I think this article is conflating the craft of writing, which is essentially literary ambition and aspiring toward literary fiction, with genre fiction which is focused on plot and story above language that is employed. Writers who aspire towards a nobel or elite critical acclaim certainly must read because their aspiration is to develop a novel and masterful command of their native language. But writers who aspire towards story, storytelling itself is an oral tradition. The author here conflates these two, citing Woolf and Nabokov as examples of voracious readers while addressing a general population of writers. It is not obvious that the genre fiction writer is losing out by reading less compared to watching tv or movies. They would still be learning about pacing, dialogue, plot mechanics, and the ability to consume more stories albeit via a different medium may be net positive EV for them. As a fun counterfactual, if Fourth Wing by Yarros was instead written as literary fiction, would it be more or less popular? My guess is, less. Which is again to emphasize that masterful craft of language vs. plotting/storytelling are distinct skills that do not face the same payoff or learning dynamics.