Troy

Read (or listen) to a panel discussion on this topic help during Book Expo America 2014 Where are the People of Color in Children’s Books? - Panel Discussion (transcript) Held During Book Expo America (BEA).

No she does not possess the fiery rhetoric of a Farrakhan, nor the witty puns of an Al Sharpton, so the information she has will largely go unheard by Black people. Of course putting this info in a best selling book will not help is either. Both this is always the case. We have answers and solutions, but most of us aren't even aware of the problem, so it is hard to get folks to work and make sacrifices to fix something that don't even recognize is a problem...

Yeah Wack would be one way to describe the tee shirt. I just attended a Blogging conference I don't think I met anyone who claimed to living off blogging. Many of those speaking seemed to using blogging as a platform to get noticed in the media or as a springboard to better (paid) writing opportunities. Others viewed to be blogging as a passion, they had some personal challenge, say losing weight, and they wanted to share that with the world and where more interested in ideas and commiserating with others (again why it probably skewed female). OF COURSE IT IS HARDER TO MONETIZE WEBSITES TODAY--THAT IS THE POINT OF ALL MY EFFORTS TO HELP PEOPLE UNDERSTAND THIS, AND WHY IT IS IMPORTANT. The emphasis was for other reading this conversation, but not participating. As far as the sale of Yelp that is just another example of a few rich getting richer. The inherent value of that website and its long term prospects were compromised years ago. Howabout a black tee with this image?

I doubt these companies will go anywhere soon, at least not the market leaders. It is all software driven. In the past I might have had to order a few dozen untis to get the price down, but I can buy/sell one AALBC.com mug at a decent price and the mugs are excellent quality. No labor, storage, shrinkage, returns, or dreaded trips to the post office. I sold products directly through the website, but I have to have someone else do the work, shipping stuff is not my thing. I have a buddy that did not mind doing it and he was quite good at it. The best products are the ones that are exclusive, but those opportunities are very rare now. Autographed books don't do the trick, if the book is also available from Amazon (even if it is unsigned). Last year, I had a book, signed by the author and at a price LOWER than Amazon's price, but everyone still purchased through Amazon. Maybe if I (AALBC.com) was fulfilling the orders I could have sold some, but the company fulfilling the orders had my endorsement and are reputable... Maybe what I'll do next time handle the transaction myself and just have the other company drop ship on my behalf. Matter of fact I will see if they have any of those book in stock. I also put up a tee shirt I though had a cute line, But maybe black tee, white letters, on a Black model, preferably a known author would work. I'll think about the store I just need a partner to handle the shipping... I have just started the site redesign and an online store would not take too much additional heavy lifting to implement I just need products.

Man this woman takes my observations to a whole 'nother level!

Your visitor stats do not look unusual, in the sense that the majority of people who visit a site do not stay very long. The majority of visitors will be new and a minority will be return visitors. As you suggest, if have a ton of content you generate more traffic. That is one reason AALBC.com has survived for so long. I often will see some obscure page jump in terms of traffic because people are searching on a particular subject or person I've covered that is not covered many other places. This is called the long tail and some have made a science out of creating websites based upon this idea. Whenever a popular author passes away I see a bump in hits on that author's profile page. When Maya Angelou passed away Guy Johnson's page, Maya's Son, surged in popularity and was the top page on the site for several days. Maya's page saw an increase too but because there is so much more competition for Maya Angelou and less for Guy Johnson my Maya page did not see nearly as large an increase. Again, as with many writers, my website is my product. So social does not help me as much as in might help someone who has a tangible product like a book. I'm down to about 5-10 minutes a day on social media. I share from websites not on social and I only login to check for comments that I need to answer; if I don't see any I'm out. I even updated my banners to instruct people on how to get their questions answered or how to reach me. I get getting messages from Facebook saying I'm not responding to my messages. I updated my facebook page banner to make this plain to visitors Here is an quote from a Blog, The Black Agenda Report, that I discovered as part of by blog promotion project: WHY YOU SHOULD COMMENT ON OUR ARTICLES HERE INSTEAD OF FACEBOOK Facebook & Twitter are like rivers. If you're not standing by the bank when something floats by, it's gone. Good luck finding that brilliant conversation you had with somebody in a FB thread 2 or 3 weeks ago. People who "follow," "like," and "friend" you on FB may rarely or never see your posts, especially if they're answering someone else's, and those lacking that tenuous relationship are even less likely to see them. So like and follow us on FB and Twitter, but when you post your comments on our articles here, anyone who finds the article finds the comment, now or a decade from now. That's because Facebook respects your carefully thought out comment exactly as much as an emoticon or an LOL or STFU, LMFBAO, and needs to make room for the next one. Mark Zuckerberg doesn't respect you. We do. I don't normally see this sentiment expressed on a Black sites. Generally Black sites want people to engage on social sites, but then I have to step back and remember all big Black news sites are white owned and controlled. They are not interested in empowering Black folks. The problem is most Black folks don't know this.

Chris your statement: "What we have in the Black community is a lack of understanding how relationships are built. We hold on to information because we think we lose if we give it away. We also want to be paid for everything, but that's not how it works. There has to be reciprocity for a relationship to work" pretty much sums it up from my perspective. Over the years I've noticed that we all are forced to reinvent the wheel because we don't share from our experiences and repeat the same mistakes. We also believe business is a zero sum game; that is I only benefit at your expense. The concept of growing the pie is completely alien. It never occurred to me to contribute to Spike's movie project. Honestly, he should be contributing to AALBC.com. Seriously, I've promoted every book he and he wife has ever published and I have published reviews every movie he has made. There has never been any form or acknowledgement or gratitude. But this is not unusual, so there are no hard feelings, just the realization that support of wealthy people is rarely reciprocated. They expect and receive support as if it is owed to them. Fortunately not all authors are like that, as AALBC.com recieves support from NY Times bestselling authors to first time indie authors. But FAR too often indie authors end up subsidizing the promotion of wealthy authors--which is backward. It is also crucial to emphasize, as you pointed out Chris, that support does not have to come in the form of money. Indeed nonmonetary support that is even more valuable. Spreading the word about a website, linking to a website, posting a comment on an article, or even referring someone as a potential client is all very important. After every Newsletter I'll get an encouraging email from someone who just says, "I love what you are doing," this all helps. By the way several years ago I did set up a store where folks could buy AALBC.com branded merchandise: http://www.cafepress.com/aalbc Over the years I realized people just don't buy the products. I get a few orders here and there, but not enough to compel me to grow that component beyond what I have set up now. Occasionally I'll promote the fact that I offer authors an incentive to buy AALBC.com products, but again nothing substantial enough happens to warrant working this revenue stream more aggressively.

My wife took her class to Gettysburg, PA (know know the site of the bloodiest scenes in American history). I would have loved to have taken this trip and will probably swing through there real soon. At any rate, she brought me this book and I started reading it the other day. It is turning out to be pretty good so I did a little research about the book and discovered to my surprise that it was published 40 years ago and won a Pulitzer Prize! The book says "Winner of Pulitzer Prize" right on the cover, but I did not notice that. I chose to read this book because my wife said every who saw her with it raved about it. That was good enough for be to dig in. Plus it boggles my mind that so many men would so willingly walk into certain death for their version of "honor." It was certainly a different time. Shaara wrote four novels before he died of a heart attack in 1988. His second novel, The Killer Angels, is considered by some readers and historians to be the best novel ever written about the Civil War. Rich in carefully researched historic detail, the book recreated the Battle of Gettysburg and won the Pulitzer Prize in 1975. History Channel

This is cute and humorous video performed by La Shea Delaney (@lashea_delaney) & Annabelle Quezada (@annabelleqv) I discovered it trolling for bloggers for Huria Search. This video was shot in NYC, and makes the city looks like a really nice place. The Strand bookstore pictured in the video's preview image is a great independent bookstore. One of the last videos I shot was in the Strand Bookstore. This easily the largest indie store I've ever seen, perhaps the largest book store I've ever been in. They claim to have 18 miles of books!

I agree Chris even if people did decide to make the contribution I actually discovered the Breaking Brown Blog when I added blogs to Huria Search: http://aalbc.it/breakingbrown I did not take the site very seriously because of all the crummy ads. Later, I stumbled across a video with her and Boyce Watkins and they were plugging the site so I visited it not realizing I'd visited it previously. I did recall that the site was plugging The Black World Today website, which Boyce runs, and I see that she is tight with Boyce. At any rate, if they can get their website to work on a subscription only basis they would be the only one I know that can do that. I'm not aware of any commercial entities that are doing that not a website, newspaper, magazine, nothing... I solicit and collect subscription for AALBC.com through the eNewsletter, and that actually covers my fixed costs, but it does not come close to providing a living or even paying writers for content. I can't image what it would take to send a journalist to cover a story in some remote location, $3 a month from hundreds of people would not cut it, you need 10 of thousands to even begin to think about it. Yeah Amazon can work really well especially for high priced items (sneakers yes, books no). Another problem is she spends an awful lot of time bashing Obama, while I might agree with much of what she says, I know most Black folks are not interested in that and certainly would not pay for it. But the real problem is we, as a people, don't work well together.

LOL yeah it is depressing Speaking about support; I noticed this on twitter a few moments ago: http://www.gofundme.com/themoviereport the guy (deliberately not posting his name) is trying to raise money to save his house. He has raised $1,100, over 26 months, from 19 people. The campaign has the requisite hard luck story, but given the numbers it has not done very well this far. A bum on the street would have raised far more in this amount of time. He too complained about the lack of support from friends, family. I've never met the person running this fund raising campaign, but I've published his film reviews going back into the 90's. I feel bad, but I see these requests often some from from people I actually know personally. It is always tough to read these and not contribute. But I'm one of those guys who feel guilty walking pasting a pan handler, because no matter how badly I feel I'm doing financially, I can ways get up off a dollar. I think part of the problem is so many of us are struggling and so many people are asking for money. Overwhelmed how does one decide who to contribute to? This, again, is one of the reasons Spike using crowd funding for his film irked me, because I just saw that effort as taking money away from struggling filmmakers, or even people losing their homes... Struggling people, and indie business don't get much support in America. We happily give millionaires money while we watch others lose their homes. We all know the statistics of how the ultra rich are getting even richer while most of the middle class struggles. I've been making direct appeals for contribution for two years now. Family and friends rarely support. The support come from people who actually believe in what you are trying to do, and sometimes these are not the people in your family. I read there was a time when family members would pool resources to help each other in times of need, or send money when some accomplished something like graduating from high school. If that time existed it was before my own.

Sounds like the projects in many cities.

Well without any bias in term of the blogs I added and the blogs people added themselves, here is a count of blogs by gender combo or unknown: 41 female: 78 male: 38 total: 157 I guess you are right Chris. I'll see how many male Bloggers we dig up. Any ideas on what I could provide other sites with as an incentive to share Huria of post automatically updated information on their websites? One could reasonably draw the conclusion that if an incentive is needed to get others, who are already on the site, to share the information then the website's inherent value is questionable. The interesting thing about the site is that the people who visit the site, seem to find it more valuable than the people who are on it. Of course visitors matter most, but it sure would be easier if someone besides Chris mentioned it on their website. Chris here is a direct link to your Blog: http://aalbc.it/blogcdp

This sister right here, Yvette Carnell of Breaking Brown is singing my song. Would you believe just moments before I watched this video I'd emailed the editor of the site http://breakingbrown.com/ to try to understand how they squared their mission with the all the crazy ads they were running. I could not image the trade off in what I viewed as integrity was worth whatever these ads would generate in terms of revenue. This in my mind is far worse that what Googles ads do. I normally don't reach out to editors in this manner, but the Yvette, seems forthright and conscious so I took a chance. Below is a screen shot from the Breaking Brown Website: After listening to her appeal in the video above, I still think Breaking Brown should get rid of these ads.

Who knew Orson Welles was a civil rights activist. Isaac Woodard, Jr., often written just Isaac Woodard, (March 18, 1919 – September 23, 1992) was an African American World War II veteran who was attacked by South Carolina police in 1946, while still in uniform, hours after being honorably discharged from the United States Army. His attack and injuries sparked national outrage and galvanized the civil rights movement in the United States. The attack by South Carolina police left Woodard completely and permanently blind. Due to South Carolina's reluctance to pursue the case, President Harry S. Truman ordered a federal investigation. The sheriff was indicted and went to trial in federal court in South Carolina, where he was acquitted by an all-white jury. Beginning shortly after this in 1946, President Harry S. Truman embarked on several major civil rights initiatives: he established a national interracial commission, made a historic speech to the NAACP and the nation in June 1947 describing civil rights as a moral priority, submitted a civil rights bill to Congress in February 1948, and issued Executive Orders 9981 and 9980 on the same day to desegregate the armed forces and the federal government. (from wikipedia)

I don't know Wordpress well enough to develop my own theme. Besides I don't have the time to stay abreast of all of changes Wordpress makes to properly maintain one-- I can barely keep my plugins current :-) Man, all of the conferences I attended use to be white male dominated. I used to go to a trade show hosted by the FSID. I just went to their website here is the first photo I saw: This photo pretty much sums up my world back then. I can tell you all of these people have incomes well into 6 figures, they all have nice homes (as in more than one home), in good neighborhoods. Their kids go to private schools and they take several vacations a year. During conventions like this, they have a really good time staying in fancy hotels, dining in fine restaurants and drinking, everything, all on their company's dime. They've flown to the location in first class and have racked up a tons of frequently flyer miles to cover personal trips. How do I know? I've sat in countless rooms like this having everything in common with these folks and nothing having nothing in common with them. Most Black people I encounter nowadays have not idea well so many other folks live... But I digress. In my current, life the only trade show I go now is Book Expo America (BEA). I've attended BEA every year for over a decade and I've even exhibited there three times in NY, LA, DC. That was back when I was still sitting in rooms like the one pictured above and could afford the expense.. Today, if you visit BEA's website it looks completely white washed. You get no real indication that Black people have anything to do with the business of books. Attending the show would not change your mind very much. When you do see a Black face most of the time it will be female. I think the reality is that Black men are increasingly missing from a wide variety of fields that don't involved entertainment, whether it is by scoring points or yelling ni*ger to a beat. Many of us have blue collar jobs like driving buses or pullin' triggers for Uncle Sam. I'm going to seek out Black Male Bloggers.

I need a lot more flexibility than wordpress can provide. Both Huria Search and The Power List Website started off using Wordpress templates, but I quickly discovered that it was far too limiting given what I wanted to do and I ended up rebuilding both websites. Like wordpress both my Power List and Huria Search websites are completely database driven, but I can control exactly what I want my sites to do. I maintain my own books database, for example, and it contains a lot more information that I'm presenting on the website. Huria Search is also taking advantage of the Bootstrap Template. I'm not pleased by Googles mandate. AALBC.com is completely useable by a typical smartphone. Google's motivation is driven by their own financial interests, not some altruistic desire to make the web a better place. The are optimizing the delivery of ads on mobile devices. Unfortunately Google also controls search so I have to comply. However, I do need to bring AALBC.com out of the realm of static webpages to dynamically generated content, but I can't afford to rely on a template designed by someone else that I don't understand and unable to troubleshoot or customize. As far as the Blogger event being mostly female, I asked a few people why they thought that was the case. I was told it was because women are more inclined to network and talk more than men. I dunno about that reasoning, because I've been to many conferences dominated by men. Maybe this issue is a Black thing, and is just reflective of the absence of Black men from the world of building a business from Blogging. The most popular Bloggers tend to be women and if they are men a substantial portion tent to be gay. Most of the 153 Blogs in my database are run by women.

I'm going to keep the site not-for-profit for the foreseeable future. Even though it is doing well trafficwise. I can certainly use the money but I feel like putting ads on the site would pervert the mission. I spent the weekend in DC at a blogger conference it was a really good event, but it skewed too young and female to benefit me very much. The real problem was the age difference. I was on a panel with a young lady that was the same age as my daughter. Which means I've been building websites almost as long almost as she has been living. I doubt anyone else was making their living primarily from their website my perspectives was very different from the average person in attendance. But I did meet some cool people and will follow up with them overtime. You know I've seen so many sites come and ago over the years; I really wanted to just tell folks most of you will not be doing this in five years and here is why. But that really was not the right audience I really needed to be around folks who've been around for a while and have experienced a few things--like one major Google major algorithm change :-) Speaking about hair, that was probably the single most popular topic amongst the bloggers, followed by perhaps, fashion, lifestyle and weight loss. Again, it was a good event for the the twentysomething female demographic. At any rate, I have to make AALBC.com more mobile friendly. Google sent me a message saying, effectively, that I will lose revenue unless I make the changes to my website. I'm going use some of the techniques I used to update Huria.org on AALBC.com to update AALBC.com. I also want to pull all of my content into a database, but this will take some time to accomplish and really push back some of the writing I was planning on doing...but I have to bring my website out of 2009 and into 2015 ;-)

I just upgraded Huria Search making it mobile friendly, adding back the social icons (Harriett Tubman had to go back to the plantation to save her people), cleaning up the look and making major changes on the backend. The database is growing and the quality of the content is improving. Sadly, many of the book stores are dropping their websites--there are some many broken URLs, I'm considering removing the category. This is hard because supporting bookstore websites was my primary reason for creating Huria Search in the first place! It is to the point now it is not even worth talking about, sort of like complaining about the lack of Blacksmith websites. The larger Black media websites don't appear to care about this issue either... Hopefully these upgrades will improve traction of the website. I have not tried to monetize the website over that last 4 years, and I get very little financial support. I'll continue to run it as long as I can. Google, which drives the search portion of the website, says the number of websites in my index will generate "unpredictable results." I pay for the ability produce this search results without Google advertisements (which has the effect skewing traffic away fro our websites). Google say they are working on a solution to support what I'm doing, but they have not provided a timeframe for a solution. I'm looking for an alternative solution, but have not found one yet.

...and Clinton apologized for enslaving Black people. Do you think these apologies make a difference? Australia, more progressive... compared to what, the U.S.? That is not exactly a high bar Del. I'm not so anxious to give Australia too much credit. It is much easier to be progressive in a "racially" homogeneous environment. I bet it would be an entirely different scene if the Aboriginal population were significant. But we will never know, because they've been, effectively, exterminated like the North American indigenous peoples. There are many great white neighborhoods in the U.S. with great schools; fine homes; terrific services; splendid businesses; friendly policeman, who are part of the community; low crime; beautiful houses of worship; shoot even the air quality is better. You'd be hard pressed to find many predominantly Black neighborhoods like this in the U.S., I'm sure Australia is no different. If Black people move into what some call "whitelandnia," white folks move, property values drop, voting districts are redrawn, services decline, crime increases, and ghetto emerge.

Free the Atlanta Public Schools (APS) 12 Black teachers are under assault in America. This trial may prove, just like during slavery, that educating Black children in America is something for which you can go to jail. Hear the victims of the failed American justice system in Atlanta speak for themselves. You may call in to speak with them on Saturday, May 2, 2015, 7:00 pm eastern, 6:00 pm central, 5:00 pm mountain and 4:00 pm pacific. Teresa A. Mann, Attorney, APS 12 Dr. Dana Evans, Principal, APS 12 Diane Webb, Teacher, APS 12 Free the Atlanta Public Schools (APS) 12 As they continue to proclaim their innocence, they do not want probation, a pardon, community service or time served; they want justice in America! Because they are are innocent, they are requesting exoneration of all charges, restitution of legal cost, and re-in-statement in the jobs they love! ------------------------ Now that RICO (Racketeer Influence and Corrupt Organization Act) has been used to "railroad" Black teachers In Atlanta, "Are You Next?" ------------------------ Please asked President Obama to send the new Attorney General of the United States, Loretta Lynch, to Atlanta to investigate this miscarriage of American justice by Clicking Here. join us on Saturday, May 2, 2015 Join us at 7:00 pm Eastern; 6:00 pm Central; 5:00 pm Mountain; 4:00 pm Pacific; 3:00 pm Alaskan; 2:00 pm Hawaiian. Call-In number at 773-591-1690 Listen to The Black Star Project's Internationally Acclaimed Radio Program The Parent Revolution Every Saturday on WVON 1690AM Click Here to Tune In. ***************************************************************** The Black Star Project thanks the Board of Directors of The Field Foundation of Illinois, the Board of Directors of Woods Fund of Chicago, Illinois State Senator Jacqueline Collins, Illinois State Senator Kimberly A. Lightford, Chicago Alderman Will Burns and Melody Spann Cooper of WVON for their generous support for our parenting programs

You were an adult 50 years ago Cynique, I was still learning to speak, so I bend to your wisdom. But by all accounts, from what I've heard and read, what is happening in Baltimore today is like a walk in the park compared to the riot in the '68. Entire neighborhoods were destroyed, police were shot it at, people died. 50 years later some of these places have yet to recover. The devastation was far worse that what we've seen in 2015. The biggest story coming out of Baltimore today seems to be the one about the mother going upside her teenage son's head. We also have Black people running things, the Mayor is a sister and 30 minutes down the road, another sister, Loretta Lynch is attorney general reporting to a Black President. Black people make up a substantial percentage--if not most of Baltimore's police force, the police commission is Black. Can you see why the fight today is so very different, from 50 years ago. Of course I often talk about and fight for Black people, but that is a tactic I'm forced to employ to deal with very serious problems we face. But our problems are a symptom of a much more profound root cause; greedy rich people who will rape the planet and everyone on it for even more wealth. This was true in Hughes day. As far as Australia (which is 90% white) being shocked, that former penal colony better not say anything.

...yeah Warren as a running mate would help placate those who want a female president.

It looks like he will be running on the democratic line. Though he is actually an independent. "...there is a hunger in this country for a movement that is prepared to stand up to the billionaire class, which has so much influence over not only the economic life of the country, but the political life of this country. Everybody knows that the middle class continues to collapse, we have more people living in poverty than ever before, and the wealthiest people and largest corporations are doing phenomenally well, and people are angry." He has my vote.

I not disputing when the poem was put to paper it may have been true. But in 2015 it does not carry the same gravity. Now if the word Negro was replaced by "Poor People" (of all colors), then I'd say it would be more applicable today. WARNING! Negroes, Sweet and docile, Meek, humble and kind: Beware the day They change their mind! Wind In the cotton fields, Gentle Breeze: Beware the hour It uproots trees! Del, your Aussie compatriots are not alone, Americans are asking the same question. I'm not surprised it is making news in Australia, it is the same 'news' everywhere in the western world. Have the Australians completely exterminated the Aboriginal people yet?