A bad book wouldn't make money, because no-one would want to read it.
I think the OP's question is based on a rather inaccurate understanding of the writing/publishing process, and also the artistic process.
Consider this: The vast majority of people who start out to write a book fail. Of that tiny minority who succeed, most never get their book seen and accepted by a publisher. Of that minority who do get seen and accepted, most never get stocked and displayed by the mainstream bookshops. Of that minority who do, most never become best-sellers.
So the question should not be whether to write a commercial success, or a slow-burning literery masterpiece, but just to fucking write, and may God's best luck be with you because you'll need it. The idea that the writer has a choice in this is daft.
I imagine that a 'bad book' is not one in which the spelling is appalling, or the plot disappears into nothingness, or the binding doesn't stay true, or the protagonist changes their motivations part way through a propos of nothing; all these inconsistencies would be picked up by editors and printers.
By 'bad book' I imagine you're invoking this rather unfair and snobbish delineation between literary novels (which still in some quarters are seen as 'real writing') and genre fiction such as spy books, or hard-boiled detective stories, or gory horror, or tell-all emotional novels of childhood despair which publish straight into paperback and don't get reviewed on the late night shows from New York and London which we like to watch because they make us feel suitably cultured.
The fact is that genre fiction outsells literary fiction by many orders of magnitude, and it does this because it is supremely GOOD at what it does. It hits exactly the buttons that readers want hitting.
No writer who finishes a novel or any worth (and notice I say, of any worth) can have done so solely with the cynical intention of writing a commercial success. Of course they hope it will be, but first they have to understand the genre, subvert the genre if they wish, and pass muster with all the highly attuned readers of that genre, who won't take any old pap. You cannot fake it, and the idea that you can 'fake write' a sucessful commercial novel, and then turn to 'proper' writing' which doesn't sell as much but which ticks many academic boxes is proposterous. As a myth, it also prevents many good genre writers from feeling proud about the novels they write, when they deserve to feel very proud indeed.
Fantastic fiction is what readers want. If you can write it, and write it supremely well, then you will sell. Millions.
Stephen King is not a literary master. He is no Flaubert, Camus or Dostoevsky - but he his an arch storyteller who kicks arse within his genres. Most writers would kill to be Stephen King, and have his readership. In this competitive, harsh and ultimately unrewarding publishing climate, to separate writers into worthy and unworthy based on elitist assumptions of what makes good or bad art is wholly unfair.
*Glares at everyone, including self*
But Relentless isn't poor quality. It might not have the characterisation you like, and it might not have come to the conclusion you would have come to, but you don't become the best-selling thriller in the UK by being poor quality, I don't think.
Relentless won't change lives, it won't alter the course of literature, - and it never promised it would. It's like saying: 'That Kylie, she's no Mozart, is she?'
No, she's not. But it's a few hours of distraction, and it races along, and it's entertaining and it's bubble gum, and fabulous bubble gum at that.
A publisher read that book, thought it would sell, and published it. It was listed on Richard and Judy, and sold lots and lots. So there. Let's not be jealous, the fella's done very well. I wish my novel was published, and it was listed on Richard and Judy, and was about to make me a rich man. But it's not - and while it isn't, we have to put any criticism of Relentless that I might make into that perspective, imo.
It is such terrible shite though. I'm not saying that people dont have a right to read it, and enjoy it. But fucking hell 
Write a bad book that does sell.
youre young dumb and full of cum.
then at least have some money to give yourself some liberty to free yourself to be your own patron and test your capability to write something that is good, then you'll know if you can.
On the other hand, dont sell out and make no money and sit in squalor wondering all your life where it went wrong.
If you were you would know that committing whole years of your life to a novel in a bid to get rich is a silly, silly way to try and get rich. The odds against it are frightening.
With any sucessful book, it's possible to write a stinker of a sequel and get sales because of the reputation of the original. But you can only do this once, you cannot do it 5 times. Frank Herbert did it 5 times, he was writing what his audience wanted to read, moving the story on.
I can see that you might not have liked it, but that doesn't make it bad.
Bad books don't sell millions. They really don't.
With any sucessful book, it's possible to write a stinker of a sequel and get sales because of the reputation of the original. But you can only do this once, you cannot do it 5 times. Frank Herbert did it 5 times, he was writing what his audience wanted to read, moving the story on.
I can see that you might not have liked it, but that doesn't make it bad.
Bad books don't sell millions. They really don't.
oh dude
That's a terrible analogy!
No McDonalds burger takes years to create, and has to make it through the hoops of reading editors, publishing editors, company directors, market research, librarians and bookshop owners, and finally be dissected word for word in the online, print and media reviews sections on a global scale before finally seeing whether or not the reading public think it's worth buying on a mass scale.
Fiction is all genre - it's just that some is literary genre, and that is deemed by academic snobs to be better than any other, in the same way academic snobs will tell you that opera is better than Stevie Wonder. And which any Stevie Wonder fan will tell you is bollocks.
you can't say that the first one is of equivalent quality to the other two, can you?
But then whats the point of having an opion on anything? Stevie wonder and opera are not proper comparisons, because its a matter of taste ... they are both good in their own way!!
a better comparison would perhaps be Dima Bilan - the guy who just won Eurovision, and, say, KoRn, or DJ Tiesto ...
No, and you're going to have to invest some time in reading my posts a little more carefully before I spend time explaining what I just have in several different hues to Virginia Woolf over there.
Rubbish. If you'll forgive me being so direct. The endeavour is precisely the same, and the distinction is one maintained by a culturally elitist bunch of wankers who disrespect any writer who doesn't fit their tightly controlled manifesto of intellectual superiority.
Pah! And double Pah! The Emporor is waving his willy about in full view.
I can't read Tolstoy, it sends me to sleep.
I can't write Mills and Boon, I don't know the genre well enough and I don't have the discipline.
So who's to say who's the winner?
Mills and Boon sell more, and arguably mean more to more people.
Are you telling me Tolstoy is better coz it is harder?
I can't read Tolstoy, it sends me to sleep.
I can't write Mills and Boon, I don't know the genre well enough and I don't have the discipline.
So who's to say who's the winner?
Mills and Boon sell more, and arguably mean more to more people.
Are you telling me Tolstoy is better coz it is harder?
I do apologise. I shall go somewhere else and take my tone with me.
You aren't a writer JC, and dare I say it I don't think you're much of a reader either.
If you can write a throw-away potboiler that sells millions, then you have by definition written a brilliant book. I have no time for this snobbishness that separates literary genre fiction from the rest, it's tired, baseless, old-fashioned and anti-writer.
Bad books don't sell millions. They really don't.
