How did this become a hit?

 This Kong guy considers himself the father of LIT RPG in America. Inflated ego much? Oh my.

Chaos Seeds

From Book 1: From the Wall Street Journal Best Selling Author, Aleron Kong, comes the 1st book in the genre defining series, The Land
The series with over 100 THOUSAND ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Reviews!
"It's like Rick and Morty were the gods of Game of Thrones!"
Audible's Customer Favorite of the Year
"Best new series I've read in YEARS!!!"
#1 Audiobook 2017
"Better than the Wheel of Time and Firefly!"
#1 in Epic Fantasy

What? How? Why? It's def. not my cup of coffee. Whatsoever. It's time to do a dive of sorts. Plus his latest book utilizes the:

• "in African American Fantasy Fiction" 

To basically rise to the top of, if I had to guess, an under utilized genre arena. Plus based on what I initially see here, was it the audible version that catapulted this series to the top? It would be on a bullseye to assume:

Audible Version 

Gotta admit, that narrator is pretty animated.  

Debates 1 
Why is Kong hated? 
 
2,000 pages of useless charts and added fluff is basically his books in a nutshell. Kong is a cash grabber not a storyteller, I read his first book and it was awful not a good example of a LitRPG. Awaken Online is better in my opinion. And the MC of The Land is cringe as hell. 

• So the basics: Good Audible Narrator
• Abusing the KU page turn with empty stat fluff 
• Does the standard meat and potatoes of Lit RPG but its like McDonalds. 
• attempted to trademark "LitRPG". SO very much in the vein of the Star Justice guy, Micheal Scott Earle.  

Oh boy, yea, even from that thread above, most attribute his initial success to "over feeding" that genre and the audible narrator. Who managed to pull more people in. The way reviews describe this series, I will not touch it whatsoever. From the 5 down to the 1 stars. It's empty calories: the series.
But the audible keeps it afloat for some:

To read? No. To listen with Nick Podehl as narrator? Absolutely. 

So the series is cringe as all getup but some will give it a pass because the narration is smooth as silk. SO you can dress a pig up in a tux. Note to self, when launching Superhero Space Opera, don't call myself the Queen of Superhero Prose, that sounds just as stupid and silly as this "father" of americana LIT RPG. 

Further inspection of other threads about it:

• Has elements of Cash Grab, with some idea of marketing to the algorithm, with some grifting and griefing of customers who disagree with him. 
• He doesnt really use his status to help find other LIT RPG stuff worth people's time. 
• Using his superfans as attack dogs (That sounds familiar.) LKH syndrome/comic book land debates.

Another Gem:

Please Fans, no bulli and leaving bad reviews. 

So....you have all this revenue from the audible versions which apparently snake charm people into keeping your series above water and funded....but yet, your like, "No bad reviews pls." Damn.  Plus it would appear that he had a pretty nice dayjob as a doctor so whatever he made from book selling was pretty much gravy. 

(So why not use your resources to promote things you enjoy Mr. Kong? Just wondering. Genuinely, cause if I was that big in my genre, id be bringing up my favorites all the time.) 

Cause with today's society there's so much navel gazing that maybe he's just too wrapped up in just what's in front of him to notice.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/aleron-kong-55455970  

Yep, has Doctor experience.

But one thing is clear: He knows how to market himself and his books for the greatest effect he can get. Love him, hate him or don't care about him? He still managed to hit on all cylinders to get his books out there.

https://www.patreon.com/AleronKong 
https://www.fantasticfiction.com/k/aleron-kong/ 
https://www.instagram.com/litrpgbooks/?hl=en 
Kong on LIT RPG popularity 
www.LitRPG.com/store  
https://www.litrpg.com/ 

Since he was making bank, so was amazon, so it ended up supporting him even more. Because you know amazon made a nice little bundle from his audibles and books.(its not a knock, just basic economics guesswork)

So the other big things I get from all of this, try to pre-plan your book launches as much as possible, build an audience, strike when the iron is hot, get some basic marketing experience under your belt, plan for success. (even if his ego gets in the way, he did plan for that, from the looks of it). But try to temper all of that with as much good will as you can. Imho. Cause even after my series launches, Ill never stop finding books to bring to the surface. So we can all enjoy.

Edit: I will give him credit, he does use his main site to promote other work he likes. I still think its silly to try to trademark LIT RPG or call yourself X of Genre. That's just my personal input. So he does try to use some of his own coat tails to help others. So that does put a feather in his cap. In my estimation.

Either way, he is a pretty busy topic:

Kong, all across reddit.