Is there a word for a "cheap page-turner"?
I think what you are looking for is a potboiler.
A potboiler or pot-boiler is a low-quality novel, play, opera, film, or other creative work whose main purpose was to pay for the creator's daily expenses—thus the imagery of "boil the pot", which means "to provide one's livelihood". Authors who create potboiler novels or screenplays are sometimes called hack writers or hacks. Novels deemed to be potboilers may also be called pulp fiction, and potboiler films may be called "popcorn movies."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potboiler
Also there is a term specifically used for written work: dime novel.
In the modern age, "dime novel" has become a term to describe any quickly written, lurid potboiler and as such is generally used as a pejorative to describe a sensationalized yet superficial piece of written work.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dime_novel
I suppose the 19th century British equivalent of "dime novel" is "penny dreadful".
As Wikipedia says,
A penny dreadful (also called penny horrible, penny awful,[1] penny number, and penny blood[n 1]) was a type of British fiction publication in the 19th century that usually featured lurid serial stories appearing in parts over a number of weeks, each part costing one (old) penny. The term, however, soon came to encompass a variety of publications that featured cheap sensational fiction, such as story papers and booklet "libraries". The penny dreadfuls were printed on cheap pulp paper and were aimed at young working class males.
The penny dreadfuls were bought by men who couldn't really afford to purchase more up-market reading material, (eg, the works of Charles Dickens, which originally appeared in serialised form). These stories were cheap, and the paper was very low quality. Still, the penny dreadfuls made an impact on working-class culture, and some of their characters are still known today, the most famous probably being is Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber.
These stories were published before the advent of modern copyright laws. Publishers felt impelled to sell as many copies as possible in a short time period, knowing that if a story turned out to be a hit it wouldn't take long for a competitor to publish a plagiarised version, or even a direct copy. Thus there was no great incentive to produce works of high quality, but what they lacked in quality they more than made up for in sheer quantity.
One word which came to mind was schlock
"of low quality or value"
And here
Something, such as merchandise or literature, that is inferior or shoddy.
This however may not convey your requirement of compelling enough to keep its audience going?
Doesn't have to be specific to books.
In the context of web media, there is the phenomenon of Clickbait which typically makes use of:
- Catchy or attention-grabbing headlines
- Misleading pictures
- Pop-culture or trivia-themed articles
- Multiple short pages of content interspersed with advertisement
These articles are intentionally designed to increase traffic to a website, whether for visibility or simply to achieve more advertisement banner impressions, thus revenue.