For some months now I have been adapting a well known and popular videogame into a Novel with the intention of sharing the incredible story with those who do not, or cannot participate in video gaming. It currently stands at 13 chapters and has been enjoyed by family and friends alike whose reviews and opinions remain independent and bias free (as far as I can tell anyway.) I am happy to carry on this work without reward because I enjoy it and at the end of the day, the fan fiction community will tear it apart and give me some true feedback. However. My closest friend who I have known for 13 years has just become a published author and is expecting his novel to be released sometime in the new year. (look out for Machina by Daniel J Nesbit). All throughout the writing process he has given me nothing but critical support and is pushing me to get my work published, often he quips that my descriptive language exceeds his in many ways although my counter argument to this is that I am working with existing material and a well established story, so its not that hard to flick through a thesaurus and match the words to the pictures, so to speak. Anyway, my main concern is copyright issues, many fan fiction advice websites have general advice which always says DO NOT APPROACH PUBLISHERS WITH FAN-FICTION which is understandable as they probably get millions of 13 year olds (i'm not 13 btw im 22) sending in their fantasies of popular characters moving on to pastures of their own design. However I believe what I am doing is slightly different, I'm not designing anything or breaking away from the original story direction of the IP, I'm simply elaborating the key elements of the story to make it available to a wider audience. I guess the main question is...why would a publisher be interested in this above any other fan-fic? Well I strongly believe that my novel would generate profit, and without going into the details of the game or which game it is for that matter the timing of it is perfect, and I find it difficult to think or reasons why it hasn't been done before. I've spent some time googling this, looking at my options and weighing everything up but i'm just not sure what to do or who to go to. I'm not saying that it's good enough to be published, but if it were all it would take is the right publisher at the right time to see that it would be worth haggling over to get permission to publish it. The companies that I have thought about contacting so far are: Prima - authors of the famous prima guide books and a few insight books (e.g GT4, Half Life 2: Raising the Bar.) The developer itself (but I don't want a cease and desist letter. Possibly the publishers of the Halo (unrelated) series however they were written in house and published by Tor with full permission from Bungie. Any advice...opinions? Should I push for a publisher to have a look or am I living in a fantasy world?
