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 nonfiction authors and books the latest book reviews. and we'll talk about the current nonfiction and books featured on c-span's book tv. and book tv. we want to introduce you to troy johnson. and he's the founder and president of the africa and american literature book club. mr. johnson, what exactly that? well, the african book club is one of the oldest and perhaps the largest website dedicated to books written by or about people of african descent. we provide a platform for, people to share eas and discuss books. we 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, you know, one librarian recently called it a library. it's paradise. so that's the african american literature book club. so the year is 1997. what inspired you're due to do this? you know, that's an interesting story. 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 or not. in the mid-nineties, a small business father's foot, small businesses. it started, you know, i was selling personal computers on the side and built the to support that business and to build a websites for other businesses. those would be 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 i built this website focused on black books, i just discovered a the world of books literally opened up. and you meeting people and authors and it just was a tremendous, you know, it just i just really enjoyed it. and i wanted 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. so you talked about the ecosystem of the black book what what exactly do you mean by that. yeah, when i talk about that, i'm talking about all the professionals involved with getting a black book to the

readers hands. so from the author to the reader and everyone in between. and what i discovered over the years is that there are a lot of roadblocks, a of barriers, some systemic, some, you know different motivations. but after after, you know, a few years doing this, i realized that it wasn't a lack of desire for products which you you know when i started the website was often bandied by mainstream publishers you know black people don't read and you know i knew that true and i knew that if there were more books available. they would certainly they would certainly read them. i so then i started to look at 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 in 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 at 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 that's you know, i up again in new york city and you know books by black teaching us about black 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. and then when you look at publishing, you know, the idea that you know, black people don't read, how did they, you know, come that conclusion and then you 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 black audience with black books. there weren't a lot of people

that and the ones that 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 cookbooks into stores, you know, they sell books that the you know you know it's as often as who, you know or what you like. so you sell what like so which, you know, you sell to who, you know, and you know, all along the chain is, just so many roadblocks and so what i wanted to do was address those and sometimes the easiest way to do that to just, you know, do it yourself. and so i started supporting indie publishers, authors, publishers and, you know, it, you know, and build those. so there are companies, you know black book printers that i support like beekeeping, digital there are black independent publishers some small some large

that i support an act, you know. so even in my own publishing endeavors, i attempt to use like a professional's as, you know, as as reasonably possible so the editor, the book design, the person who sets the type you know all of those people. i you know, i to help with the new black book ecosystem to build that up so that we can get more books. the hands of people who are most likely to enjoy it. when i went the website a l b c dot com, i found over 100 150 black owned or black focused on their show. yeah, that you know which i don't know if that sounds like a lot to you but it really is and you know many people who live and who many people out there don't within a reasonable distance, a bookstore that's going to support the you know,

that's going to carry the books that i'm talking about. so here in tampa, black bookstore opened recently and until they opened there, you know, the ones were previously open, had closed. and where i come from, i was born and raised in harlem and then, you know, the village of harlem there, a single black owned bookstore. so you have to go up to morningside heights was just as uptown to find the kind of books that we're talking about, you know, books that are published, africa, world press or books that are published by third world press, books that are not only by major publishers the big five, but also some of our important smaller and and a successful self-published. so, you know, bookstores like that are really important and we need more. so, again, you know, i think that i want to say listeners 165 now you're right.

so over one 5165 it's not a lot we use more, but we also got no, no, go ahead and finish. troy. yeah, i was going to say we're also an environment where, you know, reading is, is being challenged from wide variety of alternative things to do and those alternative things don't necessarily serve us serve is not, you know, a community as a country, but and, you know, i'm talking about, you know in a lot of respect social media and the revenue driven algorithmic feed that keeps us engaged, not necessarily informed, 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 drive people psychologically to do specific things. i can, you know, rely on my my influence and so, you know, well, a great you we're up up against a great deal when you're

trying to deal with the artifice and intelligent driven allegory of trying to convince people to use their to troy johnson you talked about revenue 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.? well, it's just not me. it's it's a whole community of people. they're a very variety of groups that are working to help publishers address a need in the and from time to time they do there was you know when i first started there was a surge in interest in an urban literature so some of these that i talked about supported in the past these were indie writing, you know, gritty stories about the urban environment. and they were selling a boatload

of on their own and, you know, mainstream publishing listened and they perked up. they started publishing all of these guys in mass. you know, they weren't quite a successful of marketing these books as as the indie authors were, but they did that there was a need and there were other trends. i recall perhaps the first, you know, before i started was a time where black women authors, the new york times at the same time. and, you know, that whole commercial literature genre well in and a bunch of a host of other authors became super and publishing, you know, produced books and that in the in those venues to meet that need so generally what happens is there's a need in the marketplace driven by indie authors and the mainstream comes around and takes advantage of

that. but in terms of i you know, they're dealing with the same thing i'm dealing with, you know in terms of competing against these algorithms in to, you know, for attention or users attention. so know competition for readers and attention has never been more intense and. you know i don't think humans are capable of competing effectively against it. so either i have to come up with own tools or or, you know, i don't know what the future will bring. but, you know, i i certainly the most you know, it's it poses an existential threat to period. it just and it is the most thing that has hit the public certainly since the world wide web. i mean it's as it's the and i use a i every day to run my website and as a tool to help

build it and you know i just can't you know, they talk about how much it's going to improve over the next few years and it you know, i've just seen it approved in the last and it's been remarkable. so you know, how we compete against that you know, i always say we have to do with our humanity. we have to compete against the algorithm. you know, flesh and blood. you know, we are 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 humans. and that's i think, fundamentally as fundamentally important to our are thriving as people. you know, we have to engage with other humans as opposed to scrolling a screen or, you know, doing that type of thing. troy johnson a bachelor's and a master's in engineering and an mba from new york university. is this a full time for you now,

mr. johnson the african-american literature book. yes, it is. my livelihood. you know, when i started, i had idea that that would even be possible. but yeah, so it's a full time vocation for me. i mean, other people other my other peers are all retired. and, you know, i'm doing this, you know, really as a labor of love it, you know, i'm not making enough to support a family, but i'm making to support myself and have a decent lifestyle. so i think that, you know, there's a lot there's the potential certainly there early is to to be more financially successful there. and today you know it's always been a fight. it's always been a struggle to me financially viable. again, when i started, it was just a sideline and i started in 97, sit down to code site and and 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 is becoming expensive, that my overhead is increased dramatically in the last few years. well, when you look at alice maya angelou's toni morrison's james baldwin, henry louis gates, i mean, those are considered great america and writers who are writing about the black experience. who are some of those writers that we should know about that perhaps we don't or that perhaps we don't know that that's a great. one. so personally, the authors that i think about, many of them writing about history. so you have writers like anthony browder who's producing books and hosting tours and taking people to africa to learn about ancient africa or it there you

know he's known within circles should be much more widely known of their writers you know that really my interest when i first discovered them like naima akhbar we have you know dr. john henry clarke, dr. ben and jacana and they're just a number of people like that who are writing know again, you know, going to school. my history was really to, you know, african were dragged over here and enslaved for a few hundred 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 astonished that that so much of that history, you know, wasn't

taught in schools and even within american history, there's a that was left out. and, you know, previously of the black arts movement and the harlem renaissance and the principles from those movements, you know, all of 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 columbia, amiri song, sanchez, you know, just a wealth of people whose writing still resonates today, because a lot of ways we are still struggling for the same things that based 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 was extremely difficult for for black people to be educated in

the you know, these people lived in a time when it was illegal for black people to be and so, you know, so the output during the harlem renaissance was it was just remarkable and you know, we could talk all day about the four different groups of writing to different periods that are that are really. but i encourage people come to the website and, you know, search and discover. do you feature at the website? do you feature some of these authors we have discussed that are lesser known? yeah. so we are i published a newsletter periodically. it's typically between five and eight times a month. and the newsletter will include, you know, people who aren't. well, some, you know, the books that reviewed, for example, aren't being reviewed widely and

they're aren't being reviewed on platforms that are seen, you know, broadly. and, you know, one of the things that i really like to do is when i publish reviews that, you know particularly of books that are lesser known, you. we recently published the books that we recently published on a whole page and you know, we just published a book written by a saxophone colossus, a bio of sonny rollins. and interestingly, sonny is last surviving member of that really famous photograph a great thing that came to be known as the great day of harlem, featuring, i don't know, about 50 jazz musician and so and so he's actually the last musician alive that photo and we published the and what i think is an important biography of him and you know the didn't get a lot of attention you know if it doesn't make the new york list, it

almost doesn't exist as book. but it is an important book you know it chronicles an iconic figure in jazz. and i think it should be more widely read. so we you know, we reviews like that you'll find on the website and i found also you publishing that you list new upcoming books too. i wanted to ask you about one was about gordon parks the photographer and document a.n. and toni morrison as an editor at random house. yeah a lot of people don't know so first that that page that you're looking at is the most popular page on the website. so the goal to you know you know provide information about upcoming which is you know pretty labor intensive and you know because i get a lot of that information from amazon actually so i'll hear a someone that's got a new book coming out and then i'll go to amazon and

search for the book's metadata and then go to the publishers house, the publishers website and pull back. but yeah, a lot of people didn't know toni morrison wasn't an editor for many years. in fact, she edited, she was responsible for, exposing us to other great authors and in fact of them has a new book or a republication. eddie jones has a book coming out first tales and morrison spoke highly of many work that is work. but she edited some of some of really important black writers and so toni morrison's impact on publishing is profound and deep and she's really just an iconic and indeed i got to see win an award or beyond for a lifetime work at at the national book awards. this was, you know several years

indeed. maya angelou presented the award. so it was it was really a special moment. yeah. and i think i'd 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. yeah, so i don't know a lot about that book, actually. i when i heard he had a new book out in this sort of information but i, i don't recall it the top of my head. what book covers. but again, if there's a description, you can read about the description and i maintain that so when a publisher really publishes more detailed information about the books, i update the website troy johnson. can people books at a mlb.com? absolutely. people can buy books and you know, we sell all the books that are the site are available for sale at are out of print you know we have a lot of books on the website that are no in print but they are maintained on the

site just to show the author's body of i'll shut people off to amazon or some of directly to the author. so i sell books in a wide variety of ways you know, there actually was a time where i work, got it on amazon, but pulled them back into the fold. i used them for e-books. when i sell e-books a site, but most of the books that i sell are fulfilled directly. so some of the books are dropped by. the distributor meaning that the ships them on my behalf or i, you know i'll put them in an envelope and take them over the post of 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 truly appreciate it. you know, the the other thing is, you know, it's i supplement

bookstores, you know, in other words, there again, there are some there are people who don't live near a store that's going to highlight these books. so as for websites to exist and and you know provide additional and you know one of the challenges is that is much more difficult today to write a or to attract attention. so you know i have an advantage that been online for so long but if i was to start today doubt i'd have a chance as a new website, you know, attract attention and ranking google search. you know, it's just just it's just much tougher. but yes, i do. so books and i appreciate all the business director troy johnson is the and president of the american literature book club a lbc dot. mr. johnson for spending a few minutes with us on booktv.

but thank you peter. really appreciate your time and book tv and c-span c-span.