Well, I read your piece; I have not seen any of the books and wouldn't buy them anyway, despite thinking her work very good, judging from what I have dredged from the depths of the Internet and the BBC documentary.
The funny thing is, where you tend to be somewhat negative about Ms Maier I see Arbus instead. Did Arbus have style? To me, from what I see on the 'net, she was a fairly lousy technician and her identity was pretty much wrapped up in the freak show she so enjoyed until she took herself out. Which probably explains more about her photography and motivation than is kind. If concentrating on one topic is acceptably a definition of style, then okay, she was a stylist. Hardly convinces me, though. Style demands a bit beyond subject. Style is a fairly unmistakable handwriting whatever the author writes.
If you want to be able to take a photographer, any photographer, and condemn him or her for similarity in their work to the work of others, expecting some virginal version, then I guess its possibly you has the problem, which is that you start off on the wrong foot: no photographer has ever been unique to the extent that none of his work reflects, somewhere, that of others. Similarity within the same genre is unavoidably a direct product of the genre, and impossible to escape. Are you suggesting, perchance, that there are no echoes between Leiter, Faurer, Levitt, Levinstein, Frank, Model, Davidson and Grossman at one end of the time capsule and Winogrand and Meyerowitz at the other?
Of course, you may or may not be right to pour a little petrol over the people who are attempting to monetize Maier, but in the end, why not? How much money gets made every day by selling cheap Stars and Stripes flags probably not even made in the USA? It's a fact of life, and in this case, at least we owe them the credit for the introduction (to Maier, not the flags).
On the whole, I'm happier to have seen her work than not.
Rob