Troy

Sounds like a plan. I'll reach out to the organizers.

17th Day of ‪#‎BlackHistoryMonth‬ 2/17/16 Thousands of Readers Choose Their Favorite 100 Books from of the 20th Century

Cynique in this context I'm talking about media consumption, who produces it, who profits, how the consumer (Black folks benefit). We are all consumers, and a small percentage are also producers. Sure producers stand to benefit financially, but if they care about the consumer, the consumer will benefit in many ways too. They will benefit from content that serves them, they can even benefit from employment by the producer, I can go on an on. In today's world media production is coalescing into the hand of a few multinational corporations not only don't care about us but don't like us. Who else would publish a book, for your children where a grown black man is skurrying about the kitchen to make a cake for his slavemaster, the "father" of our country. In the book world most of the top selling Black books aren't even owned by Americans. There is not one Black owned publisher that can produce a book that will Black people will support, in the same way that they support a book from Spiegel and Grau published title. So yes, if they were more Black media, the average Black person would benefit. In fact all you have to do is look at what we have lost over the last 20 years. The following cartoon was published in the NY Post, a major newspaper, in one of the world's great cities, New York City. The paper is owned by Rupert Murdoch who owns more media properties than I can count including HarperCollins one of the planet's largest publishers. Murdoch has used his newspaper to advance his businesses. Do you think he give a crap about Black people, poor people...

Piggy backing off another event is a good idea, that would also increase participation. There is an event in Charlotte I've been meaning to attend (I helped in the initial organization but never actually attended the fair. Maybe I can set something up then. It not on my list of event http://aalbc.com/events because they have not set and date for this years fair: http://www.charlotteliteraryfestival.org/

Well done! Thanks for sharing this book here Daryl. Did you know you slaves with Swag was an AALBC.com bestseller? http://aalbc.com/books/bookinfo.php?isbn13=9780978786212 I have not migrated most of the site's content to the new format yet, but I compete yours on the next update.

While it was not my observation regarding the ownership of media outlets Sara, I do wholeheartedly agree with the idea. Of course the the notion that we "...move from being a race of consumers to one that produces..." is predicated up the fact they we do not produce, nor control the production of wheat we consume, so I'm 100% in line with that idea.

This audio interview was done in 2009. Ishmael saw into the future better than Nostradamus. But it is very frustrating to listen to this because while Ishmael is speaking the truth his behavior, particularly on Facebook, goes directly counter to what he is saying here. He is making Marky Z rich, as the saying goes... I just don't get it. I have invited him to comment here on occasion as well, but he never has. Of course it is terribly difficult to pull people off Facebook, so that does not make Ishmael unusual, but I don't expect usual behavior from a man of his intellect. We need him engaging on Black owned platforms.

Thanks for taking the time to reply here Michael. I had not considered the possibility that the message introduced that way would carry more weight with other white folks. Still, I think introducing your art with your race is unnecessary. We know there are righteous white folks; that goes without saying. Your imagery is powerful and your race is incidental unless you chose to make it otherwise.

Yeah coordination something like this would take effort. Let me see if I can get say 20 people together in a hotel in somewhere where we can connect on a personal level and hash out some ideas. I think southern VA maybe NC would be more central and definitely cheaper than NY or DC. It does not have to be a destination location. It could be like a writers retreat, the less distractions the better.

Black Issues Book Review was the only large circulation magazine devoted to books written by black authors. I talk about this magazine often. William Cox had sold it to the Brother that runs Target Market News, Ken Smikle. It is curious Ken does not mention this on his website's biography. At any rate by the time the magazine died, the surge in attention paid to Black books was already in run downswing. There are some indications that the pendulum is beginning to swing back as there seems to be renewed interest in Black books. 15 days down 351 to go :-)

It was interesting that the artist led with “I'm a white artist...” I'm not sure what his intent was when he provided that information. Was I supposed be more impressed? Was it done to preempt any negative reaction were I to discover his whiteness later? If I were white, I would he have used the same introduction? Obviously he shares his art with Black people who fight racism, but does he share it with the white racist who actually need it to hear the message? I did invite the artist to comment on his work here, perhaps those questions would be answered. I chose to use, Michael D’Antouno’s tactic to introduce his work here. In today's racist culture, perhaps it is salacious enough to attract attention to his message In any event the art speaks for itself.

I decided today to add all major book events, not just Black ones, that I could find to my Book events listing. I think it one of a kind. There are plenty of places that lists book events, but none also list Black events. My list includes book and literary festivals from across the country. Have about 100 in in my database, some have already occurred, and others have not posted there 2016 data, so they are not showing, but right now I have 75 events listed. Check out the list at http://aalbc.com/events/ I plan to provide a list suitable for printing, but I'm looking for some feedback on what I've done so far. Also, am I missing any important events? Let me know what you y'all think. Also take a look at the participating authors at these events. What conclusions can you draw? Occassionaly some well meaning white person will ask me some variation of the following; "If there was an event that was called the National White Book Festival, that would be considered racist, but you all can have a Nation Black Book Fair, why isn't that racist?" Again, let me know what you all think.

OK It must be getting late I read the article twice and completely missed the methodology so prominently placed at the end of the article I'll look at this again tomorrow. I will say any data collected at an Essence Festival would be VERY biased. Have you ever been to an Essence Festival? LOL!

200 hours is more time than someone working 40 hours a week would spend on their job. There are many homes I visit where the TV is playing and no one is watching it. I know a lot of people who sleep with the TV on--one lady I talked to about this needs the TV on to fall asleep. Some people still keep TV's one to even when they are not home to give potential burglars the impression someone is home. This is purely anecdotal of course, but since Nielsen no longer hands out surveys I presume they are collecting the data by monitoring our viewing habits which is data that is easily obtained now that we all use view TV broadcasts over some digital network. The article did not discuss the methodology used to collect the information. I suspect what Nielsen is capturing is a cultural bias, where Black folk happen to have the TVs on longer, and not being watched, so the perspection is we are watching them longer. As far as smart phone usage is concerned that makes sense because for many Black folks the cell phone is there only form of Internet access. We don't talk about it much any more but there are A LOT of Black people who don't have PC's or laptops at home, and their cell phone is their primary method for access the internet. Which may explain why Black folks disproportionately use Twitter. The stats about newspapers readership baffles me. I subscribe to newspapers and read them, but I don't know very many other people who do. They read, but it is typically online...

Where is the midpoint between ATL, NYC and Memphis? We should host an conference, a real roll-up the sleeves combine to hash some of these issues out. We all know an least two who would be interested in doing this maybe we get the ball really rolling. I've been part of similar efforts that went no where, but Mel is fired up and Chris is not too jaded yet :-) I think our group we can actually make something happen. Over the long term. Maybe over the Summer? What do you think?

This was shared with me on Twitter today You know artists have always been an important part of the struggle. This image below was also part of the tweet. I think the analogy is valid.

14th Day of ‪#‎BlackHistoryMonth‬ 2/14/16 Dr Jawanza Kunjufu author of The Conspiracy to Destroy Black Boys

Hey Mel I just updated my initial message (for syntax and clarity). It had not occurred to me but that link you provided would be a good springboard to other blogs as well.

You know I hot the main page of Chasties' sites started reading and was drawn into the story then bam! "...here is your book..." then we are presented with the cover. I actually think that is a good intro to the book. I would get rid of the social buttons -- there is nothing happening on any of these platforms. I have never seen a twitter account with only one follower. Some folks would consider that embarrassing :-) You absolutely need a call to action showing how people can purchase the book. Make it easy for folks. Finally you can probably Blog all day about your teaching experiences. I would be careful not to simply show a parade of dysfunction, but do more of what you did on your homepage present a problem and demonstrate how you solved it. That is what is inspiring and should resonate with people--they will want to support your efforts.

You know that makes sense to push these types of selections directly to people most likely to use it. Just posting it on social media, or even here, and expecting it to just be discovered will not work. I will publish monthly updates of the links I posted. I hope this link will have legs beyond the daily posts.

Again I have no problem with, and will encourage visitors, to share links to our content on Social media. So I will keep the social buttons to facilitate that sharing. Indeed I will share from here myself. You just will not catch me engaging on social media. If all content providers did this social media would not be able to exert so much control over the net

This really is an important book.

25 Important New Books by African Writers

Back on the 23rd of January I shared a link to a page on my test site called, "100 Top Recommended African-American Children's Books." This is list really part of an overall strategy to increase my focus on children's books. At the time there were 70 something titles on the list; I was interested in getting more feedback on the page's layout as well as suggestions from others on additional titles. I posted a link on Facebook and it was shared over 1,700 times. The posts were also shared on Twitter, Google+, and Pinterest. These are the 4 social media platforms that I regularly post to. The reaction on Twitter was just as strong. I notice one site customized and created a post about the list, and gave complete credit to AALBC.com with clear hyperlinks back to this site--a very unusual, but positive action. Each day, over the two day period shown, there were more than 3,000 new visitors to the AALBC.com test site. Prior to this the website was getting 300 hundred visitors a day. This was all direct traffic. While the site was in the Google's index it was not getting any traffic from search. Because virtually all of the traffic to the site was due to this post, this gave me a rare opportunity to examine, in detail, how well social media performs in terms of generating traffic back to my web site and even in generating book sales. The Google Analytics screenshot below reflects the sources of traffic on my test site. You can see that 95% of the traffic to the test site came from Facebook and less that 3% from Twitter. I immediately consolidated the test site into AALBC.com proper, something I did not plan to do until the spring, but I was concerned about AALBC.org, creating confusion not just to users but to Google's Search engine. After migrating the test site to AALBC.com (a NON-TRIVIAL acitivity I assuure you), I reshared the chidlrens book list. The activity on the Twitter side continued even more strongly Below is just a sample of the updates I would get from Twitter on folks who shared or retweeted the page. My kid texted me from her job saying that she got a message from Twitter telling her that the post was trending. She also warned me that the link was wrong; it said aalbc.org instead of aalbc.com. I explained to her that it was not a problem (the non-trivial task was worth it). The link has been circulating on social media for about three weeks now. I can see the half-life is about a week. In other words the traffic generated to AALBC.com from all of social media for this post descreased approximately by half each week. The graph chart below shows the traffic from all of social media to the "100 Top Recommended African-American Children's Books" page from Jan 23 to the morning of February 12. As you can see there were a total of 18,851 visitors to the website--virtually all of them came from Facebook. The tremendous about of engagement on Twitter did not translate into very many visits. All of the engagement on Twitter benefited Twitter more than it did this site. This is not news to me as I've written a great deal about "likes" and "shares" not translating into traffic. But this case really illustrates the point in a stark fashion. Twitter simply does not benefit my platform. Sure it is great to have 552 visitors that I would never have had, but look what it takes to get it. I also get tons of repins on Pinterest but even this viral post generated almost no referral traffic from Pinterest. Google+ is not much better. If either platform (Pinterest or Google+) benefits the AALBC.com brand I have no way to measure it. Book Sales There was indeed a surge in book sales. The majority of these sales were made by people on mobile devices. if you look carefully at the Google Analytics chart, I shared above, you will see that almost 75% of the visitors (5,228 total) were Facebook mobile users (m.facebook.com). Naturally, the mobile users dominated sales. Conclusions My initial posts on social media did NOT generate all of the engagement and resulting traffic; it all come from people who shared it and even more who reshared those shares. We benefit most from social media when we support each other naturally, organically. Organic reach is far more powerful than paid or promoted social media posts. I've never seen this much engagement from a promoted post. Plus, needless to say, it is a whole lot cheaper. The underlying content has to be of interest. Children's Books have been in the news lately, it is Black History Month, and frankly people love lists. The new website design will allow me to go to town with lists. Yesterday I published QBR's 100 Essential Black Books, tomorrow I'll share 25 New Books by African Writers. Will any of these pages gain as much traction as the children's book list, I doubt it, but I does not need as AALBC.com is more than one page of content. It is the collection of content here that will attract visitors over the long haul. One of the reasons I'm upgrading this site it to optimize it for mobile users. I see clearly why this is so important: since the site is optimized for mobile; making the book purchase, directly on the site, is easy for the reader. As a result, this site earns more commissions on book sales. Examining your site's traffic is so important. If I never looked at my website traffic I would never have known that all of the Twitter engagement led to very little traffic and zero book sales. The week long half-life for the "100 Top Recommended African-American Children's Books." list is actually a lot longer than I'm accustomed to seeing. Typically a single day half life is normal. This subject has legs right now and is supports my designed to provide more content in this area. Finally, this is why websites are important. I could have posted the list of books directly on Facebook and it would have looked something like this (at best); A is for Activist by Innosanto Nagara (2013-11-19) A Weed Is a Flower : The Life of George Washington Carver by Aliki (1988-04-15) Afro-Bets 1-2-3 Book by Cheryl Willis Hudson (1989-02-16) Amazing Grace by Mary Hoffman (1991-09-02) And the Sun God Said: That’s Hip by Ernest Gregg (1972-01-01) Baby Says by John Steptoe (1988-04-20) Bad News For Outlaws: The Remarkable Life Of Bass Reeves, Deputy U. S. Marshal by Vaunda Micheaux Nelson (2009-09-01) Beautiful Moon by Tonya Bolden (2014-11-04) Bird by Zetta Elliott (2008-10-28) Black Mother Goose Book by Elizabeth Murphy Oliver (1981-09-17) Oh and there would have been no hyperlinked text. I'm noticing that many entities are abandoning maintaining websites in favor of Facebook pages. I've also been reading about content providers agreeing to publish content for consumption directly on Facebook. If this trend continues I think it would be disastrous on more levels than I can describe now. It is hard to imagine that this is happening in an environment when running and maintaining a website has never been easier or cheaper. Another reason I upgraded my website was to move it from a server which was costing me $90 a month, to one which costs me $14.99 a month. It could run AALBC.com on a website that costs less than $30 a year--inlcuding domain name registration. There is NO reason for Facebook to be anyone's primary platform. After my 366 days of Black History campaign, I'm going to stop posting to all social media. I will support anyone that shares content on social media on AALBC.com's behalf, but I just will; not post. Social media, like this very discussion forum needs people to participate in order for it to be valuable. If I'm constantly posting there why would people come here?

Brilliant exchange Mel and Chris. My struggle to keep this forum alive so that dialogue like this can emerge is well worth the effort. Mel your media pitch for Chris is priceless. Chris being a celebrity, or having a celebrity cosign, can definitely help, but it is insufficient (unless you are Kanye West) for something to go "viral" on Twitter. I've had both Cornel West and Tavis Smiley retweet one of my posts and it went no where. A recent tweet of mine,100+ Recommended African-American Children’s Books, that did go "viral" did not have a celebrity cosign (as far as I can tell), but it resonated with more people. White House Af-Am Ed (@AfAmEducation) Retweeted and their retweet was retweeted 100 times-- and that was just one of many. People love lists, and the recent hullabaloo over the racist children's book, A Birthday Cake for George Washington, was still fresh in people's minds. So the tweet got some traction--but only on Twitter! Here is the kicker: Virtually no one from twitter visited the website (this will be the subject for a different case study). Mel I do believe there was a time, when we had a stronger, independent Black media, that the coverage of folks like Chris and myself would have come much easier. This is purely anecdotal, but 10 years ago I, and many of my peers, used to get much more media coverage--without having to develop the angle, pitch the idea, and essentially hand them the whole thing on a silver platter. I also know that much of what we do see in the media did not get there organically, but is part of an orchestrated effort by media professionals, PR experts, advertising executives, etc. I think part of the frustration Chris feels is that his being "...the only Black owned shoe company in the US actually selling shoes..." should be newsworthy in and of itself. I think 10 years ago a Black Enterprise would have been more likely to pick up his story with a PR professional, than they would be today. Of course there were always PR firms, but it seems today the content they promulgate crowds out everything else that does not have a PR machine behind it. If you look at what proliferates on the top Black websites, much of the content is the same.