I know a couple of O’Reilly authors. I don’t think any of them expected a best-seller or awards from their work, just “I get a high-four or barely-five figure payment for a competent treatment of a technical topic.”

Maybe you could argue that’s a lightweight version of “approval of others”

Surprised to hear that an O'Reilly book will net you less than a month of work for a SWE in the US and some parts of Europe.

But I guess the reward is not the money but the expertise and signal.

That plus, online, in-person training opportunities.

Here's an authors account of royalties received from the no. 2 best selling O'Reilly book at the time (around $500k over 6 years)

https://martin.kleppmann.com/2020/09/29/is-book-writing-wort...

It might not be as common, but some authors do write something to get it out of their head.