James Branch Cabell was probably the first writer to do that in English. Unlike his successors he could actually write, and he didn't have an overspecified word processor encouraging him to write a paragraph when a phrase would do.

Working in a second hand bookshop I get to see how well these things have stayed the course. Of all the SF/fantasy genre, by far the best sellers are the Golden Age books written as one-offs; I can sell all the Ray Bradbury or Stanislaw Lem I get. Terry Brooks, Robert Jordan and the other shelf-footage-mongers are dead meat and I usually send them for pulping now.

There is a layer even further down in the primordial slime of unsaleabity. Percy Jacson, the Beast Quest books, another couple of early-teen-oriented interminably mass produced hackwork series. Pulp is too good for them.