Garren Jacobsen
Auror
Readers do care about quality, they just don't know it nor can identify the problems readily, until the problems reach a certain critical mass. When there are enough problems (shallow characters, poor sentence structure, etc) the readers will notice and put the book down.
However, I do have to take exception with the definition of success being solely financial. Sure, that is a kind of success but it is not the only type of success. There are many ways that a person can be successful and be a writer. It depends on what you want to get out of it. If all you want is financial success then sure making money is the only objective measure of success. But what if you want something else? If you want money and a work you can be proud of and your standards of quality exceed that of the average reader your definition of success is going to adjusted accordingly. If you want to change the way people think about a genre, that too requires a different definition of success.
Also, I am not sure writing purely for the sake of some faceless reader is the best for the craft or best for an individual writer. I write primarily because I want to write things that are interesting to me. I want to be financially successful as a writer. But I do not want to write what everyone else is writing. That is boring for me. I want to do stuff that's different enough to get noticed, but similar enough to get people to read it. I want to write novels that use property law as a basis for its magic system. I want to write novels set in a world that isn't your classic medieval setting. And dang it I want to write a story about magic terrorists and a kid trying not to be like that though by rights he should be. Writing the same old crap different day just doesn't sound appealing to me. May as well have fun, I have a regular job that'll be the same crap different day.
However, I do have to take exception with the definition of success being solely financial. Sure, that is a kind of success but it is not the only type of success. There are many ways that a person can be successful and be a writer. It depends on what you want to get out of it. If all you want is financial success then sure making money is the only objective measure of success. But what if you want something else? If you want money and a work you can be proud of and your standards of quality exceed that of the average reader your definition of success is going to adjusted accordingly. If you want to change the way people think about a genre, that too requires a different definition of success.
Also, I am not sure writing purely for the sake of some faceless reader is the best for the craft or best for an individual writer. I write primarily because I want to write things that are interesting to me. I want to be financially successful as a writer. But I do not want to write what everyone else is writing. That is boring for me. I want to do stuff that's different enough to get noticed, but similar enough to get people to read it. I want to write novels that use property law as a basis for its magic system. I want to write novels set in a world that isn't your classic medieval setting. And dang it I want to write a story about magic terrorists and a kid trying not to be like that though by rights he should be. Writing the same old crap different day just doesn't sound appealing to me. May as well have fun, I have a regular job that'll be the same crap different day.