About Us


Why Murder Must Advertise?

The group was started by Kate Derie in the late 1990s. At the time, publishing was producing a record number of mysteries. however, as traditional publishers merged, fewer resources were available to the mid-list authors for promoting their own works. They were left stranded in a world that expected results with no roadmap. As a result, Murder Must Advertise was created so that mid-list authors could share ideas, create synergy and develop best practices for marketing one's work.

In 2001, Jeffrey Marks took the reins of MMA.

Over the past 15 years, MMA has changed and so has its membership. There are still a number of mid-list authors, but there are now independent authors and hybrid authors as well. Each has a different set of obstacles to getting the word out about their books. 

Rules of the Road

The Yahoo Group for MMA is entirely moderated. That means that each message is reviewed for purpose before approval. The list has a no blatant self-promotion rule. The group is like no other, because it is laser focused on the topic at hand. There are no announcements of blog posts, contests, new releases or free days. You may discuss the particular hurdles for each of these and include information about your blog, contest, etc, but it cannot be the thrust of the message.

You should not expect immediate turn-around on the message. I may be gone on a book signing and it may take two days for me to approve something. Posting "is anyone there?" or complaining about the time lapse is strongly frowned upon.

There is no discussion of politics or religion on the site. All are welcome, and we want everyone to feel welcome.


The Facebook page is less moderated, but my hope is that for every piece of BSP that you leave, you also leave one article or suggestion for marketing or PR related to books. You should not post the same or closely similar post to the Facebook page more than two times per week. This is on an honor system, but repeated failures to follow the rules will result in being removed from the group.


This website is the third component of the MMA information. It has resources for writers and publishers along with blog entries and other helpful pieces of information. Suggestions for articles or blog entries are always welcomed as long as they are marketing and PR related.

About MMA

The list is named after Dorothy L. Sayers' 1933 book, in which Lord Peter Wimsey takes a job working undercover at Pym's Publicity..

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About MMA

Membership is now over 1500 and traffic currently averages 15-20 messages/day. All messages are moderated which means that there's no unwanted spam or BSP to deal with. It's all about marketing and PR.

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