1. Person A builds up a persona on HN as a guru, product person, consulting expert, etc.
2. This person then sells an e-book, leaning upon that reputation.
3. This person's uses the launch as an example of being successful.
4. The cycle repeats.
This is an obvious manifestation of the age old Mass Control, Product Launch Formula, etc, and I have no problem with that. My point above is that it's OK for people to vet the parties behind these products, and I think it's lazy to immediately dismiss criticism as jealousy.
No, I am literally having a hard time understanding why people are so automatically suspicious of ebooks. My bias on the table: writing books is so non-remunerative that making them almost seems like charity to me.
Very often the real return in writing an (e)book is personal branding. It's a pretty effective SEO technique. I don't see why this isn't obvious to you. I literally know more than a handful of people whose primary motivation for writing an ebook was that it would raise their profile. That's half the reason why so many ebooks are free, kind of similar to how and why (partly) people contribute to OSS projects without pay.
