It's been ninety days since I first put TheRealJoyG up on Amazon as an eBook, a return to self-publishing after more than a decade away. Reading books might be passé and AI might be making us dumber, but I'm choosing to ignore the gloom and keep publishing. So three months ago I clicked the buttons and turned it loose on the world as much as an act of defiance against tech-driven dumbing-down as my own social experiment. Is anyone actually reading?

For all of Amazon's might and muscle, the life o...