Troy

Hi Jill thanks for visiting our forum. Yes Carol did write highlightly of your book in her review. The link above was broken, but I added an interview I found below (this is you right?). I also added it to your web page. Can you provide a short description of the interview so that I can add it to you page as an intro. Your browser does not support the HTML5 audio element.

@Xeon, once March comes I'll see if anyone notices that I'm carrying Black history month beyond February and what the reaction is.

"Marketing is not PR and PR is not Social Media... and none are SALES" good point @Mel Hopkins The real challenge is how does an unknown (non-celebrity) writer use social media to develop relationships which would ultimately lead to the potential to soft sell of a book? Keeping in mind that the time and energy that goes to social media must be taken away from some other activity. How does one create an efficient and productive balance? A couple of years ago I did a quick analysis of the twitter accounts of the top earning authors. Some of the authors like Suzanne Collins, Nora Roberts, and John Grisham did not even have twitter accounts. Most of the others, with accounts were inactive. J.K. Rowling only Tweeted 29 times despite have over 2 million followers. This was two years ago, if I had more time I'd revisit the analysis. Some additional interesting stats I collected at time included; 90% of internet users don’t use Twitter One-quarter of all tweets, are generated by software (automated tweets, not initiated manually by a human) 5% of Twitter users account for 75% of all activity 93.6% of Twitter users have less than 100 followers 1 in 10 Twitter users don’t follow anyone 92.4% follow less than 100 people 6 out of 100 twitter users have no followers 25% of Twitter users have never tweeted 0.29% of overall Twitter users who follow more than 2,000 people This was two years ago, so I'm sure these numbers have changed, but at the time I questioned whether avid readers would be very active on Twitter. I still question that. My own experience tells me that Facebook is more fertile ground for reaching readers that Twitter, despite Facebook making it increasingly more difficult to reach these users over the past year.

While I'm glad the kid in Beasts got some recognition during the image awards that is not enough for me to lift my boycott of the NAACP Image awards. GIven the critical acclaim of the film Straight Outta Compton I can't help but feel manipulated in wanting to see it. Could it really be the best film made last year? I guess 2015 was a relatively weak year for Black film.

I've saw Max Max, and that was because my kid borrowed it from the Library. I did not particularly care for the film and was surprised by the critical acclaim. I also saw was Beasts of No Nation, a very moving film. I'm surprised the kid who played the character, Agu, Abraham Attah, has not been given more acclaim. His performance was as good if not superior to the Quvenzhané Wallis' (Hushpuppy in Beast of the Southern Wild). The only other film on the list that I saw was Martian. It is available on Netflix or one of the streaming services. It was an excellent film. Chi-raq generally elicits un favorable remarks from anyone I ask you has seen it. I will see Straight Outta Compton and a few of the others when they are available for for free streaming. I never heard of the The Danish Girl or Carol. I looked them up and I see why. I did not see any of them films in the theater, but I see less than a handful of moves a year in the theater nowadays.

AFRICAN-AMERICAN FILM CRITICS ASSOCIATION NAMES STRAIGHT OUTTA COMPTON AS TOP FILM OF 2015 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE AFRICAN-AMERICAN FILM CRITICS ASSOCIATION NAMES STRAIGHT OUTTA COMPTON AS TOP FILM OF 2015 Will Smith, Teyonah Parris and Ryan Coogler Also Receive Wins from the Nation’s Premiere African American Critics Group The Danish Girl and Mad Max: Fury Road also take key honors Los Angeles, CA (December 7, 2015) – Movies that reflect the revolutionary undercurrent running through society dominated this year’s voting for the 7th AAFCA Awards. Straight Outta Compton, the surprise summer box office hit centered on the 90’s rap group N.W.A., captured an overwhelming majority of the votes cast by members of the association. The Universal Pictures film earned multiple awards for Best Picture, Best Ensemble and Best Supporting Actor for Jason Mitchell, who portrayed the group’s founder, Eazy E. Awards were also given to Creed in the category of Best Director for Ryan Coogler; Michael B. Jordan for Breakout Performance and Tessa Thompson for Best Supporting Actress. The top acting honors went to Will Smith and Teyonah Parris for their roles in Concussion and Chi-Raq. AAFCA will hold its 7th annual awards ceremony on Wednesday, February 10, 2016 at the Taglyan Complex in Hollywood, CA. “Our members found an interesting theme in many of the films released this year, giving a voice to communities who have generally been underserved and marginalized in society,” says AAFCA president Gil Robertson. “With movies like Straight Outta Compton, Chi-Raq, 3 1/2 Minutes and Dope, filmmakers brought to life many storylines that are a reflection of what’s happening in our world today, including the #BlackLivesMatter movement. Pictures like Carol and The Danish Girl, give voice to another community that is too often ridiculed and ignored by the status-quo. With Creed, the members of AAFCA found an opportunity to celebrate a film with “a” universal message of hope, honor and perseverance – something that everyone can embrace. Overall, it was a transformative year in cinema.” The following is a complete list of 2015 AAFCA Awards winners. Best Picture: “Straight Outta Compton” (Universal Pictures) Best Director: Ryan Coogler –“Creed” (Warner Bros.) Best Ensemble: “Straight Outta Compton” (Universal Pictures) Best Actor: Will Smith “Concussion” (Sony) Best Actress: Teyonah Parris “Chi-Raq” (Roadside Attractions) Best Supporting Actor: Jason Mitchell “Straight Outta Compton” (Universal Pictures) Best Supporting Actress: Tessa Thompson “Creed” (Warner Bros.) Best Independent Film: “Chi-Raq” (Roadside Attractions) Best Screenplay: Rick Famuyiwa, “Dope” (Open Road Films) Breakout Performance: Michael B. Jordan “Creed” (Warner Bros.) Best Animation: “The Peanuts Movie” (20th Century Fox) Best Documentary: “A Ballerina’s Tale” (Sundance Selects) Best Song: “See You Again” Furious 7 (Atlantic Records) Best TV Comedy: “Black-ish” (ABC) Best TV Drama: “How to Get Away with Murder” (ABC) Best Cable/New Media TV Show: “Survivor’s Remorse” (Starz) AAFCA Top Ten Films of 2015 are as follows in order of distinction: 1. Straight Outta Compton (Universal Pictures) 2. Creed (Warner Bros.) 3. Mad Max: Fury Road (Warner Bros.) 4. Beasts of No Nation (Netflix) 5. The Martian (20th Century Fox) 6. 3-1/2 Minutes/Dope (HBO/Open Road Films) 7. Chi-Raq (Roadside Attractions) 8. Carol (Weinstein Co.) 9. The Big Short (Paramount Pictures) 10. The Danish Girl (Focus Features) As previously announced, AAFCA’s Special Achievement honors will be awarded to Codeblack Entertainment CEO, Jeff Clanagan; director John Singleton; Maverick Carter and LeBron James’ SpringHill Entertainment. New York Times film critic, Manohla Dargis will receive the organization’s Roger Ebert Award and HBO will receive the group’s Cinema Vanguard Award. About AAFCA The African-American Film Critics Association (AAFCA) is the premiere organization of African-American film media professionals. Founded in 2003, AAFCA’s members represent a geographically diverse cross-section of media covering the cinematic arts. The organization honors excellence in cinema by creating awareness for films with universal appeal to black communities, while emphasizing film about the black experience and those produced written, directed and starring performers of African descent. The association actively reviews the quality and standard of black talent, content and media coverage. AAFCA also supports the development of future black film critics and filmmakers. AAFCA is based in Los Angeles. CONTACT: Jeaunine Askew 323-878-2399 | info@aafca.com

The this morning I received an email from a publicist, touting a book that has nothing to do with the demographics of the website. The message was however well written and while I did not reply to the message, I did check out the website of the domain from where the email was sent. I was interested in the services they provided to help authors reach book clubs. The is an excerpt from the first case study I read on the website (This case study has nothing to do with the book mentioned in the original email I recieved). "Results: In the six short weeks that we worked with Whitmore, she blossomed from an author with no social media experience to one with a mastery of her blog, Facebook, and Twitter who was capable of building her own audience without our help. We launched the campaign with zero followers on each of the three accounts and finished our six-week campaign with more than 300 followers on Twitter, 104 likes on Facebook, and 540 views per month on her blog with 33 blog followers. Whitmore continues to be active on all three platforms and has grown her Twitter following to nearly 450 followers." You may read the full case study here. It was published on December 2014. Even though the author started from scratch, the numbers aren't particularly impressive--certainly not worth boasting about in a case study as a pitch to other potential clients. However, given that these numbers were posted two years ago I thought it was be a great case to review to see what the long term impact of this social media campaign. So I checked out the author's account to see how they have grown. After two years here is what I found; Facebook: 18 additional likes on Facebook. The authors posts sporadically, an average of twice a month over that last 6 months. None of the posts have anything to do with her writing and most posts get no likes. She averages 0.5 likes per most over the last 6 months with zero comments. I would strongly recommend this author remove her Facebook page). The link to her website on Facebook points to a broken URL. When I do a google search on the author's name, Jan Whitmore, Facebook comes up first. (This is a Google problem that I wish they would fix.) Twitter: there are 51 additional followers on Twitter (less than 2 new followers a month). The author is active on Twitter tweeting on average 3 times a day since the account was created. Looking at the tweets from the past two months there is no shares, no retweets--virtually no engagement. The Blog: The authors blogs infrequently the most recent Blog post was last September. The Blog is part of a website that describes her mission, but could benefit from some SEO. The site is not getting enough traffic to even have an Alexa ranking. At first glance, it does not appear that the author is very interested in selling her books, but that stands at odds with the fact that she contracted (apparently) the services of a full service PR & Advertising Company. Bloggers in particular really need to understand what their goals are when they engage on social media. In this author's case the neglected Facebook page is causing more harm than good, because it is ranking higer than her website, in search, and most the important information, her website address is wrong. None of her social media spoke about her books or her Blog. I would not have known that she was an author with any interest in selling books if my first exposure to her was through her social media platforms. Aside from hiring a PR firm, this example is no different than many others I encounter on a daily basis--most far worse. For many authors are abandoning websites in favor of a Facebook pages. It appears the only beneficiaries in this case study are the social media platforms and the PR firm.

OK Sara you obviously ignored my very simple question about the percentages you provided, because you don't have answer. Indeed there is no logical answer, because what you wrote makes no sense. I was hoping my question would help you see the problem with your conclusion, but I overestimated your reasoning ability.

I'm sorry @Sara, but you are indeed misinterpreting the information. Let's try a more Socratic approach: Sara, you presented the following percentages which, according to you, is a breakdown of the percentage of students enrolled in college. Again, you are asserting that Black women, at nearly 9%, make up the largest race/gender demographic in college enrollment.. Black female 8.7% Asian female 8.6 White female 7.1 Black male 7.0 Hispanic female 6.6 White male 6.1 Hispanic male 5.9 Now if you add these percentages up we get a total of 50% Please tell me what demographic makes up the remaining 50% of the students enrolled in college?

@Sara you are obviously keen on promoting positive Black accomplishments, as I am. However you are misinterpreting information. Black women are not "the biggest demographic in both race and gender of college students." Again given that Black women make up roughly 6% of the population that should be obvious. What is true is that if one looks at the percentage of students within a given race/gender combination, Black women have the highest percentage of students enrolling in college. In other words, a higher percentage of Black women go to college than any demographic. This is a very different statement that what you wrote. Do you see the difference? Pew summarized this information, but you can download the raw data from for 2014 from the census bureau and crunch the numbers. It is also worth looking at graduation rates in context: Black people still lag all other groups in graduation as a percentage of population. In other words were are 13% of the population but make up roughly 9% of the college graduates. Numbers are only a portion of the story. So while the data show a relatively high percentage of us go to college, it also shows that a higher percentage of us fail to graduate. Digging deeper, on relative basis how do we compare in terms of; quality of our education (caliber of school, GPA); debt we graduate with; and employment outcomes (time to find a job and salary); after our graduation? This is the stuff that matters. So while some are doing a happy dance with this data, they are also oblivious to some very profound problems.

8th Day of ‪#‎BlackHistoryMonth‬ 2/8/16 The Black Arts Movement by Kalamu ya Salaam

Well Chris, as bookseller, I have a close enough feel for the industry to say for certain that Black women did not by 50% of the books sold in America in any year. I don't need to see the numbers, as you indicated it is illogical. No I don't doubt for a split second that Black women buy more novel than Black men, however compared to the rest of the popular they are in the minority as a demographic. I've been following the Pew data of the last year fews years. By the way, no one has firm numbers of the racial demographics of book buyers. It is not as if K-mart collects the information at the register. The information is collected through a variety of means, including surveys, and to Cynique's point, about data, we all know how problematic surveys can be. Cynique, people can present numbers is a misleading way, or they misinterpret what the numbers mean, but at some point if the information is scrutinized the attempt to mislead can be revealed. Also If I wrote Black teenage boys purchased 25% of all romance novels in 2015, anyone familiar with books would know that is a ridiculous statement--data would be unnecessary. It is like saying Black people do not read. Finally I wish Black women did buy 50% of all the book sold. I'm sure the entire Black Book Ecosystem would be fairing much better than it is today.

My new favorite website: kentakepage.com now in Huria Search and the blogger database

7th Day of #BlackHistoryMonth The QBR 100 Essential Black Books

Sara, I can see that numbers, percentages and the like confuse you. If I thought it would make a difference, I would explain to you how the reasoning and math you used to arrive at the conclusion that, “50% of books bought in the 1990's were bought by black PEOPLE."”is terribly is flawed. With the reasoning and logic you presented here I don't see how even presenting you with additional information would help you understand something that should be obvious. I give up.

I'll guess I'll have to check out the tweets. I did not see them right away can you post a link to the train of 148 tweet that tell the story?

Hi Mel. The was a line in the Broadway play, Avenue Q, goers along the line of "The Internet is for Porn." There was a time the majority of traffic on the web was porn related. As I migrate my bestsellers books to a database I'm able to very easily run some queries that present some interesting results. My all time bestselling book (far and away) is the Confessions of a Video Vixen. Three of the top five books deal directly with sex. I think this has more to do with the subject matter, sex, than the quality of the writing or the writers journey. Zane started the same way, but on her blog. Karrine's (author of Confessions) blow-and-tell book made her quite wealthy.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 3 FEBRUARY 2016, Los Angeles YASIIN BEY IN NEW FILM THAT REVEALS THE ORIGINS OF THE WORLD PASSPORT “My country is called Earth” yasiin bey says in a new film. “This whole thing belongs to everybody that’s on it.” The hip hop recording artist, actor, comedian, and activist from Brooklyn, New York, formerly known as Mos Def, was improperly detained in South Africa after he presented his World Passport to travel to a gig in Ethiopia. A 9 minute excerpt from “The World is My Country” was released today on www.acountrycalledEarth.com, the site created by yassin bey and Ferrari Sheppard. (bey prefers to spell his name in lower case letters) The site says that Arthur Kanegis Director of the film, rushed to release the clip from his film in response to Mr. bey’s detainment: “this excerpt shows that the World Passport is a fundamental human rights document that has been issued by the World Service Authority (WSA) in Washington DC for more than 60 years. Visas have been stamped on it by 90% of the World’s nations.” In the film clip attorney David Gallup, President of WSA, talks about the bey case: “We immediately sent a legal statement to the government through his attorney explaining the legal validity and recognition by the government of South Africa,” Gallup says in the excerpt, “including copies of stamps from the government, the most recent one as you can see on our website here in the last few months.” The film shows that South Africa has visited the World Passport at least eleven times just in the past few years as displayed at www.worldserivice.org/visas.html. The site shows copies of visas from 183 countries. “People can apply for World Documents using the forms on www.worldservice.org” Gallup said, “or contact us at 202-638-2662 or info@worldservice.org” “We hope that once South African officials see this film they will not only honor yasiin bey’s World Passport, but also move to the forefront of recognizing this important human rights document,” Kanegis said, after all “Nelson Mandela himself said “we are citizens of the world,” and South Africa’s constitution says that ‘everyone has the right to freedom of movement’ and ‘everyone has the right to leave the Republic.’ "The World Is My Country" shows origin of yasiin bey's world passport from Arthur Kanegis on Vimeo. The film tells the story of “World Citizen #1” Garry Davis, the founder of the World Service Authority which issues the passport. “He was an actor – a song and dance man, who leapt off the Broadway stage onto the world stage in 1948,” says Martin Sheen in the excerpt, “showing us that … We don’t have to accept a world ravaged by war and plunging toward environmental disaster…. We can build a world that is constructive for all and destructive to none.” “The full film reveals the very interesting story of the role Garry Davis played in helping to precipitate the UN’s unanimous passage of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) in 1948,” said director Arthur Kanegis. “People can go to www.futurewave.org to watch the excerpt now and to sign up to be informed when they can see the whole documentary.” Since 1954, the World Service Authority has been issuing World Passports, Birth Certificates, Marriage Certificates, IDs and other World Documents all based upon provisions in the UDHR. The film clip shows the important role these documents have played in helping to secure observance of basic human rights for thousands of refugees and stateless people. A work-in-progress preview of the documentary will be shown at the Manchester film festival Friday March 4th at 8PM at the Odeon theater in Manchester England. The date and place of the Grand Premiere has not yet been revealed. The full article is posted here: http://acountrycalledearth.com/2016/02/03/yasiin-bey-the-world-is-my-country Arthur Kanegis and David Gallup are available for interviews futurewavefilms@gmail.com Media Contact: Ilene Proctor PR 310-858-6643 Cell: +1 310-721-2336 E-mail: ilenepr@sbcglobal.net ilene@taghollywood.com www.ileneproctor.com

Here is the correct link to the website I could not figure out how to buy this book, otherwise I would have posted a link. Hopefully Shona will provide that information. I recall The Caribbean Writer, but have not seen it in a while.

Square (paypal too) really should provide more descriptive error messages. When I take payments over the phone I'm not even promoted to obtain an address.

@Sara, You made a statement that Black women buy 50% of all books sold. I should have made my reply much clearer by saying that statement was wrong and reveals a complete ignorance of the industry. No data is needed, as it is absurd on it's face. Instead, I asked you to cite a source hoping you would discover the error on your own. However you comeback, not with a source to cite your ridiculous assertion, but comments with the comments from other people with limited or partial knowledge of the subject. Indeed nothing to support your original statement. However you demand facts from me. I told you I have the data, but it would take me some time to find the book. This information is not freely available on the web, those in the industry pay for it. But I posted a video, which you apparently did not listen to, or understand, featuring the founder of Kensington Books, talking about many of the points you raised. Instead you cite racism in this case, without even knowing what the hell you are talking about. In the white racist environment that is New York publishing Kensington Books is one of the least racist of the larger publishers--certainly during the time when Walter was at the helm. I seriously doubt you are actually interested in facts, given what you have written and your reaction thus far. So go ahead and keep believing that, "...in the '90's, African-American women purchased close to 50% of all books sold in the U.S. That's right. 6% of the population bought (not "avid readers" or "went to the library," but put out cold, hard cash!) 1/2 of all new titles sold in the U.S." However if you make outrageous statements like this here; expect them to be challenged. You can call it throwing mud, or whatever makes you feel better..

If you like you may simply send PayPal a payment of $50 for 50 days (or any increment of $50) to troy@aalbc.com. Otherwise I can do a credit card over the phone just email me you telephone number. Sorry you had difficulty, I generally don't run into problems using Square.

Well that is a very interesting conversation @Sara. Is the forum still active? I see rather than "50% of all books sold in the U.S.," the assertion is 50% of all romance books. This is a very different statement. I doubt this is true too, but I don't follow the genre. But there may be data to support his. I used to get reports every year, commissioned by PW, which broke down books sales by demographics, format and genre, I'll have to see if I can find one. In the meantime, the whole Black romance genre, for the most part, was kicked off by Kensington (who was mentioned above). I interviewed Walter Zacharias, the founder of Kensington, a few years ago. Both Walter and author Gwynne Forster, who also appears in the video,. are no longer with us. They were both fine people, and lived brilliant lives.

5th Day of ‪#‎BlackHistoryMonth African American History Month Quizzes This is always a popular page on my website each February.

Sure it is a referral service, it is just that Amazon is controlling the money. If they are successful contractors will make less money and become dependent upon Amazon for business. Recently Uber and Lyft decided to cut prices for their glorified taxi referral service in New York City and other major cities, launching protests. Meanwhile regular cabbies and car services make less while Uber and Lyft get rich.