No, cheap books came from the invention of cheap printing. But the quality of works was going down because printers were just printing with zero copyright protections. Copyright is what brought the wealth of works worth reading that were then printed using cheap printing. If the only money is in private works for private libraries, that is where the quality stuff is going to go.

Making the avenue of creating for the average person also the avenue for the most income was huge in creating our modern literature landscape.