I really love Tolkien and Jordan, and also GRRM… I would treat competing against them as entirely accepted and obvious.
Teenagers buying Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, or Jordan for the first time… Wonderful. Of course you will be stocked there… These are the gateway to the genre, IMO.
It shouldn’t be viewed negatively or as a sort of competition - which is why I respect the meme.
I don’t think writing better books will help. Every big bookstore I’ve been to has a whole section for Harry Potter and those aren’t exactly literary masterworks. The real ticket is “get someone who has a big movie/tv studio to think they can make money off your books”.