Publisher or go-it-alone?
by Margaret Winfield
(Hull, East Yorkshire, England)
They lean more towards comic effect than serious sleuthing, with clues and red herrings scattered throughout, including a very amateur DVD introduction and denouement.
Occasionally, the cast can be induced to burst into song if the way a speech is written reminds them of a familiar tune.
The first two have been performed and thoroughly enjoyed by a group of twelve friends, who now await their invitations to the third. The original one has been requested by a friend's friend, who hasn't done anything like it before and was intrigued by reports of an extremely enjoyable evening's entertainment.
I packaged the whole thing, with scripts,costume and menu suggestions, invitations, etc. into a box for her.
It occured to me that the project might be worth publishing, but having taken part in other murder mysteries, friends bemoaned the lack of a proper script, so mine have exactly that.
I realise that this does not conform to the format of any of the events I have attended.
Is there any mileage in approaching a publisher with this rather different format, or would I be better off trying to go it alone with a PDF version? Any advice would be appreciated.
My response:
Hi Margaret,
My advice would be to publish it yourself. As you point out, your game is very different to most of the existing publishers, and doesn't really suit their house style.
I do suggest that if you can, to begin with you keep your costs down by trying to package everything so that it can be delivered electronically - ie, downloaded over the internet. Creating physical products requires a whole lot of extra work and expense, and you can test the water relatively inexpensively by keeping things digital.
I've written an article on this topic - click here to read Selling your murder mystery party game.
Good luck!