Popular Books - What is the Secret?

I want to write a popular book, the greatest novel ever written.  Where do I start?  What is the secret?  Why do certain names like Stephen King and James Patterson draw crowds of people?  Why would someone read fiction by Clive Cussler and nobody wants to read my book?  Name recognition is a wonderful boon to those who have it - but they are a minority to be sure.  Thousands of great novels lay undiscovered and writers abandon great works because they need to get a "real" job that pays the bills.  Life is unfair.
Are you a writer, trying to break into this competitive space?  Do you have a great idea; perhaps a partly finished or even (gasp) a completely finished piece of fiction and you don't know how to proceed to the next level?  I am happy to tell you that you should be very happy to be alive in the 21st century.  Popular books are not the only ones being read today, and unknown writers have endless opportunities to have their work discovered.  Fiction is just as popular as ever, even if book sales don't show it.  What could be the cause?
Online novels.  Online reading is one of many chances for readers to discover great fiction without going to a book store and often without spending any money at all.  There are apps also, there are downloadable e-books, there are lending platforms that act like digital libraries and share works of authors.  Online fiction is simply a wonderful advantage of living in the technology age that we live in.  For readers it really is the best time to be alive.  Imagine only 100 years ago, people would share books at school due to lack of family funds.  And today we can find thousands of books that fit in a single device smaller than a single novel.  Ah, what a time to be alive!
For you, the writer, this is very good news also.  We don't have to think about 100 years ago - we can just go back twenty years.  If you were and author twenty years ago and you wrote a fabulous piece of science fiction you had completed only the very first part of an arduous journey.  You had to contact an agent and a publisher and get tests printed and decide on how large the scale of printing would be - first run, second run, etc.  That was IF you could get someone to read it and agree to publish it for you.  Enter the internet.  Today you can produce literature and post it immediately.  You can even post on some websites on a schedule; so you produce a chapter each week and you can get instant feedback from readers around the world.
You, the writer, can find an audience for your work by making it available online.  Online fiction may never make you rich, in fact I love to find the free stuff - I'm not interested in paying for untested works.  I want to read a novel and if I like it then I have made a friend.  The author will be on my list and I will read their next book and their next.  That is what makes literature great, the reading of fiction - not the paying for fiction.  Find some fiction to read online.  Read a free book.  And then go write one yourself.  It could be my next great read.