See how ridiculous it sounds in a different context?
Everything you say is right, of course ...
But it does all depend on context, I think. And the context being applied to Al Brooks, sadly, is probably the same context as the one much more reasonably applied to the outright, blatant scammers charging $5,000 for a two-day "trading course" teaching moving average crossovers.
Obviously, to a rational person, being the author of three respected, acclaimed textbooks published by Wiley and retailing to their comparatively small audience at about $50 each, and earning an author's royalty of 10% (maybe 12.5%) on that cover price, doesn't even begin to put someone in the same league as that, as "a vendor".
But
to people who don't distinguish one context from another and simply lump everyone together as "trading vendors", it can come across that way, I guess ... and regarding "trading vendors" in general, I suppose it's fair enough to have some healthy skepticism, in principle.
The reality, though, in the case of the good Dr Brooks, is that there also plenty of people around who found that what he's teaching didn't work for them (typically, I suspect, because they didn't want to put in "all that effort" to understand it - and it really
is an effort!), and rather than blaming themselves for that in any way, or realising that they perhaps bought the books expecting them to be something they never pretended to be, some of them just blame the author instead. That's human nature, to some extent ... but it also means that there's a bunch of people badmouthing the guy and seizing on any opportunity -
however irrelevant and farfetched - to besmirch his reputation. As we see, time and again, when he's mentioned here at ET.
Which is a shame, of course, but what can you do?
And to answer my own semi-rhetorical question, all
I can do is keep mentioning the undeniable, independently verifiable
fact that there are also impressively large numbers of long-established members in many trading forums happily mentioning that Al Brooks' teaching was highly influential in their developing the ability to become consistently profitable in their own trading, and that fortunately for us, none of us ever has to pay back to anyone the money we've made by following his teaching, whether the author chooses to publish his own trading records or not.