Anyone who has read Tom Clancy or Vince Flynn knows that, too. What matters is the ability to tell a story - for some reason the ability to tell stories and the ability to write well don't often coexist in the same author. "Writers" tend to spout brilliantly crafted nonsense, and "storytellers" make grammatical and structural mistakes that would make a fifth grader blush.
People don't read anymore, anyway. In the late 60's, a bestselling paperback would sell twelve million copies - today a book that sells three million is considered miraculous. The television generation has killed writing.