meteor is not to build static web sites. Its for build Single Page Apps.
A static page is the simplest form of website. It is trivial to build a static page using Meteor. I hoped one of the authors would tell us why they chose not to dogfood on the marketing page for a book on Meteor.
Probably because it's like using a sledgehammer to crack a nut. A marketing page like this doesn't require any realtime updates.
Exactly. Using the best tool for the job.
Exactly. We used Middleman (http://middlemanapp.com) for the landing page and it worked great. All the data on the landing page comes from a few YAML page, and it even lets us auto-generate special pages for discount codes. I strongly recommend it for any kind of static site.
I think it is mainly for SEO. I don't think google bots like meteor.
Meteor can be made to prep stuff for search engines and other spiders, but the current solution (they admit it's a stopgap) involves PhantomJS, which gets into serious resource consumption for a static site.
At least we have a solution. Anyway node is not good for serving static files. (specially in HTTPS).
So we should let meteor to do what it is best at :)
It's worth noting that the book itself is in fact a Meteor app.