For those of you who have worked with a publisher directly on an indie game, how did you get their attention? Are there any specific strategies you used in your presentation of your game concept or prototype?

I don't have a direct answer to the question, but I do have some links to articles on the subject. I posted them just recently in another thread, but let me share them here, too:

https://ltpf.ramiismail.com/archive/
https://www.gamesindustry.biz/how-to-guarantee-your-pitch-will-be-rejected

Programmer71 said:

I proposed my game to a publisher, they didn't like becasue it hadn't been done in unity, after 1 month i reproposed it without changing anything byut saying that i had ported in unity and i got the deal

That sounds pretty rough. I'm guessing that publisher's managers were convinced Unity was the only good game engine.

@Tom Sloper Thanks for the input.

Thaumaturge said:

https://ltpf.ramiismail.com/archive/
https://www.gamesindustry.biz/how-to-guarantee-your-pitch-will-be-rejected

Thanks for the articles. Very good reads!

Programmer71 said:
Consider that only 20% of programmers today do not use a ready made engine, my answer has always been “we cannot publish a game made for an engine mantained by a single person”

So, do I infer correctly then that the problem wasn't that you weren't using Unity, specifically, but rather that you were using your own home-developed engine rather than a third-party one?