Robots, the Middle Class and the Future

A recent comment by a reader on my Facebook author's page interested me. Besides expressing his admiration for the newly revised version of "The Reality Plague", he also commented on one of the hard technologies in the book. Specifically, he mentioned the idea of a general purpose machine that could manufacture anything, a machine called a "Fabber".

My mind works in mysterious ways and unbidden it started running threads ("what ifs?") following each thread to its logical conclusion.

The term "Fabber" came from a talk I attended years ago when I was an officer in the Society of Manufacturing Engineers. A professor from Cal State LA presented the concept and the newly coined word. In his vision, the user of the future would purchase a file from the internet, a file that contained the programming to use the Fabber to make something. It could be any consumer product. The user would pay a small fee for the program and the Fabber would make the item on demand.

Many of my colleagues thought the idea was science fiction but I knew better, because the machines were already in existence and making parts. At that time and (still) today the machine was not called a "Fabber" it was known as a "Rapid Prototyping Machine" and I’d worked with many of them, both using them and repairing them.

The machines varied, some used paper, some chemicals, some corn starch and some metal. Using these materials they converted a series of program commands to a useful object. In my own lab at San Diego City College we had fabricated dozens of objects ranging from a skull for medical research to aircraft parts and a plastic ball that actually bounced when thrown.
It's no secret that most of my career was centered on automation. I've worked with and repaired hundreds of robots and machines that are designed to replace people in the creation of manufactured goods.

Now, at this point you might rightly ask where is he going with this? As I said before, my mind led me along this path, and if you'll bear with me we'll get there together (eventually). If you have a tad more tolerance, a little history is in order.

Others might argue the point, but in my opinion the first true robot was built by MIT in 1955. At that time it wasn't called a robot. It was called a Numerical Control Machine (or NC). A 'robot' (unlike Isaac Asimov or other sci-fi authors) is a programmable machine designed to work in three or more dimensions and replace humans in various tasks. It needn't look like a human to qualify. The NC was designed to use a cutting tool and create useful three-dimensional parts out of solid chunks of metal.

Here’s where the story gets close to the point. Fast forward seven years later to 1962. At the company I worked for at the time, the United States Air Force had purchased two of the machines and had leased them to the company.

The machines produced an essential part for an airplane. Each employed one human operator and about three technical people to keep it running for a grand total of five. (I was one of those people.)

Prior to the introduction of the machines, the part in question was made of one hundred and two small parts, all assembled together. To create those parts required the services of forty-five highly skilled machinists and a like amount of lesser-skilled assemblers (round it off to one hundred people all working full time). Once the machines were installed, each machine could make the same part out of one solid piece of aluminum (exit, stage-left, one hundred well-paid, skilled workers).

It didn’t stop there. Over the years the machines (robots) became more reliable and more sophisticated, finally employing computers to control them. After a few sputtering starts, robots appeared everywhere, making cars, airplanes, cereal, kid’s bikes, the list is long.
In fact, larger computers began to control entire factories, sending programs to the slave robots to cause them to perform different tasks.

When robots begin to make things they replace humans. It’s as simple as that.

You might be tempted to think I’m talking about what’s going to happen in the future, but I’m not. I’m writing about what’s occurring right here and now. To get an idea of the impact of automation, think of this: if every component in a modern cell phone, pad computer, video game console or home computer had to be constructed by hand, no one could afford them. I’m talking about everything, the fabrication of the chips, the construction of the boards, and the final assembly of the device. (Yes, workers assemble iPads in China from prefabricated parts (parts built by robots), but they’re underpaid and commit suicide at a depressing rate.)

One might think that the new robots might have opened more opportunities for the people who repaired them but that didn’t materialize. The increased reliability and the more modular construction actually reduced the amount of technicians required.

So, where does this lead? We have a huge amount of manufacturing occurring (manufacturing has actually increased in the United States) but fewer and fewer people can obtain gainful employment by it.

Of the major economic and employment areas in the United States, one of them is manufacturing. Traditionally manufacturing was the place where the lower educated middle class could find a decent job and raise a family. However manufacturing as a place to employ people is, and has been, declining. In fact, I’d argue that the decline in manufacturing employment has directly led to our current economic woes.

For example, the disagreements over Social Security stem from the fact that not enough people are gainfully employed to support it. Social security has been likened to a Ponzi scheme and it’s true, but it was a Ponzi scheme created by people who thought it could continue forever.

During the years Social Security was created, manufacturing was huge and the other economic sectors small in comparison. The word ‘robot’ was in the vocabulary of a fringe group of sci-fi writers and no self respecting politician admitted to reading it. In the politician’s minds goods were created by people, plain and simple and that was the way it would be forever. Since the U.S. was destined to rule the world in manufactured products, employment could go only one way and that was up. Social Security could therefore never run out of money. Today we know that’s not the case.

(The detractors of Social Security never mention that the program worked and worked well for decades. It kept seniors from starving and pumped much needed money into the economy. In addition, Medicare prevented seniors from going bankrupt from catastrophic illnesses. The problems with a government program like Social Security or Medicare stem more from the fact that there aren’t enough workers to support them rather than the idea the program doesn’t work.)

In the past, manufacturing represented a place where undereducated people could find employment at relatively high wages. 

Even today, many potential young workers drop out of education, before or after graduating from high school, either because they’re not interested or motivated, or the cost of college is too high. These young men and women represent a large labor pool we could use but we can’t. They will find it difficult to contribute in this society. They face few choices and most of them only provide low to minimum wage.

Of the jobs lost and created after the banking meltdown in 2008, 60 percent were lost in construction and manufacturing, the places where the above young people might have found a decent job. However, of the jobs added since the crisis, 58 percent have been low wage and minimum wage jobs.

Those working for minimum wage are in the poverty level, only making about $15,000 per year. Providing minimum wage jobs for these people is clearly not the answer. After standard deductions, they pay little or no income taxes and their Social Security and Medicare taxes can’t support the programs. No matter how many jobs you create at low or minimum wage, it won’t solve any of the problems. Of the high wage jobs added, most were involved in moving around money to create more money, making the one percent richer.

Projecting the current trends into the future and looking at other trends eroding our freedoms, I foresee America as a police-state oligarchy, ruled by the rich, with robots making most of the manufactured products. The middle class is destined to vanish replaced by a huge disenfranchised slave-labor class that will be forced to work for a pittance or starve once the government’s economic safety net is jerked away.

The elderly (like me) will be allowed to die off becoming less of a burden on the national debt, and wars will be used to control the lower classes by distracting them and killing off the excess people.

In Robert Heinlein’s novella ‘Revolt in Twenty-one Hundred’ one of the characters discusses the use of the English language to appeal to emotions rather than logic. (The word is commonly known as ‘propaganda’.) Exciting one’s fears, racial and religious prejudices using loaded words, even though they might be blatant lies, works and works well. People want to be soothed by being told what they already believe, rather than facing the truly complex nature of the world they live in.

Perhaps Heinlein foresaw our current scenario in his novella or George Orwell in ‘1984’. They just got the dates wrong.

The case for self publishing.

I hear many people say, "I've always wanted to write a book." It seems to happen every time I mention the fact that I'm an author.

It's an urge that many people share but up to now it's not been strong enough to encourage the same individuals to write a cookbook, short story or novel. After all, when you've done it, put the effort into the writing and finally possess a finished manuscript, who will read it?

Having a reader is important. Most (if not all) writers possess a yearn to be read that transcends earning money or making a living at writing. Although I can't speak for all writers, that's been my experience.

To be read, you need to publish the work, get it in front of an audience. In the past there were only two ways to do that, seek a traditional publisher or publish it yourself.

Established publishers could distribute the book to a wide audience because they controlled the distribution sources. If you self-published, the burden was on you. Many people who tried it beggared themselves using unscrupulous vanity publishers, and the negative connotation along with the miniscule number of successes discouraged the practice.

But then the internet grew to maturity. Web publishers offered an alternative to the traditional route, giving people who wanted to try writing, a path to a huge audience. At first, traditional publishers ignored the web-publishers, treating them like annoying insects that would eventually fly away or could easily be crushed.

Now the web-publishers have become more like a pack of hungry prowling wolves. If traditional publishers can't or won't change, the pack may select them for their next meal.

Writers who seek the traditional route to publishing success are frequently lonely and confused. Almost a hundred percent of their tentative efforts to seek traditional publication will be met with form letters, if they receive a reply at all. They'll flounder around in the dark with absolutely no knowledge as to why they were rejected.

Traditional publishers hold their cards close to their chest and frequently the hand they hold is a pair of deuces. The writer may be rejected, not for the quality of the writing, but for economic reasons that the would-be author doesn't understand and which may not hold validity.

Nevertheless an impersonal form letter provides no enlightenment at all.

So we'll suppose that some of the replies from agents and publishers have resulted in more than the typical rejection. Perhaps they've seen something in the writing that triggered a personal reply and encouraged by the response, the would-be author continues to send out queries. (This could consume a significant fraction of the writer's life.)

Of a sudden, bam! The author gets an offer from an agent or publisher and with trembling hands stroking the keys on the computer keyboard, he or she responds. After all, success is just around the corner, isn't it?

Not so fast, prospective author, now come the hurdles. You're racing toward the finish line but you're not there yet.

Is the offer legitimate? Is the agent or publisher set to help you become an author, or are they just out to rob your wallet? There are more scam artists out to fleece wannabe authors than there are legitimate agents and publishers.

Let's assume you've done your homework, and verified that the offer is real. If you're like most people it may have been the only offer you've had, so you decide to take it.

If you're not careful and you don't understand the in and outs of contracts, you may just be selling your life away. When you sell a book you give up your right to it. Once it's sold, unless you're really adept at contract negotiations, you own it no longer. It's your baby and you've just peddled it to the only bidder. You've sold your soul to a devil you don't know and can't understand.

Okay, you've signed the contract and turned your fate over to the agent or publisher. Everything has worked out, and now the only obstacle remaining is to get it to the bookstores.

Be prepared to wait, in fact, be prepared to wait a long time. In the case of an agent, it may take a long time to find a publisher and the agent may request substantial changes to the manuscript to make it salable. If you've contracted directly with the publisher, you'll need to satisfy the editor, approve the book cover (assuming you negotiated that in your contract), pour though the proof copy and make corrections. It's time consuming.

Finally, a year later, your book is in the bookstores, and then it's time for the readers to vote with their dollars.

Maybe it's a best seller or maybe it's a mid-list, or maybe it doesn't earn enough to repay the advance (the most likely outcome, assuming you got an advance).

To complete the above process may consume five to ten years of your life.

You could have learned all that in a couple of months if you'd self-published it and could have earned substantially more in royalties than agents or the traditional publishers offer.

To understand why the writing is accepted or scorned, the writer needs to be read. Maybe it's the fact that the work is bad, or just maybe it will strike a chord with readers. Either way, you've learned something, because readers don't hesitate to pan bad writing or reward good writing, a fact I've learned from experience. The question is, how do you get read, because in the final case, it's the readers that matter, not an agent or publisher.

Is self publishing easy? No, but it's not as daunting as you might think, and I guarantee it's easier and faster than seeking an agent or traditional publisher. If you're competent or can become accomplished in a few areas, including editing, cover design and formatting, you won't have to spend one red cent to become self-published. If you're not, there are hundreds of people who can help and the costs are more than reasonable.

There are many free options to get your work in front of an audience like Smashwords, Feedbooks (free books only!), Pubit! (Barnes and Nobel), Lulu (print on demand) and AmazonKDP to name a few.

Feedbooks, Pubit!, Lulu and Amazon limit your exposure to their sites or a couple others, while Smashwords distributes to multiple book sellers.

(Don't be caught by crooks who want to charge a lot of money to publish your work. If you're asked to spend in total more than the mid three figures, including editing, cover design and formatting, you're likely being ripped off.)

In the end you need to be recognized and reach readers. Self-publishing can accomplish that, it can give you an idea of whether or not your work is appealing to the readers.

If there's an expressed interest in this subject. I'll post future articles on formatting, cover design, pricing, and the overall strategies you can use to get your work self-published.

Cell Phone

I was writing a paragraph today and something that I’d written struck me as being strange, bordering on the bizarre.

Like many of you, I’m an avid reader of science fiction, having started when I was just twelve years old. That was fifty-six years ago.

I was always amazed at the technology the authors dreamed up, remembering descriptions of what today could only be interpreted as modern e-readers and personal communicators and frequently wondered when these things would come to pass. Those weren’t the only wonders science fiction authors wrote about, but since FTL space ships don’t seem to be on the drawing boards (speaking of that phrase, I suppose I should change it to read “CAD programs”) I suppose the afore mentioned technology will suffice to illustrate my point.

I can’t help but feel like Captain Kirk, communicating with the Enterprise, every time I flip open my cell phone, and that little marvel is the reason for this blog post.

A new character in “Shadow Twins”, a beautiful, saucy, Italian woman named, Dani, makes an innocent move in the novel. The sentence reads: “Dani removed a cell from her pocket and slid it across the table.”

That’s weird. If I’d written that ten years ago it would have been interpreted as the woman actually plucked a cell from her body and slid it on the table, as unlikely as that might seem.

Actually to avoid misinterpretation, I probably should have written “cell phone” rather than “cell” but even with the short version I doubt anyone will wonder what I meant. The previous paragraph is about a cell phone and a modern reader will understand it. Besides, the epiphany it conjured in my mind led to this post.

We’re living in a science fiction world minus the space ships and space colonies and we don’t register it except for rare occasions.

I learned engineering on a slide rule. Any of you know what that is? If you don’t, read some of the old Robert Heinlein novels and pay attention to the phrase “slip-stick”. That’s a slide rule. It’s not a ruler; it’s a calculator, an analog calculator. No electronics, no batteries, and horribly inaccurate. We used to carry them in holsters, like a sword strapped to our waists. You were lucky if you could perform a calculation to two decimal places, but that device and others like it allowed us to travel to the moon and back. Heinlein understood it perfectly, but a modern reader would be confused.

Given the technology we possess today, how much further we can progress? The sky is within our reach folks, I think we should grab it.

PayPal and Censorship (and how it affects me)

A lot of blogs and comments have been written about the outrage over PayPal's edict to Smashwords and other online publishers prohibiting the sale of certain erotic content. I wish that PayPal would extend that to the sale of illegal firearms, but that's unlikely, because the NRA would quickly destroy their business. Since we writers are a small group with little clout they'll likely get away with this kind of censorship and one can only wonder what's next. Both firearms and freedom of speech are Constitutionally protected, but it seems that death is more palatable to PayPal than sex.

As I said before, a huge quantity of words have been expended to question the validity of PayPal's actions, so rather than repeat them, I'll confine my comments to how this decision will affect me personally as an author.

I have two books on Smashwords that may fall under scrutiny. One of them listed as erotic but completely lacking in prohibited content and the other contains a reference to incest but listed as romance.

Ironically I received an email from Smashwords because I had the one book categorized as erotic, and that book contains no prohibited content at all. The second book will not be subjected to the microscope because it's listed as romance, and that's the book that might be interpreted as having content possibly prohibited by PayPal.

The romance novel tells the story of two couples who fall in love and have sexual encounters. One couple are older, in the twilight of their years, and the other couple are younger, just starting out. After I'd written much of the novel, I realized I had placed the characters into a situation that might be described as a stepbrother and stepsister engaged in an incestuous affair. In fact, I wrote one or two paragraphs in which the young couple joke that since their parents ran off to Las Vegas and married, they might be committing incest.

Curious as to the laws surrounding incest, I researched the topic and found to my dismay a bewildering range of laws, varying from state to state and country to country, some of which provide twenty years imprisonment and some with no penalty at all. Some define incest as relations between blood relatives, some even include step-siblings, and some allow marriage between first cousins. In at least one case, the relationship is considered incestuous even if the couple was married, and their parents subsequently married later. During my research I read articles from respected scientists that argued against certain incest laws saying that the reasons for them were more religious rather than scientific, and that genetic counseling could determine if the union held any dangers from recessive genes.

In other words the whole thing is a jumble of dumb laws with no relation to reality. Realizing that, and knowing that the issue deserved to be addressed, I left it in the novel to showcase how stupid it was. I'm not addressing the issue of incest between stepfather and minor stepdaughter (or vice-versa) because that relationship is rape and child abuse, both of which I wouldn't touch with a ten foot pole.

Having said that, I will admit that after sixty-eight years of experience and numerous girls friends, a disproportionate number of them confided they'd had sexual encounters with stepfathers, either unwanted or instigated by the minor stepdaughter. So, the problem seems widespread and mostly hidden and deserves to be brought out in a factual manner or through fiction. Unfortunately PayPal blushes at the mention of sex even though it's the driving force that keeps the human race alive.

Now, I wonder if I'll have to withdraw one of my best novels from publication.

Sex in Novels (revisited)

A lot of novels are about serial killers that commit multiple murders and paranormal creatures like zombies that munch on live human beings.

It often seems that violence and gore is perfectly acceptable in fiction while love, romance, and the resultant sexual encounters are not. I've read numerous novels that describe in graphic detail, horrific amounts of blood, shattered teeth, torture and dismemberment. It seems it's considered part of the craft and acceptable, yet describing an accurate, loving, sex scene is considered obscene.

What does that say about our society?

At any given moment, nearly half the world's population is engaged in the pleasurable act that makes babies. Yes, babies. You know, those cut little bundles of joy that make life worth living and keep the human species from becoming extinct?

Half. – over three billion people.

Maybe more than half, if you count those people making love in the daytime.

So, why hold back on the one aspect of life that prevents the end of the human race?

In the U.S. We have a very skewed outlook on sex. This is a country in which a three letter word, describing the act of killing people, (war) is considered heroic and brave, but a four letter word describing the act of making babies (fuck) is considered obscene. Is that a rational or sane?

So I put sex in my works. I don't do it to sell, I do it because it belongs there. Sex is an essential part of human life. It's grand and sometimes glorious if it includes love. There's nothing nasty, obscene or degrading about it. It's about the closest you'll come to experiencing heaven in this life. The French call orgasm the little death. They've got a point. If a good orgasm never stopped, I think I would die. Check any novel, novella, or short story ever written and you’ll find sex ranging from either blatant sex or sex hidden somewhere. Even Harry Potter has sex in it and that's supposed to be a kids book. Lord of the Rings has the romance between Arwen and Strider, and between Sam and the barmaid. Sex is the natural outcome of romance. Everyone knows it, it hovers in the back of their minds and that's what makes romance work.

I look at it this way, if two people fall in love in a novel, and at the end, bounce babies on their knees, then they've had sex with each other. It's as inevitable as sunrise. So, if the outcome is a glorious, loving sex scene, then why not write about it? It's much more preferable than writing about killing people.

Shadow Spies

I haven't posted to my blog for some time because I've been busy, concentrating on the writing, editing and publication of my new book in the Shadow series, Shadow Spies.

I look back at the very first book, Shadow Games, and I reflect upon the person who naively wrote that book, a person who used limited writing skills, but who nevertheless, managed to create a large book that many people found enjoyable. I'll likely go back to it and revise it someday, but I've got a lot more books to write and Shadow Twins, the next book in the series is my next project.

Shadow Games has done well on Barns and Noble and Apple, however, the crowd on Amazon is a tough, but mostly fair, audience. I'll have to do better to please them.

I reread Shadow Spies again looking for those small errors that the editor may have missed, and I had the strangest feeling that I was reading a novel written by someone else. I finally realized that I was so engrossed in the story that I didn't care who wrote it, I was having fun reading it. It was hard to connect the person who had written the previous book (a year ago) to the person who had written what I was reading.

The reason I started this whole career was because I wanted something to read. Cereal boxes and an occasional book borrowed from the library (when I could find one) just wasn't doing it. I found that when I was writing, I was reading, allowing the story to unfold in my mind and guiding (or sometimes following) the story to where I wanted it to go.

Now, I actually dream story-lines in my sleep, mentally back spacing over the dialogue or narrative to correct the flow. I know it sounds bizarre, but it's the truth.

Anyway, I finally had to quit tinkering with the book and publish it. I first published it on November, 11, Veteran’s Day on Smashwords. It will be available on B&N and Apple, when Smashwords releases it, sometime later in November, or early December. I'll cross my fingers and publish it on Amazon, November 25. I've a standing offer to provide a free copy to anyone who leaves a comment on my website. It's good until November 20. Here's the link to Smashwords. Shadow Spies

Indie authors and “The Tsunami of Crap”

I recently read a Joe Konrath blog “The Tsunami of Crap” and it caused me to wonder why we Indies, as a group, should be singled out for poor writing.

I've read books by Legacy publishers that also deserve the same title, but somehow The NY big six seem to slither out of the appellation, somewhat like greased pigs.

Out of over six billion people in the world only a thimbleful can point to a collection of paper or a file on a computer, and proudly announce. “I wrote that”.

The announcement becomes more meaningful when the collection of words totals tens of thousands or more and the story has a beginning, middle, and end. The vast majority of people can't or won't do it.

Regardless of the quality of the work, the fact that an author sat down, slogged through the writing task, and in the process, created something never read before, is to me, a monumental accomplishment.

True, the result may be trite, riddled with mistakes, jumbled, incoherent, composed of poor grammar or just completely confused, but the fact still remains that the author created it.

Many people, proud of their newly born word-child, stop at that point and simply release the mess to the internet.

It's a really bad decision. Stop it.

Stop and think about the three most important aspects of the work you've created, grammar, style and content. These three elements are the building materials that constitute the structure of your work. If they're not applied carefully the building will fall down.

Grammar.

Grammar constitutes the bricks and mortar of the story. Crumbling bricks and poor mortar will doom even the most thoughtfully designed house.

One of the problems with grammar is the fact that we don't often use it. We may have been educated in public or private school systems where grammar was taught, but since it didn't constitute a significant portions of our lives the lessons were quickly forgotten.

Lessons learned well in schools tens of years ago, hardly apply to today's concepts of modern writing. For example, I was taught to always use a comma before a conjunction and today that's not often done. Passive voice was a common aspect of books, even classic works, when I grew up and today it's considered bad grammar.

We speak using poor grammar, fragmentary sentences, wrong tenses of verbs, slang, incorrect use of personal pronouns, the list is extensive. Frequently, using our voice, we write as we speak. Is it any wonder that a person, who has never before written a story, finds that they have unintended problems with grammar?

Most would-be authors find they must learn the concept of good grammar anew to be able to write what today is considered a grammatically correct book. If a “classic book” came under a modern editor's sharp knife it would most likely not survive the process intact, losing multiple commas, phrases, and entire chapter-length swaths of text. (Moby Dick is one good example.)

Many people have significant stories to tell, good stories, but even with the best of intentions, they must learn the “new rules” by trial and sometimes humiliating error. The serious ones don't give up. They learn from their mistakes, correct them, and proceed to the next work.

Style.

The concept of style is a tricky one. It involves multiple issues, narrative, dialogue, organization and plot, to name just a few, but mostly in hinges on voice.

Voice is a subtle thing. It's the element of your story that maintains the reader's interest. A book can be narrative style, composed principally of dialogue or some combination, but regardless of the type, a book without voice is a house about to fall.

Voice is the unique feeling you impart to your work. The element that identifies you as the story teller and makes the reader want to know what's next. Your voice may be flippant, humorous, sober, somber, threatening, romantic or sad, but it must be present throughout the work.

You can write the most complicated plot ever conceived and polish the grammar until it shines, but without your unique voice it's flat and lifeless.

I've read books that contained fragments of puzzle pieces that the reader must stitch together at the end to assemble a whole story, but because the author's voice provided the framework, the book worked and worked well.

Content.

I've personally read books that contained numerous grammatical errors but because of their content, I also witnessed they were widely popular with many readers. I've also read prosaic novels, in which the author lovingly crafted each word and must have spent years in creating the work, that were flat, lifeless and boring; frequently books in which the author took two or more long chapters to come to the point. (“Lord Jim” is an example.)

People may argue this, (and most likely will) but I think there are two types of readers. The reader who desires to escape into another world and the reader who salivates over words and symbols. The former reader constitutes the clear majority, while the latter reader occupies a small part of the market.

The first reader wants to escape the humdrum reality of life. He or she wants to experience new worlds, intriguing characters, interesting situations, romance, sex, violence, fear, ...the list goes on.

This type of reader could frequently care less about prose, in fact, it gets in the way of a good story.

He or she also wants to feel superior to some of the characters in the book, such as the tragic person from a dysfunctional family, the stupid heroine who enters the darkened hallway, knowing the monster's bound to jump out, and the drunken detective who can't or won't cope with life.

The escapist reader wants fun quirky characters, the type of people they could never emulate but who provide the spice that makes the content interesting.

On the other hand, the prose reader savors the caress of each word, looks for hidden meaning within the text and teases out the symbols cleverly embedded in the work. This type of reader is apt to be critical of a misplaced comma, an overlooked passive voice sentence or an incorrectly spelled plural possessive. To these readers a grammar error is like a verbal landmine and when it explodes, it spoils the whole work for them. Their meaning, when it comes to content, is the artistry displayed in the author's wordsmithing, the brush strokes of metaphor, simile, alliteration and onomatopoeia.

In the end, readers cross the lines, some more balanced in their tastes and some more swayed to one extreme or the other.

The “The Tsunami of Crap” doesn't apply simply to grammar. If you as an Indie author want to become successful, you would be well advised to excel in all three of these areas. Grammar alone won't do it, neither will style or content. A careful balance of the three should be your ultimate goal.