No, in order to make money, you have to appeal to as wide a demographic as possible. This means insulting as few people as possible, writing so that anyone can understand and making it as familiar as possible to as many people as possible.
You can make a lot of money this way but your writing turns out to be bland, insipid and about as complex as "Run Dog, Run". Take "The Da Vinci Code". As a work of literature, it sucks. It's poorly written, with two-dimensional characters and a plot that has been rehashed many times before. Yet it sold millions because of wide appeal and marketing.
Most well written books appeal to a very small niche market. Yes, once a book becomes a "Classic", everyone reads it. However, most people won't venture outside their comfort zone of their preferred genre unless Oprah recommends it, it sells 15 million copies, gets turned into a movie.... or unless it's free.
That's part of what libraries do and honestly I don't think it's going to hurt sales to give away free e-books. If it's good enough, people will buy a dead-tree version. If it's crap they won't be out any money. I love the Baen Free Books project. They have shown that books sell better if they are given away for free. If I don't like a book, I'm not out anything. However, I'm much more likely to say to a friend "It wasn't for me but you might like it". As a result of Baen, I've discovered several new authors and bought in excess of 100 dead tree books that I wouldn't have otherwise. I figure that's a huge profit for them.