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 liter

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.