Narrowing the Scope

Dear Readers, Writers, and Potential Authors of ComStar Media, LLC,

ComStar Media, LLC is a company started by myself, my husband, and my father to bring great roleplaying games and original fiction. Our entire philosophy has been to offer a chance to authors who might, for one reason or another, be overlooked by the larger publishers and to give them this chance without taking all the rights to their characters and/or worlds. As an independent publisher, we strive to find great talent and even to find the rough new authors, help them add the polish to their work and become the writer they always wanted to be. We’ve been very successful in our gaming side of the business, but our fiction side, unfortunately, has been suffering many set backs, and it’s because of that truth that I write this letter.

In the infant stages of ComStar, we opened up our ability to publish to all authors, regardless of genre, level of experience, or marketability of the project. However, when the book proposals started rolling in, we were overjoyed to find ourselves in a position of having a great pick from many talented and worthy authors with equally impressive scopes of projects. However, as is the folly of some new publishing companies (and new owners), we did not pay as close attention to the marketability of some of these projects, and while we still believe in every one, we have grown a lot over the years and have come to realize that it is easier to start with one market and spread outwards, rather than try to conquer all markets at the same time.

Another huge consequence of our willingness to take on so many projects in so many markets, was that our inexperience led us to start contracting faster than we could really hope to publish the projects we were contracting. Being the sole person to read over the hundreds of proposals, decide on them, draw up the contracts, edit the stories, and keep up the lines of communication with those authors as well as assist on the business side of ComStar was much more than I could have hoped to accomplish in a smooth manner. Especially since I hold down a full time job outside of ComStar. Our goal was to be an author-centric company who would make the publishing of a book easier for the author, rather than difficult. However, because of the magnanimous task I took on and the fact that I discovered I really am merely human, it has painfully come to my attention that I bit off more than I could chew. As a result, communication has been slow, updating the website has been horribly neglected, authors have decided to pull their projects, and yet the book proposals keep rolling in, keeping me bogged down even more than before, when we were so brand new.

While I don’t blame the authors who have decided to look elsewhere for publishing, it has made me see how the fiction side of ComStar must narrow the scope of authors we are publishing until we are financially able to hire more editors and personnel to make a wider scope possible. It is wholly important to me, as well as the other partners of ComStar, that the authors we serve feel the impact of our hard work and time spent on their project. As it is now, many authors are wondering how close their project is to being done, and while they wait, opportunities are being lost and this is unacceptable. The truth is, while I have not stopped working towards the completion of our many projects, it is impossible for me to get them all done before the contracts run out on them.

For all these reasons, we will be restructuring the way we publish fiction. We will be narrowing our group of authors down to fewer projects at one time. We will no longer be accepting new proposals all the time, and instead when we are able to accept more, we will put a call out for new authors. We will be contacting each contracted author and the authors who are being considered for projects that have been long in the making and discussing with them our decisions on whether that project is a go or not. We will be taking a good long hard look at all the projects we have and decide if this project is still viable and will be letting all the contributors to that project know the decision we’ve made.

We ask for just a little more patience while we do these things and then we look forward to a much smoother ride for our authors.

Thank you for your continued support of ComStar Media, LLC. We look forward to bringing you more great fiction, along with our already popular and great gaming products for many years to come.

Sincerely,

Jennifer Lee Andersen
ComStar Media, LLC