Decisions, Decisions

I have recently been confronted with some tough choices regarding publishing options for my first game. The first one is where to publish. In order to circumvent the traditional tabletop RPG publishing route and go the modern way of Print on Demand, I have scouted two sites that do PoD. One does it for free, but lacks a high-traffic advertising venue. The other charges a fee (a rather large fee when you live paycheck to paycheck) but advertises your book on Amazon.com.
The question here becomes this: is it worth it to advertise an unknown book on Amazon.com, or should I just drum up word of mouth support and direct people to the other site? I'm going to be doing some of my own promoting anyway (a story for another time) but is it worth it for a book people have no exposure to?

The second problem is in which edition to publish. Many indy games make a little extra scratch and cater to gamers with less cash by offering text-only versions of their games. Case in point, I have a text-only version of Cold City sitting on my desk (an EXCELLENT game by the way.) Text-only versions offer cheap games at the cost of illustrations, layout and finesse. But, for some gamers, that stuff isn't as nearly important as the content of the game itself.
Seeing as how I am fairly confident in the content of Neurojack, I have been considering releasing a text-only version, either as a downloadable .pdf, as a cheaply bound book or both. The question I have is this: should I release the Text-only version before or after the regular print version with all the bells and whistles?
Part of me says the cheaper version would help drum up support for and knowledge of my game. The other half of me says that I should put my best foot forward and release Neurojack in all it's glory first, then offer the cheaper alternative later. Hm...maybe I should go back to school and take some marketing courses.

Voice-Only

Though it does help facilitate gaming with old friends across long distances, I'm not sure if I'm totally sold on the idea of gaming through voice chats such as Ventrillo or Skype. I've only tried it once and although the results were more or less acceptable so long as everyone makes a conscious effort not to talk over each other (which people tend to do during voice chats anyway.) But still, it seemed like a certain "personal" element was missing. Probably something to do with face-to-face contact inherent tabletop gaming.

It has become a question of preference. Voice-only games, while impersonal, do allow the "gaming connection" to be reestablished with people who have long been absent from our gaming community, particularly recently, when a very good friend of mine was able to reconnect via Voice Chat. Is it worth the impersonal medium to game with old friends again?

As long as the game is kept to a manageable size...I think so.