Five on Friday: The Chutzpah of Hustlers

Required reading for the week! Little late today, sorry.

Victoria Strauss on the class action lawsuit against Publish America.

Smart Bitches Trashy Books on the utterly vile appropriation of Nora Roberts and James Patterson’s names to sell books on Amazon.

Susannah Breslin‘s rather mean-spirited post on Forbes about why you shouldn’t be a writer.

K.S. Brooks on the need for self-publishing to have a seal of approval.

Support indie authors!

Today’s candidate for indie glory is Becca Mills, author of Nolander, who popped up on Kindleboards in a thread where I was offering cover critiques. She writes very strange urban fantasy – and it is good, very very good, in a way that makes me wish all prose was this grabbing and interesting. She’s got no others out, but trust me – this one has a whole mountain of talent.

So how’s her marketing?

Cover? – tut tut, the titles need work. Not very readable. Could do with a gradient in the top and bottom to bring up the text.
Blurb? – reads more like a query, and doesn’t start with the main character. Gotta work on that, I’m afraid.
Social media? – kickin’ it on Twitter, but no sign of Facebook or Google+.
Web design? – functional, good layout, but needs a link to the book in the sidebar. Let’s see some more color there!

Everyone have a good weekend – I have six thrillers to get through, so I’ll be busy.