I accept that some bad books succeed, but this really is vanishingly rare. Subjectively even many so-called bad books have really excellent qualities - especially in narrative structure.

So there are Bad Books and then there are BADly written books.

I agree also with your point: build it and they will come doesn't work. Marketing is essential. But ask people to swallow an unreadable book - which is most books people write - and all the marketing in the world won't save you.

In the writing groups I've participated in, there seem to be a number of authors that are scared off by the process of getting their work out there. I'm hopeful that this post will help them overcome the technical hurdles in doing so.

I invite you to check out my novel's Amazon page and read some of the reviews. Even the negative reviews praise the story itself, while slamming my writing style :)

Something about getting the product in front of a critical audience ASAP to prevent wasting time creating something that even marketing can't save?

The trouble with getting stuff in front of a critical audience is that you don't get many chances. If you run after friends and family with a manuscript, you may also find your circle of acquaintance rapidly shrinking.

So, I don't think you can treat it exactly like an MVP :). However, to talk in "HN" terms the equivalent of an MVP in the literary scene is probably a short story. If you can write one good short story, the chances are you've cracked a great number of the problems of writing a novel. So I always strongly advise people to write short work and share it. And that is less intimidating to your potential audience. Also it's likely you can get feedback from magazines and so on. With a novel - it's very hard to get feedback in a timely fashion, or with any detail.

Now, of course, novels have significant other challenges, but at least you've addressed style/voice and basic story-telling.

What I find about technical people (even mildly technical people such as myself) is that we have a big disadvantage: rationality. The thing is that being reasonable often makes for bad story telling. You need to have a little bit of cruelty and unreasonableness to generate an emotionally convincing world. I find writers with a technical background portray rational actors and lack a sense of drama (I do anyway). To give an example, they resolve conflicts too early. They find using "miscommunication" to be a kind of cheat. They don't like information hiding (ironically!)...And these are all staples of provocative fiction.

Anyway, sorry I haven't really clarified much there.

1. Identify the problems and just work on eliminating them.

2. Write about characters in a milieu in which everyone does behave in a highly rational way - to be honest I don't know of such an environment - but kinda sounds interesting.

3. Abandon conventional narrative techniques. However this doesn't work if you want to write genre fiction, or anything that will be widely read - i.e. you're in the experimental zone!

4. One writer I know uses Myers–Briggs personality types to determine each character's behaviour and lets their actions in each situation flow from that. In fact he's a good writer and the technique (however he uses it) really works, though I would have been a sceptic if someone told me that is what they do.

The thing that fascinates me is how some writers can create tension in the smallest things. Some writers can generate drama out of a missing cat, or the fleas on a dog. It's all about tapping into extreme subjective reactions, while showing the rational justification the character supports it with...

Good luck.