Murray Ewing has an interesting long account of promoting his Alice at R’lyeh…

“…different subcultures have very different attitudes to self-publishing. In the UK comics scene, there is a thriving self-publishing community, which sees the fact that something is self-published as a genuine plus-point. It actively welcomes the diversity of the sort of things people produce when they’re let loose on their own. Other areas, though, see self-publishing as an active minus-point, if not an outright automatic rejection. Searching for places to send a review copy of Alice at R’lyeh to, I often came across “no self-published work” notices, which started to annoy me as much as the “no fantasy, science fiction or children’s fiction” notices you find in The Writers & Artist’s Yearbook list of literary agents.”

Personally I have distant but strong roots in comics and SF fandom, and a more recent interest in artists’ books and print-on-demand. So I see self-publishing — if done with care — as perfectly fine and as adding a nice frisson of authenticity.

Ewing usefully points to the fannish conventions as places to sell. But unless you’re going anyway, then the travel + ticket + table costs would seem likely to drain any profit from your sales. For instance, the annual Fantasycon is not far from me. But to attend would cost me around £250 for the weekend, even before a table in the dealer’s room. Sure, if I took 100 copies and pestered everyone there to buy a copy, I might just break even and cover my costs. But that’s no way to enjoy a convention.

I concur that AdWords is a waste of money. Even if you can craft a good ad and target some niche keywords, it’s a futile exercise to spend £5 to get 12,000 impressions a month, which yeilds about 8 clicks and no sales. eBay is certainly one of the main ways to go for genre and genre-linked print material.