Anything can be a marketing tool... but to do that here, you have to get out of the writers corner down in to the readers areas and become a useful addition down there. If you are then people will gravitate to looking fro your books. I wish I had time to do more of that kind of marketing. I do not know if he did that or not... since 99% of the time I am in the writers corner.
Either way, if he saw this a primarily a marketing avenue, then yeah, he probably was disappointed with the results here. I did buy one of his books so, so he did get one sale from the forum