Let me get this straight: You're seriously suggesting that I maintain my own distribution because the author can't be arsed to test their own module?

Yup, I think so. You are the author now. You should ship working software, not task your users to read a readme then install and hand-edit some module

There really is no maintenance, besides the maintenance you do already (installing modules on your dev machine), after than its a one or two clicks and you're uploading your own binary release with the latest version from your dev machine