First, for clarification, V developers can not control who writes books on the language. To say otherwise, looks to be about projection, as to what competitors have done or plan to do.

The first book written about V (5 years ago), looks to have been a total surprise to the community and its creator, because it was written in Japanese[1]. The 2nd book written about V has clearly sold well and received very good reviews[2]. It's author had no connection with V development. A 3rd book[3], which was for academic circles, is not primarily about V. It, however, uses the programming language for random number generation and explanations on the subject.

The point I'm getting at, is marketing one's self on HN or podcasts as a viable alternative versus being an actual viable alternative used by the general public. There is a qualitative difference, that is even picked up on by Wikipedia, which is arguably why Odin or C3 don't have a page. Despite any misdirected anger or envy, that problem has nothing to do with the V community or its creator. It's up to fans and interested third parties to show wide usage and reporting of the language.

Reading the history, and a bunch of it is actually on HN (going back to 2019) and online (including YouTube), the truth of it seems different or it can be viewed differently, in regards to the V Programming Language.

V started from a former professional Go programmer (Alex), creating programs for himself, because he was frustrated with using Go and it missing features that he wanted[1]. He started a new language, which he used to make Volt, Vid/Ved, etc... Others, finding out about his new language, pushed him to make it public. It looks like he was in collaboration with some other developers, when working on Volt.

Others posted about his programming language and pushed him to make it public. Relatively soon afterwards, he came into conflict with creators of competing languages, like Zig (the Andrew Kelly that you mention) and some others (Odin's GingerBill). The conflict appears to have turned hot, originally, because they claimed the language did not exist. That it was something "fake" that he (Alex) made up, but was getting Patreon money from supporters. Clearly that was wrong, and the V language was released on GitHub. Soon afterwards, numerous contributors joined in the effort and gave it stars.

The main push, "of hype", looks to mostly have come from books written about V[2][3] and perhaps the addition of angry competitors constantly talking about it. Zig and Odin have only recently published books about their languages, mainly in 2024, despite that these languages have existed since around 2015 (and have not achieved 1.0 yet). The V language is of course going to get more "hype" or "attention", if it has actual books about it. While in contrast and for years, its competitors had nothing published or didn't/don't even have a Wikipedia page.