About Books: Peter Slen Interviews Troy Johnson

[Troy]

About Books Interview: Peter Slen talks to Troy Johnson Founder of the African American Literature Book Club. They discussed the website Troy started in 1997 to promote books by or about people of African descent.
 

[ProfD]

Brotha @Troy, excellent interview. Thanks again for everything you're doing with AALBC from providing a portal for Black books (authors, publishers, distro, readers) to the forums. Appreciate you mayne.

[Troy]

Thanks man I appreciate it.

[richardmurray]

Congrats @Troy I have to look at later, but will share now

TRANSCRIPT

Visit booktv.org for a full schedule of author events.

00:00:08 

On about books, we delve into the latest news about the publishing industry with interesting insider interviews with publishing industry experts. We'll also give you updates on current nonfiction authors and books, the latest book reviews, and we'll talk about the current nonfiction books featured on C-SPAN's Book TV. And now on Book TV we want to introduce you to Troy Johnson. He's the founder and president of the African American Literature Book Club. Mr. Johnson, what exactly is that?

Show More 00:00:43 

Well, the African American Book Club is, uh, one of the oldest and perhaps the largest website dedicated to books written by or about people of African descent. Uh, we provide a platform for people to share ideas and discuss books. We, uh, publish book reviews. We share profiles of, you know, thousands of authors and tens of thousands of books. It's just a tremendous resource to share information about what's happening with black books and indeed the black book ecosystem. So I share information about bookstores. Brick and mortar bookstores, book festivals and fairs, it's just a, you know, one librarian recently called it a librarian's paradise. So that's that's the African American Literature Book Club.

Show More 00:01:28 

So the year is 1997, what inspired you to do this?

00:01:33 

You know, that's an interesting story and It wasn't a love of books. It was really at the time I was running a small business, creating websites, if you can believe it or not, in the mid 90s for small businesses, for others for small businesses. It started, you know, I was selling personal computers on the side and built a website to support that business and decided building websites for other businesses would be an easier, easier thing to do. And I picked books, you know, at the time Barnes and Noble had an affiliate program and it just seemed like something that was easy to do, and I did it and as soon as I did it, I discovered, you know, as soon as I built this website focused on black books, I just discovered the world of books literally just opened up and, you know, meeting people and authors and it just was a tremendous. You know, it just, I just really enjoyed it and I wanted to share that with the world. I just really wanted to share my enthusiasm with everyone else out there because, you know, I, you know, I grew up in Harlem and You know, there was just so much I didn't know about black culture and you know I just was really motivated to share that.

Show More 00:02:48 

So you talked about the ecosystem of the black book. What, what exactly do you mean by that?

00:02:54 

Yeah, when I talk about that, I'm talking about all of the professionals. Involved with getting a black book to the reader's hands, so from the author to the reader and everyone in between, and what I've discovered over the years is that there are A lot of roadblocks, a lot of barriers, some systemic, some. You know, there's different motivations, but after, after, you know, a few years doing this, I realized that it wasn't a lack of desire for the products which you, you know, when I started the website was often bandied about by mainstream publishers, you know, black people don't read, and you know I knew that wasn't true and I knew that if there were more books available they would certainly they would certainly read them. And so then I started to look at, well, why aren't there more books out there. So you know, then I started to look at the number of bookstores that were out there and you know. Do you have access to books? How do you learn about books? Now again, the web was just emerging, so the web wasn't a good place to learn about books, and you know, you had to go to your local brick and mortar store, and you know, even in 2024, you know, there aren't a lot of brick and mortar stores out there. And if you don't learn about them in the stores, you learn about them in schools. And if, you know, I grew up again in New York City and you know, books by black writers teaching us about black history and you know, literary movements like the Black Arts Movement and the Harlem Renaissance that didn't exist, that wasn't happening in the schools, so we needed more black bookstores. So I decided to support those. And then when you look at publishing and you know the idea that you know black people don't read. How did they, you know, come to that conclusion, and then you look at the people who work within publishing and how, you know, how difficult it is for black people to get into publishing or people who are willing to address that a black audience with black books. There weren't a lot of people doing that and the ones that were were struggling, so. The, the, the publishing industry needed to change in terms of who was working in there and how they were working and then later on you learned that, you know, distributors who put books into stores, you know, they sell books that the, you know, you know, it's it's often is who you know and what you like, so you sell what you like, you sell what you know, you sell to who you know, and you know it all along the chain there's just so many roadblocks and So what I wanted to do was address those and sometimes the easiest way to do that is to just, you know, do it yourself. And so I started supporting indie publishers or author publishers and um you know it, you know, and build those so there are companies, you know, black book printers that I support like BCP digital printing. There are black. Independent publishers, some small, some large that I support, and, you know, so even in my own publishing endeavors I attempt to use black professionals as, you know, as As reasonably possible, so the editor, the book designer, the person who sets the type, and you know, all those people, you know, I work to help within the black book ecosystem to build that up so that we can get more books into the hands of people who are most likely to enjoy them.

Show More 00:06:31 

When I went on the website Aalbc.com. I found over 100, 150 black owned or black focused bookstores on there.

00:06:47 

Yeah, that, you know, which. I don't know if that sounds like a lot to you, but it really isn't, and you know many people who live in Who many people out there don't live within a reasonable distance of a bookstore that's going to support the, you know, that's gonna carry the books that I'm talking about. So here in Tampa, a black English, uh, bookstore opened up recently and until they opened their, you know, the ones that were previously opened had closed and where I come from, I was born and raised in Harlem and then, you know, the village of Harlem there isn't a single black owned bookstore. You have to go up to is that Morningside Heights with Sisters Uptown to find the kind of books that we're talking about, you know, books that are published by African World Press or books that are published by Third World Press, books that are published not only by major publishers, the Big Five, but also some of our important smaller imprints and and As successful self-published authors. So, you know, bookstores like that are really important and we need more. So again, you know, I think that I want to say the list is 165 now, you're right. So you're over 150, 165, it's not a lot. We, we can use more. But we're also,

Show More 00:08:08 

no, no, go ahead and finish.

00:08:10 

No, I was going to say we're also in an environment where, you know, reading is being challenged from a wide variety of alternative things to do, and those alternative things don't necessarily serve us, serve us not, you know, as a community, as a country, and you know I'm talking about, you know, in a lot of respects social media and the Revenue driven algorithmic feed that keeps us engaged, not necessarily informed, uh, but engaged and you know, reading is combating that and you know we don't have an algorithm. I don't have an algorithm to uh to drive people psychometrically to do specific things. um, I can only you know, rely on my uh My influence and so you know, we're up a great, you know, we're up, up against a great deal when you're trying to deal with the artificial intelligence driven algorithm, uh, trying to convince people how to use their time.

Show More 00:09:09 

Troy Johnson, you talked about revenue-driven algorithms or, you know, markets and dealing with the big five Hachette, Harper's, Simon and Schuster, etc. How have you gotten their attention? To publish more black authors, etc.

00:09:29 

Well, it's just not me. It's it's a whole community of people. There are a wide variety of groups that are working to help publishers address a need in the marketplace, and from time to time they do. There was, you know, when I first started, there was a surge in interest in urban literature. So some of these authors that I've talked about supporting in the past, these were indie authors writing, you know, gritty stories about the urban environment, and they were selling a boatload of books on their own and You know, mainstream publishing listened, and they perked up, then they started publishing all these guys in masse. You know, they weren't quite as successful at marketing these books as the indie authors were, but they did recognize that there was a need and there were other trends. I recall perhaps the first, you know, before I started there was a time where 3 black women authors made the New York Times at the time and you know that whole commercial literature genre Terry Mcmillan and A bunch, a host of other authors became super popular and publishing, you know, produced books and that. In those in those veins to meet that need. So generally what happens is there's a need met in the marketplace driven by indie authors and the mainstream publisher comes around and takes advantage of that. But in terms of AI, you know, they're dealing with the same thing I'm dealing with, you know, in terms of competing against these algorithms in order to, you know, for attention for a user's attention. So you know, competition for a reader's intention has never been more intense and you know I don't think humans are capable of competing effectively against it, so we're either going to have to come up with our own AI tools or Well, you know, I don't know what the future will bring, but I, you know, AI is certainly the Most, um, you know, it's, it poses an existential threat to websites, period. It just It it is the most disruptive thing that has hit. The public, certainly since the World Wide Web. I mean, it's, it's, it's just I and I use AI every day uh to run my website and uh as a tool to help build it and You know, I just can't imagine, you know, they talk about how much it's going to improve over the next few years, and, you know, I've just seen it improve in the last year and it's been remarkable. So you know how we compete against that, you know, I always say we have to do that with our humanity. We have to compete against the algorithm with, you know. Flesh and blood, you know, we, um, you know, that's why black-owned bookstores, bookstores in general are so important, you know, they, because you're dealing with humans and you're You're engaging with humans and that's, I think fundamentally is fundamentally important to our our thriving as people, you know, we have to engage with other humans as opposed to scrolling through a screen or, you know, doing that type of thing.

Show More 00:12:50 

Troy Johnson has a bachelor's and a master's in engineering and an MBA from New York University. Is this a full-time profession for you now, Mr. Johnson, the African American literature Book Club?

00:13:04 

Yes, it is my livelihood, you know, it took, when I started, I had no idea that that would even be possible, but yeah, it's a full-time vocation for me. I mean, other people, my other peers are all retired and you know I'm doing this, you know, really as a labor of love. you know, I'm not making enough money to support a family, but I'm making enough to support myself and have a decent lifestyle, so I think that You know, it, it, there's a lot, there's the potential certainly in the early years to, to be more financially successful was there, um. And today, um, you know, it's, it's, it's always been a fight. It's always been a struggle to remain financially viable. Again, when I started it was just a sideline, and I started in '97, sit down to code the site and In 2008 is when I started doing it full time. And part of the reason I was able to do that, I moved from New York City to Tampa, Florida, and you know, to reduce my overhead, but now Tampa, Florida it's becoming so expensive that my overhead has increased dramatically in the last few years. Well,

Show More 00:14:17 

when you look at Alice Walker's, Maya Angelou's, Toni Morrison's, James Baldwin, Henry Louis Gates, I mean, Those are considered great American writers who are writing about the black experience. Who are some of those writers that we should know about that perhaps we don't?

00:14:36 

Oh, that perhaps we don't. Now that that's a great one. So personally, the authors that I think about, um, many of them writing about history. So you have writers like Anthony Browder, who's producing, uh, books and hosting tours and taking people to Africa to learn about ancient Africa or Kemet, um, they're, you know, he's known within circles but should be much more widely known. Of their writers, you know, that Really piqued my interest when I first discovered them, like a nai Akbar, um. We have, you know, Dr. John Henry Clark, Dr. Benjakanen, um, they're, um, they're just a number of people like that, um, who are writing, you know, Again, you know, going to school, my history was really limited to You know, Africans were dragged over here and enslaved for a few 100 years and then fought for civil rights, and Martin Luther King ran that and you know, that was basically it. But you know, the, you know, the idea that you know even Western civilization was founded on things that were, you know, learned from Africa is, you know, you know. Just astonishing that that so much of that history, you know, wasn't taught in schools and even within American history there's a lot that was left out and you know I previously mentioned uh the black arts movement and the Harlem Renaissance and the principles from those movements, um, you know. All those people are, you know, important to read today, you know, we, you know, recently lost Nikki Giovanni, but, you know, people from the Black Arts Movement also included Kalamu Yasalam, Amiri Baraka, Sonia Sanchez, you know, just a wealth of people whose writing still resonates today because a lot of ways we're still struggling for the same things that they struggled for. And you know some of the writers from the Harlem Renaissance. You know, just, you know, producing remarkable work and in a time where it was extremely difficult for black people to be educated, even, you know, these people lived in a time when It was illegal for black people to be educated and so, you know, so the output during the Harlem Renaissance was just remarkable and You know, we could talk all day about different different groups of people writing during different periods that are that are really important, but I encourage people to come to the website and, you know, just search and discover.

Show More 00:17:32 

Do you feature at the website? Do you feature some of these authors that we've discussed that are lesser known?

00:17:38 

Yeah, so we, I published a newsletter periodically. It's typically between 5 and 8 times a month. And the newsletter will include, um, you know, people who aren't um Well sung, you know, the books that I reviewed, for example, aren't being reviewed widely, and they aren't being reviewed on platforms that are seen, you know, broadly. And, you know, one of the things that I would really like to do is when I publish reviews that, you know, particularly of books that are lesser known, you know, we recently published the books that we recently published on our homepage. And you know we just published a book written there's a bio of The saxophone colossus, a bio of Sonny Rollins, and interestingly Sonny is the uh Last surviving member of that really famous uh photograph, a great day that came to be known as the Great Day of Harlem featuring, I don't know, about 50 jazz musicians and so he's actually the last musician alive in that photo and we published and what I think is an important biography of of him. And you know the book didn't get a lot of attention, you know, if it doesn't make the New York Times list, it almost doesn't exist as a book, but it's an important book, you know, it chronicles and an iconic figure in jazz, and I think it should be more widely read, so we You know, we published reviews like that. You'll find those on the website, and I

Show More 00:19:17 

found also that you're publishing that you list new upcoming books. Two, I wanted to ask you about. One was about Gordon Parks, the photographer and documentarian, and Toni Morrison as an editor at Random House.

00:19:34 

Yeah, a lot of people don't know. So first, that page that you're looking at is perhaps the most popular page on the website. So the goal is to, you know, you know, provide information about upcoming books, which is, you know, pretty labor intensive and, you know, because I get a lot of that information from am*zon actually. So I'll hear someone who's got a new book coming out and then I'll go to am*zon and search for the book's metadata and then go to the publisher's house, the publisher's website. And pull that, but yeah, a lot of people didn't know Toni Morrison was an editor for many years. In fact, she edited. She was responsible for exposing us to other great authors, and in fact one of them has a new book or a republication. Nettie Jones has a book coming out, Fish Tales, and Morrison spoke highly of Net Nettie's work, but she also edited uh some some uh really important uh black writers. And you know, Toni Morrison's impact on publishing is is profound and deep, and she's really just an iconic figure and indeed I got to see her win an award or be honored for her lifetime work at the National Book Awards. This was, you know, several years ago, and indeed Maya Angelou presented the award, so it was a It was really A special moment.

Show More 00:21:09 

Yes, and I think like me, a lot of people knew that Gordon Parks was a photographer and a documentary maker but didn't know a lot about him.

00:21:19 

Yeah, so I don't know a lot about that book actually. I, when I heard he had a new book out and I sorted out the information, but I don't recall at the top of my head what that book covers. But again, if there's a description, you can read about the description, and I maintain that. So when the publisher publishes more detailed information about the books, I update the website accordingly.

Show More 00:21:44 

Troy Johnson, can people buy books at abc.com?

00:21:49 

Absolutely, people can buy books and um you know, we sell all the books that are on the site are available for sale if they are out of print, you know, we have a lot of books on the website that are no longer in print, but they are maintained on the site. just to show the author's body of work. I'll shunt people off to am*zon, um, or some or directly to the author. So I sell books in a wide variety of ways, you know, there actually was a time where I was boycotting am*zon, but, um, I've pulled them back into the fold and I uh Use them for ebooks when I sell ebooks on the site, but most of the books that I sell are fulfilled directly, so some of the books are are dropped shipped by the distributor, meaning that the distributorships them on my behalf or I You know, I'll put them in an envelope and take them over to the post office myself, so you know, the You know, I always acknowledge the fact that we all know people can go anywhere to buy a book, and so when they do buy a book on the website, I, I truly appreciate it. Um, you know, the, the other thing is, you know, it's I supplement bookstores, you know, in other words, there are, again, there are some, there are people who don't live near a store that's going to highlight these books, um, so it's important for websites to exist and, and, you know, provide additional information. And you know one of the challenges is that it's much more difficult today to run a website or to attract attention. So you know I have an advantage that I've been online for so long, but if I was to start today, I doubt I'd have a chance as an indie website, you know, attracting attention and ranking in Google search and You know, it's just, it was just, it's just so much tougher. But yes, I do sell books and I appreciate all the business that I did.

Show More 00:23:50 

Troy Johnson is the founder and president of the African American Literature Book Club AABC.com. Mr. Johnson, thanks for spending a few minutes with us on Book TV.

00:24:02 

Well thank you, Peter. I really appreciate your time and Book TV and C-SPAN. President-elect Donald Trump nominated South Dakota Governor.