Once you've written a murder mystery story worth selling, the question becomes how to actually get it in front of hosts and get paid for it. There are a few paths, and they come with very different amounts of overhead.
Option 1: Self-Hosting a PDF
You could build your own storefront, handle your own payments, and email a PDF to buyers. It gives you full control, but it also means you're responsible for building an audience from zero, setting up secure payment processing yourself, and handling delivery, refunds, and support on your own.
Option 2: A Dedicated Marketplace
A marketplace built specifically for murder mystery games, like Story to Die For, already has an audience of hosts actively browsing for stories, along with built-in filtering by player count, theme, and price that helps the right buyers find your story without you having to drive all the traffic yourself.
What a Marketplace Handles For You
- Secure checkout and file delivery, so you're not emailing PDFs manually
- Payouts through Stripe Connect, tracked in a seller dashboard
- Discovery — hosts searching and filtering for stories like yours
- Reviews and ratings that help build trust with new buyers
In exchange, the platform takes a 30% commission on paid sales — a trade-off for not having to build and maintain all of that yourself.
Which Approach Makes Sense
If you're writing occasionally and want to reach hosts who are already looking for a story, a marketplace gets you in front of buyers immediately. Self-hosting only really pays off if you already have a large existing audience elsewhere willing to buy directly from you.
Get Started
Read our creator guidelines to see what it takes to publish, or check our guide on how to sell your own murder mystery story from first draft to first sale.