Thank you for posting this, I 100 % agree with what your saying not to long ago I also posted something along these lines on the fourms. Many of the word press themes are for picture use and all made and designed with 3 collum grids.

If you check weekly best seller you will see almost all are both kind of “WP style” (as you point out) or creative oriented. That’s the reason why most of authors try to follow that path, cos is far away the one where the money is (and definetively, from author’s point of view, this is not about originality but money). But i’m agree that sometimes could feel quite boring.