But writers actually do get paid by the word. Charles Dickens was famously paid by the page, and his novels ended up profound enough. I'd wager most professional writers are in the business to make a living, not to be profound.
That resource says he was paid for every 32 pages. In any case, it seems like for at least some of his early books like The Pickwick Papers, he was paid proportional to volume of output and not to sales/quality. (For some of his later works he earned a percentage of sales.) It's a perfectly fine model for people who aren't already as famous as late-career-Dickens and it can nonetheless produce profound work.
