Mar 2, 2006

An Answer

About a month after my meeting with OotB President Mark Alan Osterhaus at GenCon 2005 I got restless and sent the following e-mail on September 23:
Hiya! I just had two questions:
1) Will I be told if you guys don't want to publish it, or just hear nothing?
2) In either case, roughly when should I expect an answer by?

==========================
Michael R. Keller
rellekmr@rellekmr.net
Two weeks later on October 7th I finally got my answer:
Michael

Unfortunately PROGRAMMER did not make the cut in our September Product Development Meetings. It is being returned via Priority Mail.

Thanks again for the opportunity.

Mark

Mark Alan Osterhaus
President
Out of the Box Publishing, Inc.
So there you have it. It was the closest I'd come so far and yet I'd failed. After a brief sobering period (metaphorically speaking as I don't drink alcohol, though I was tempted to start that day), I would pick up with Mayfair.

3 comments:

  1. Anonymous12:33 PM

    Persistance is the key! The more you are out there, the better your odds of getting through.

    ReplyDelete
  2. You are of course correct. But it can be hard sometimes to keep the energy going when your mind realizes that you have made no tangible progress. I enjoy the process of game design very much and don't regret trying to do this, but I'm just inherently more susceptible than most people to becoming discouraged.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Anonymous8:35 PM

    I got turned down by OTB as well. Bugged me a lot at first 'cause when I gave them the reviews copy at Origins they were gushing and praising the game!
    I was later told that though the game was good, it was not "fun" enough for their product line...
    Oh well... I decided to self-publish a few copies while I continue shopping for a buyer.
    I did find a few small press companies that were interested in the game but we could not come to aggreeable terms. either they wanted complete ownership of the game for a pitance or they were planning to price it higher then it should by a large margin.

    ReplyDelete