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Iyanla Vanzant is Disliked by Some -- Who Knew?


Troy

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Yesterday I sent an email to my subscribers promoting Iyanla Vanzant's latest book.  Iyanla was the first bestselling authors on AALBC.com.  She is one of 2 or 3 authors who has been bestselling author on AALBC.com in both 998 and 2015. I've seen her in action a few times and she strikes me as down to earth, regular--despite her fame.

After I send an email I just get feedback from folks, usually thanking me for the information.  Below is a message, typical of one I usually receive, in reaction to the Iyanla mailing:

“I knew nothing about it. And I love Iyanla! I have at least three of her books.”

Here a two message on the other side of the spectrum.  Now I do not recall ever getting a negative message in reaction to a specific author.  Here are two message I received regarding Iyanla:

“Please don't send me anything pertaining to this woman.”
“Thank you, Troy. But I'm going to pass this up.”

Again, people do not complain about authors I highlight in my eNewsletter.  Now I don't expect people to like all the authors I cover, but people generally don't share their complains with me (though I wish they would).   Shoot, I don't even like all the authors I promote--but I know others will.  

I image most people get this which may explain why I don't normally get complaints about the individual authors I cover.

So if people went out their way to complain about Iyanla they must have really strong feeling about her.  Anyone got any ideas?

 

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I saw a re-run of the episode with Debi Thomas where Iyanla did her best to give the impression that she was a wise and qualified people-fixer.  But in her effort to keep the show from bombing  she persisted in trying to expose Debbie for things that she was not hiding. The result was that an irate Iyanla ended up looking desperate and flustered while Debi remained calm and introspective. Iyanla was finally able to convince Debi and her boyfriend to enter separate rehab centers, she for depression and he for alcoholism.. However a follow-up was added at the end of the show, informing that Debi and her boyfriend both left the rehabs centers early and had reunited with the intent of working things out on their own.  

There were numerous discussions about this on FaceBook and they were pretty evenly divided in regard to Iyanla's effectiveness.   In my opinion, she was not.  In general, I've always found Iyanla to be overbearing and over-rated as an advice counselor. 

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I can't honestly say that I remember Debi Thomas, the Olympic Figure Skater

I don't watch Iyanla's show one anything on OWN for that matter.  Nothing against Oprah or Iyanla, I appreciate I'm not the the target audience and that is fine.  Besides the idea of using people's personal failings as fodder for entertainment is not very entertaining to me, but journalists started this long ago.

At any rate OWN pumped out a bunch of 90 second video clips of Iyanla and Debbie.  I looked at a couple and I can see what people mean regarding Iyanla treatment of Debi, but even if I saw the entire show it would be impossible to judge the entire effective of Iyanla help Debbie.

Nonetheless, I'm sure the show was entertaining and given the talk on social media a lot of people were engaged enough to talk about the show.  Which was the whole point of the program anyway, right?  Score one for OWN.

 

Now that I think about it.  I would be willing to bet that OWN pushed out all of these 90 clips to prevent people from easily concluding that Iyanla was ineffective in the case, and to crowd out negative opinions from other YouTubers.

I noticed this video created by, Carol Mitchell, an author profiled on AALBC.com  This video is 30 minutes long and got over 24K video in less than 6 weeks--far more successful than anything I ever posted:

 

 

 

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I know those around me have never thought very highly of Inyanla, Les Brown or almost any of the people who "may have" rode the coattails of someone with a lot of influence. I think this is a case of what I told someone this morning on Facebook,  Unfortunately fame, not knowledge, is the prerequisite for being heard.

That is the case in our community. People will listen to Oprah about books because she is famous. They will ignore Troy because he is not famous, but has a ridiculous amount of time and money invested in literature. People will listen to Inyanla because she has be cosigned by famous people. It's interesting though because she and Oprah actually fell out a while back from what I remember and at the point I actually had more respect for her. (go figure).

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Well we know you don't become as wealthy as Orpah without caring a whole lot about making money.  I'm sure Oprah brought Iyanla back because it was in her financial interest to do so.

I followed up with all the women (all the comments, positive or negative, came from women), and there was nothing specific that Iyanla did, it was just general dislike.

Regarding my knowledge of books; it is inversely proportional to the effort required to keep this business afloat.  I've been thinking more about my motivation for running this site recently.  It actually is more about celebrating Black culture; books are a channel for me to do that.  So books are important from that perspective--perhaps the best thing we have at our disposal of doing this.

 

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I think that's all we can do in this current climate is celebrate the culture and if it goes "viral" or pops and allows us to make a living cool. If not, we can always say that we gave a damn and that's valuable. Maybe Inyanla will come to the message board and discuss why she thinks she is disliked by her peers. (Wishful thinking?)

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Yeah I doubt Iyanla would post here too, perhaps for the same reasons many others don't post here.  I wouldn't be surprised if Oprah has Iyanla hemmed up contractually such that she can post on another website.

Imagine if an Iyanla did post here.  That relatively trivial action on would provide great benefit for the website.  But those things usually don't happen.

I can't complain, because SmileyBooks, an imprint of Hay House, the publisher of Trust, is an advertiser.  My understanding is that Iyanla's people made the request to promote the book here, on AALBC.com.

I've also seen Iyanla do things for indie booksellers that she simply does not have to do.  My opinion of her went way up when she did a presentation for Community Book Center in New Orleans. "Celebrity" authors are typically not very supportive of indie booksellers--Iyanla is an exception.

You see The Community Book Center, a Black owned book store based in New Orleans used to be the official bookseller at the Essence Music Festival, in fact they pitched the idea and started the book pavillion for Essence Music Festival.  A few years ago Essence dropped this book store in favor of another independent book store, which is not Black owned.  I thought a magazine dedicated to black women would support a store owned by a Black woman, but then I considered the fact that Essence is not Black owned, so I had to cause to be surprised.

Anywho, Iyanla took time off from her Essence commitments and went out her way to support the small Black owned store (shown in video clip below).  None of the other celebrity authors did that.  

The media does not cover this side of us.  We just get the nonsense.  

 

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This is good info to know and I'm sure if this was able to reach more people it would change their opinions of her. I mean, I always felt that she was not really fixing or doing anything for people and that her fame was that of getting an influencer, but I don't know that for sure and maybe my opinion was shaped by others around me instead of my own research. You gotta respect that she did this because like you said, stars don't and aren't allowed to hang out in the hood.

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