Troy

Well you knew I would get a kick out of the Chris Of course this does not come as a surprise to me. You see, I used to get a lot of traffic from other indie sites before they all, effectively, dried up. I get traffic from your site as well. This is why I'm always telling folks to link to each other--because it works. You recall the post about the traffic I send to the Harlem Book Fair's site. Large and small sites benefit from this strategy; it is free to do it; and it scales. The problem is getting authors to simply take advantage of our collective strength. This is even harder than getting authors to use an Amazon affiliate code--seriously.

Yes, and the real benefit of YouTube is the service they provide for videos including embedding. In the early days hosting your own videos was expensive, and YouTube made it possible to share videos on your website and with others. Today hosting videos is cheap, but youtube gets you videos seen by more people that hosting them on your site alone. YouTube adds value to the WWW, where most other social media platforms attempt to horde and extract value from the WWW.

I'll share with you my YouTube revenue in another post. You can use it for comparison purposes. Speaking about Facebook, check this out: On Saturday and Sunday I got a combined total of over 8,200 visitors from Facebook. The visitors looked at over 19,000 pages. In case you are wondering, that is a lot more than normal. My initial reaction was that this is bogus, but after looking at the data, it looks like the traffic is legit. The crazy thing is that I did not even use Facebook on Saturday and did not post a link until late Sunday. Plus July is historically the worst month of the year for traffic and Saturday is usually the worst day of the week. But this may be my best July ever for traffic. Something changed at Facebook. Saturdays surge in referral traffic from Facebook, and the increase in referral traffic over the first 1/2 of the year, took place despite me dramatically reducing my activity on the platform. I wonder if Facebook is showing popular content in an effort to boost internal engagement? I dunno, but I'll enjoy it while it lasts... @CDBurns, I meant to ask do you like the scrolling that I added to your Blog feed or do you prefer it to be static?

I started adding ads to my YouTube videos exactly 4 years ago. During that time, my videos have received 301,400 views (just over 200 views a day). My channel has $675.37 during that time or about $2.20 for every 1,000 times my videos are viewed. There are many producers on YouTube getting this many views every few hours. Those "YouTubers" also can generate revenue from produce placement and other forms of sponsorship. A popular channel can generate a ton of revenue. My YouTube revenue is not much, but it is enough to cover my web hosting, and is a LOT more than I'm getting paid by any other social media platforms, who want you to pay THEM for the privilege of contributing content

@CDBurns, you can't argue with results, even if they appear counterintuitive. I'm still tweaking the web pages, but I have decided to call them "Enhanced Author Profiles." I'm still working on the pricing and features. Dr. Elizabeth Nunez is an author who uses her AALBC.com page as her primary web prescence: http://aalbc.com/authors/home.php?author_name=Elizabeth+Nunez I added an events calendar to your page. For authors with a bunch of events this is a cool feature. They can also manage their own calendars. I also added her press kit. I will probably add a slide-show of photos as well as a high resolution image for event organizers I think securing the domain is still a good idea because the underlying URL is a mouthful. It is just easier to say "elizabethnunez.com," but I will get rid of the masking so that the icon shows in the browser window I'm still thinking about the "tweet/facebook/boost." This is important because authors need help in effectively advertising their books. AALBC.com could be a part of a broader mix that might include, ad words, social media, Amazon, and other indie related sites with high traffic.

The winner were announced during the fair: http://aalbc.com/books/pw-award-winning-books.php?year=2016 I was unable to attend the actual awards ceremony but I got a chance to meet a couple of the finalists. Geri Spencer Hunter Saharra K. Sandhu

{sigh} "... the pleasantries of conversation and personal interaction continue to diminish..." A great conversation was tough even before the smartphone revolution, but it seems virtually impossible today. Conversation is replaced by groups of people scrolling through their social media feeds until they find something interesting to share. The cell phone is the focus, rather than the people in the room. For a while the WWW compensated by allowing people to converse that would never meet otherwise (waving at @Cynique). But the WWW too been adversely impact from the rise of mobile technology. Even Facebook is hampered by the rise of people people sharing memes and videos over and over on mobile devises rather than contributing directly to the conversation... For me, as I get older what seems more remarkable is how quickly the seasons seem to change. It also seems as though the summers were much hotter when I was younger, but I think that may have to do with the lack of air conditioning growing up :-) Speaking of conversation I'm going to head down and talk to some folks at the Harlem Book Fair, afterward I'll have a few friends over, share a few beers and not have to worry about anyone with their heads buried in the their "stupidphone."

We don't control the narrative and suffer as a result. I pretty much ignore mainstream media. I rather be ignorant than have my head filled with lies. I'll read about this stuff later, when the truth is available.

Hi @Melica Niccole, welcome to the forums. I just added the children's book fair to our events calendar: http://aalbc.it/adckid

Hi Danielle thanks for sharing information about your book. People who frequent the website will probably think, and rightfully so, that I sound like a broken record, but I strongly encourage all authors to use an Amazon affiliate code when sending people to Amazon to buy their books. Learn why by reading point #3 on this article. I also encourage authors to post their book covers as well.

The Association of American Publishers (AAP) reported the following: Washington, DC; July 11, 2016 – The U.S. book and journal publishing industry generated $27.78 billion in net revenue for 2015, representing 2.71 billion in units (volume), according to the Association of American Publishers (AAP) StatShot Annual survey. Revenues and unit volume were essentially flat with a decrease of 0.6% from $27.96 billion in revenue from 2014, and a 0.5% increase in units from 2.70 billion units in 2014 (Read the entire press release). The AAP also reports that eBooks sales are down from last year. This does not surprise me as ebooks sales peaked and leveled off more than a year ago. Even though I was a very early adopter and promoter of ebook technology, I still prefer a physical books. Interestingly, coloring books are major factor in book sales. FYI: the "Other" category includes calendars, maps, notebooks, etc.

OK got you @CDBurns. Again that type of service makes sense. I just need to think about pricing for promotion of these internal websites. I made a few more changes/enhancements; I updated all of your individual book pages to include your side bar widgets: Here is an example book page: http://aalbc.com/books/home.php?isbn13=9781502461759 I added the favicon (the image of you that appears in the browser tab to all of your pages. I removed the masking with your domain name. In other words; when someone browses to http://christopherdburns.com, they are actually sent to: http://aalbc.com/authors/home.php?author_name=Christopher+D.+Burns. Previously I maintained http://christopherdburns.com in the browser's address bar. Doing this might seem advantageous initially, but it has a few downsides; it prevented me from using the favicon; and the URL in the browser window never changed, which prevented visitors from hyper linking directly to any of your pages. So I removed masking. Here is an author where I still have the masking in place: http://elizabethnunez.com/ let me know what you think (note: there is no image on the browser tab). I added one house ad near the bottom of the side bar. I also plan to give authors the ability to add their own ads with tracking (using my ad server). I think I'm ready to roll out the service. I've already bounced the idea off a couple of authors who don't have websites and their is define interest

DuckDuckGo won't help very much in terms search engine marketing (Google still controls that), but they will certainly help you discover more of what is great about the web.

The following observation from the linked article was interesting: "Rates of violent crime in cities did not make it any more or less likely for police departments to kill people. For example, Buffalo and Newark police departments had low rates of police violence despite high crime rates while Spokane and Bakersfield had relatively low crime rates and high rates of police violence." I'm sure some would argue the rate of police violence is why homicides are low in Spokane and high in Newark.... Man's inhumanity to one another knows no bounds. Welcome to the forums @Ray Hollar-Gregory

Earlier this year we killed a project we worked on for over two years called the Power List. It was an attempt to fill in the void left when Essence Magazine abandoned their bestsellers list almost a decade ago. Unfortunately, the Power List was never embraced enough to make it worth the effort to continue producing. After I started the AALBC.com website upgrade, allocating resources to maintaining the Power List, was impossible to justify. Especially when you consider that I'm expanding AALBC.com's Bestsellers list The really interesting thing is that people still cite the Essence's list even though the list has been defunct for years. I received a galley in the mail and the publisher boasted that the author was a "#1 Essence bestseller." I'm saying to myself, "Well sheesh, I guess this authors must not have accomplished anything lately..." Even at it's prime the Essence's list and it's methodology wasn't anything to write home about. Once Time, purchased the magazine Essence's coverage of books suffered, skewing heavily toward the most popular and celebrity driven titles. It was not long before the bestsellers list was abandoned. After Essence ditched the Black bookseller at their music festival, I cancelled my subscription and have not really thought about them very much since. Still, the Essence brand carried a lot more clout and their bestsellers list definitely gained much more traction that the Power List ever did, and Black books and authors benefited as a result--which is all I really cared about. I hoped the Power List would recreated that benefit. But hey the AALBC.com list has been around 18 years and is getting stronger each period. The more authors who boast about making AALBC.com's bestsellers list the more we all benefit.

Cool I will quote you :-) @CDBurns I'll update your individual book pages with the same widgets when I get a chance. Once that is done, I'll probably roll out the service. Well if you are talking about Facebook or Twitter promotion you can do that on your own as if it was your own website. The benefit however is that I can help you measure relative effectiveness of those promotions.

@CDBurns I figured out what to do with that extra space :-) Check out the revised page: http://www.christopherdburns.com/ and let me know what you think. For authors taking advantage of this service I've swapped out all the advertisements and replaced them with widgets. Take a look at my profile page for an example: A calendar widget (I'm using Google's calendar, but any embeddable version is supported) RSS Feed Widget (I'm pulling in my Blog) Facebook Widget Twitter Widget Related Content from AALBC.com Chris on your page you have everything by the calendar, if you want me to add a calendar let me know. My thinking it is that authors who do a bunch of events or who are on tour can benefit most from this. For authors who are active on social media, this is a way for them to capture some of the benefit their activity on their own platform. I can even create an ad unit such that the authors can monetize their pages if they liked. I plan to update the links for the book pages, so that they have the widgets instead of the advertisements. The real benefit to the author, and AALBC.com is that their website will get more traffic than if it was unaffiliated wiht AALBC.com and if the author does any promotion of their own site AALBC.com can benefit too. Win-Win! I'm almost ready to roll service out, so I'm still open to ideas and suggestions.

Sure Pioneer they way we look is indeed a factor of how we are treated; gender, height, beauty, race, weight, etc are all factors. You can say that Obama is treated like other Black folks because he is "black," but do you think a dumb, dark skinned, short, fat, Brother would navigate the world the same ease as Barack has simply because both are Black? Again, I assert Barack's upbringing, innate ability, ambition, and even phenotype, in combination is not typical of anyone, certainly not your garden variety African American. Either way, nothing in President Obama's background has predisposed him to doing anything more for Black people than any white politician.

I'm becoming more and more convinced that there just simply are not that many smart, conscientious, and righteous people. We all want police officers with all of these qualifications; but where are they going to come from? Cops are asked to put their lives on the line, work crazy hours, and deal with the worst of humanity all for a relatively low wage. It is simply unrealistic for us to expect exemplary behavior from all of them at all times What surprises me is that we don't have more low life racist cops doing evil things. If you want cops to behave better you really have to compensate these professionals accordingly. Cops as have to be treated professionally by their superiors. Cops in my neighborhood seems to be under a great deal of pressure to give out tickets. This is stressful for both the community and the police officers. Of course this increases the number of confrontations and the likelihood another brother gets killed. Usually the extra, and unnecessary, pressure cops are put under is political in origin.

The bestselling books for May and June of 2016 is a interesting mix of books published by major and indie publishers, newly published titles and classic books.

Interesting, I was looking at the thumbnail pic from the perspective of how it appears on the page. If you changed both the title and the thumbnail at the same time it would be tough to determine which one had the greatest impact on views. But I see you are already experimenting and evaluating (I must have forgotten who I was talking to ). As far as a plan for promotion drop me an email with your budget (monthly spend and duration), that will give me an idea of what I have to work with. I can even potentially do some off site promotion as well. Yes I agree the website upgrade has had a lot to do with improved engagement from Facebook. Visitors from Facebook also tended t be more engaged with the website that even visitors arrive via organic search. What is even more interesting, and I'll write about this in the article, is that while visitors from other social platforms has also increased, the relative increase from Facebook completely eclipses the other social platforms and is 88% of all social traffic. Now imagine if my strategy was to post the actual content directly on Facebook? Think of the value that I would have provided Facebook--without remuneration.

Man @hen81, those are slave hours (almost like a booksellers hours) I hope your were compensated in a way that matters to you most. You wanna send me an updated bio and link to a video for your aalbc.com profile: http://aalbc.com/authors/author.php?author_name=D.T.+Pollard

Oh ok I misunderstood Cynique. Lita, I doubt Hillary would say something that silly in public, but if you ever find a source please do share it.

Cynique, we have more options than Hillary, Trump, or nothing. We can vote for a third party candidate, I'll probably vote for Gary Johnson. He is calling for a consumption tax and eliminating the income tax (which would render the IRS obsolete) this is something I always thought was a good idea.

The 2016 Phillis Wheatley Award Finalists announced this week. There are some really excellent books on this list; including one we just reviewed, Bibsy by Brenda Ross.