Which JJ Abrams film did you like more, the last Star Trek or the last Star Wars? The film I'm excited about is the Star Trek film.

Nowadays I don't a lot of free cash laying around. But I'm more than willing to make a sacrifice and splurge on something for myself or someone else. So I decided to buy tickets for myself, and my daugthers, to checkout the latest installment of the Star Wars saga on IMAX 3D. I never would have imaged that going to the movies would be considered splurging, but at $72 for three tickets I consider it splurging. The crazy thing is that finding tickets was not easy. I brought them online and our favorite Imax theater was sold out until after Christmas! So I had to drive way out of my way just to see the film. Given the box office (more than a 1/4 of a billion dollars when I last checked), the overwhelmingly favorable critical reviews, the 60 Minutes coverage, I figured the movie had to be decent. Now I'm old enough to manage my expectations when it comes to over-hyped movies. Despite that I was looking forward to really enjoying the film. I would give the film a 2 on a scale of 5 (★★☆☆☆). It gets a 2 because of the production and effects, but overall it was a relatively weak movie. The 2 hour plus movie felt long. I was waiting for something exciting to happen. Spaceships flying around shooting at each other does it do it for me. I've seen that movie a bazillion times. I needed something more. I needed some character development. An interesting plot would have definitely helped too. Even seeing the aging Luke Sky Walker and Princess Leia was interesting, but Luke did not saying anything and I can see what The actress playing Leia is not a household. I'm not even going to describe the film, it is not worth the energy. I can't recommend spending $24 bucks to see this film in the theater, but it would probably be less enjoyable on without the IMAX and 3D. But if I could get my money back and wait for it to be available for viewing at home I would. I know this opinion goes counter to everything else that you might read about this film, which is the main reason I felt compelled to express it. I really like a bunch of guys got into a room a decided how they were going to make a billion dollars on a movie. I feel manipulated and ripped off seeing this movie... and I'm a BIG fan of science fiction.

Saradipity, please create an account so that I don't have to manually approve your comments. We had a racist spam the discussion forums recently so I have to be more restrictive with allowing access--I hope I did not make it impossible for new people to register (I've noticed others posting without creating accounts). The conversation definitely benefits from voices like yours, so I don't want to put up any restrictions. I'm not sure why this has to be an either or situation. If you look at say, popular rap music, I think anyone could reasonably argue that it has more an influence on the culture than being a reflection of it. Alternatively Hip-hop music is a was a reaction to oppressive conditions in the inner city, not the cause of those conditions People can be influenced by music and music can influence people. Indeed a people and their music go hand in hand. Music can motivate people into action and people create the music. They are inextricably linked.

The actual thank you message is article on my blog that I sent to my mailing list. @Cynique the photo above is from our annual Black Pack Party (20013). We take a group photo every year. If all goes well, it will be held in Chicago this spring. Hopefully you can make it (shoot, hopefully I can make it).

Hey Chris obviously you are right about getting people to subscribe. I'll let you know how the call to action works out. I think informative channels can do well with subscribers it they have really high production quality and/or have unique content. Also I only subscribe to informative channels off the top of my head here are two informative channels I subscribe to that have millions of subscribers: Veritasium (3M+ subscribers), Vsauce (9M+ subscribers), 60 Symbols (500K+ subscribers) I have not watched all of the videos these guys have, but I don't think that I've watched a single Veritasium or 60 Symbols video that i did not enjoy. In fact I have shared a couple of Vertitasium video here that had to do with facebook fraud. I noticed a few things about these guys. Vsauce, with the most subscriber always ends their video with a request to subscribe. They collaborate with each other and have appeared on each other channels Two of the guys running these channels have met with Obama at the Whitehouse--basically they are acknowledged, embraced, and recognized by the broader community. These are wildly successful channels I make about $30 a month from my yoututbe channel and I have almost 900K views. Vsauce at over 900M views probably makes $30K per month minimum--from just youtube alone, not counting all the collateral revenue streams that are possible with that kind of platform. I worked with a group The Book Look for a couple of years. They were focused on producing videos that covered Black authors, publishing professionals and events in a fun light hearted way. Sadly the channel was not successful enough to justify the efforts of the principals behind it. I put a lot of effort in promoting the videos too. I guess there is simply not enough demand for content surrounding Black literature. This sound crazy, when you consider that a dude (60 Symbols) with a single camera and basic editing can make a living shooting video of professors at one school (University of Nottingham).

I bet if you continued the analysis to include the most recent 30 years the trend would continue, more likely accelerate. Del I don't have the magazine in front of me, and I don't have time to check the website right now, but I would have bet money the article included a regression model, and almost certainly projected the impact out to at least 2050 (could be wrong). I would not be surprised to see a positive correlation between population and C02 emissions. Though I don't the mere presence of more humans is causing the problem, it is their activity that is problematic.

I actually do not like this time of year, not enough sun light for me. It is only 4:40 p.m. here and the sun set about 10 minutes ago, with the overcast skies it is already dark here. I'm looking forward to a break, next week, in FL, where the sun sets more than an hour later and the temperatures are ideal (this time of year). The only saving grace is that the days do start to get longer after tonight. You know I've been behind this computer all day. It was dark when I started, it is dark now. I'm taking a break in a few to go to the grocery store to pick up some food for dinner. Then I'll probably work a few more hours, down a couple of glasses of red wine (did you know that is equivalent to going to the gym for two hours), and do the same ting tomorrow. This is not unusual since I started the website upgrade, but this behavior can't be good for you physically. Well there is my holiday season in a nutshell

Hey Harry you are absolutely right. I started buying Christmas trees once I had kids. This year's tree is not as inspired as Christmases in the past, but it is not too shabby. I'm not sure how much longer my kids will be living with me--this could be their last year. I know I won't be dragging trees into the house once they are gone. I know folks that do multiple trees, in there homes, each year--God bless 'em. But as you said Harry, the best present is not under the tree -- or even the tree itself, it is the love of family and friends. Peace and Love!

Well, in the last three weeks, I added 151 new subscribers, which is a just under 40% of my goal. I still need another 239 to get to my goal of 1,000. Basically I fell short because the people I were appealing to do not subscribe to youtube channels, so what seemed like a trivial task to me required a bit more effort by others. I'm now going to appeal to people already on youtube, where the effort to subscribe is indeed minimal. I'm adding subscriber buttons to all of my most popular videos and will do so to each new video I add. I have a bunch of unedited videos to publish, so I hope to reach my goal by March. Thanks again to all that subscribed