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As another lone writer who has encountered similar attitudes, here are a
couple thoughts:
1) Putting docs as low-priority may or may not be company-wide. The
developers I've worked with have had an astonishing range of interest in
the doc process.
2) Contact with users (training, user conferences, even phone contact)
can be a morale-booster: people really do read these things, especially
first-time users. Ultimately, it's for them that most docs are intended.
3) In my own case, branching out from manuals-only to other media such as
online help and web support increased my work's visibility tenfold. I get
the sense that these areas are becoming quite important sources of
information, especially for those who simply won't RTFM.
