Too Many "Authors"

Thinking I would stray from the usual habit of reading tried and true fiction, thought I would take up one of the free kind offered by my book supplier who likes to help out the newer writers just entering the market. Big mistake. The newies who have not bothered the expense of hiring an editor, but have  bashed off their works straight into the on-line publishing machine ready to make their millions overnight, are rampant in supply. They are fresh out of their degrees from the U and off they go into the world to offer their genius. Their books are cheap to be frank, and also to be frank, they are mostly dreadful. Why? Listen in. In the book I found on line, the ad with the plot idea sounded great. On the reading membership, it was free, after all. I opened it on my reading device and hoped for the best. Rarely did that happen with free or cheap books. I began to read. The famous or infamous as it were, "hook" was there to draw me in. But on the very first page I found three avoidable juvenile grammatical errors that while I tried to tolerate them, found I had to give up the book by the third page. I am sorry but I cannot abide bad writing, and bad grammar makes for bad writing. There is no way around it. You can't an author make of a person who merely wants to write. You can write your fingers off but that doesn't make you an author. You may find hoards of "writers" but few "authors". What's the difference you demand? The difference is writing well which is what authors do, and that includes doing good solid justice to the literary muse. Cute language doesn't work nor does the ability to write reams of verbiage or dream up complex plots. You have to write. And do it well.  The book I was trying to read had misplaced the modifiers in so many places, hopefully inadvertently, but I suspect habitually, out of ignorance as to what the rules are, grammatically that it was painful. Split infinitives cause me to groan aloud. Things such as "I was quickly skipping" should read "I was skipping quickly" . The hard and fast rule is to keep the subject and verb together. Right together. Next door to each other. The descriptives shouldn't be jumping into the middle. They go on either side or where you please, but they should never, never be stuck between the subject and verb. The  mistake in the  first "skipping" example given, tells that the writer was in a hurry to get skipping while the second, the corrected one, means the writer was performing the action of skipping quickly. There is a difference. When we speak, we don't always pay attention to these rules but they have to be in place when we write. If they are not, we are not writing well. Clarity is important to meaning. What most new writers assume is that their brilliant stories don't need editing. They've corrected all of the spelling mistakes and added some darling coined little words of their own darling invention and that is all they need for their tale. Oh no! Spelling and punctuation are the easy ones to fix. We have programs that clean up that mechanical mess rather well, not always, but most of the time. The words you choose matter. When you toss into your writing little words you created for yourself when a perfectly good ordinary one will do, you are in danger of messing up your story. It is like a perfect lemon pie meringue that someone thinks would be better if froot loops were tossed into it. Thanks, but no thanks. If you don't want to mess up your story, if it is worth listening to at all, keep it straight. Don't try to cute it up with little quips and pips along the way. Night school writing instructors tell you to do that. Don't. All that does is annoy the reader who has to stop and worship your little additions and doesn't want to.  Tell the story. If it is good enough as a story, it can stand alone. That's Lesson One dear writers.