I miss Black Expressions Book Club
IDSC "BlackTechLogy" December Exclusive: There's nothing like strolling into black bookstores
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I’m nine years late and should be ashamed of myself. I had absolutely no idea that Black Expressions Book Club closed in 2013, and I’m clearly part of the problem when it comes to supporting the company.
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There was a time when I was relentlessly buying books via that club or physical stores. I loved the idea of strolling into African-owned and African-American-owned bookstores in downtown Chicago and the South Side of Chicago, taking note of any new book I saw. I could stick my arm out, spin around and know for sure that I was going to knock over a book I desperately wanted to read.
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If you’re a black Geriatric Millennial or from Generation X, you knew this book club. Pay $2 for five titles of your choice, a free gift and look out for 60% savings on retail publishers’ prices. I wasn’t quite sure how well mainstream authors were getting paid off of deals like this, but I crossed my fingers and hoped that publishers were offering them a reasonable contract. Between Black Expressions Book Club and Columbia House offering 12 CDs for $0.01, my teenage years were nonstop entertainment.
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It’s easy enough to blame the demise of book clubs and music clubs on Amazon and Ebay — and my college years were full of nonstop prowling on Half.com to get an even better deal before Jeff Bezos fully caught onto his competition. But really, the fault lies in consumers like me. Even as a self-published author who understood how important book sales were, I was fully aware that my own readers were more likely to pay slashed rates on the sites mentioned above versus a purchase from the printing site I used.