Did the 1700s have potboilers and other cheap novels?

When we think of potboiler novels, we mostly think of the age of industrialisation, the age of penny dreadfuls, dime novels, and other quick novels you can pick up for a cheap price.

However, in Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary and one thing he keeps reiterating is how tacky his fellow Frenchmen are, how they love silly novels and how the French Academy prints a bunch of bullshit.

And, of course, Rousseau in his Discourse on the Arts and Sciences attacks things from the other direction saying how the printing press has created divisions in society, corrupted the humble people and stirred up the riff-raff.

But then again, Im wondering what exactly was the market like for books at this time. Could you find book vendors over by the banks of the Seine? Outside of Drury Lane or the Piazza of San Marco?

Culturally, was there even such a thing as "popular literature"?

Could we also say that Simplicius Simplicissimus was pop literature of the Holy Roman Empire since it was printed hundreds of times?

When exactly do we see the shift in the "popular literature" and how did it function?