Baen Books

Baen Books

Founded	1983
Founder	Jim Baen
Country of origin	United States
Headquarters location	Riverdale, New York
Key people	Toni Weisskopf
Publication types	Books
Fiction genres	science fiction and fantasy
Official website	www.baen.com

Baen Books is an American publishing company established in 1983 by science fiction publisher and editor Jim Baen. It is a science fiction and fantasy publishing house that emphasizes space opera, hard science fiction, military science fiction, and fantasy. Soon after Baen died on June 28, 2006, he was succeeded as publisher by long-time executive editor Toni Weisskopf.

Founding of Baen Books

Baen Books was founded in 1983 out of a negotiated agreement between Jim Baen and Simon & Schuster. Simon & Schuster was undergoing massive reorganization and wanted to hire Jim Baen to head up and revitalize its science fiction line of its Pocket Books division. Jim Baen, with financial backing from some friends, counter-offered with a proposal to start up a new company named Baen Books and provide Simon & Schuster with a SF line to distribute instead.^[1]

Growth and philosophy

From his days in magazine publishing, Jim Baen had a reputation for being able to recognize a gem in the rough and the ability to take a new author and nurture and train him up able to write salable material, and establish himself, which were some of the qualities desired by Simon and Schuster on their team.

In the later nineties, the publisher embraced the newly emerging internet as a means of "spreading the word" about a book or author and created one of the first, if not the first, writer-to-fan discussion forums "Baen's Bar" capable of using a mix of technologies to support the overall promotion and interest in reading books for education and entertainment. The web board became very dedicated to expanding the shrinking reader base for printed works by using the electronic internet to recapture interest.

One project which came about from this focus was the compendium of great science fiction "The World Turned upside down", and the practice begun circa 2002, of republishing older good science fiction in collections and omnibus editions, such as the works of the sixties authors Christopher Anvil and others.

Electronic publishing strategy

Initially, the company invested resources in "Baen's Bar", its online community service that provides a forum for customers, authors and editors to interact, beginning as a BBS. In the early 2000s, a blogger wrote: "Like every other publisher, Baen set up a website. But several of his authors and fan friends convinced him to put a chat client on his site. Since he was interested, and since several of those authors (like Jerry Pournelle, former columnist for Byte Magazine, for instance) were very Internet savvy, he did. The chat client grew into an incredibly vibrant community called Baen's Bar."^[2]

In recent years, beginning in mid-1999, Baen has emphasized electronic publishing and Internet-focused promotions for its publications. The discussions on Baen's bar convinced him to do so.^[3] Baen's electronic strategy is explained exhaustively in a series of "letters" or "essays" called The Prime Palaver by Baen Free Library "First Librarian" Eric Flint, but in a nutshell, emphasizes distribution of unencrypted digital versions of its works free of Digital Rights Management copy protection schemes through Baen Ebooks (formerly Webscriptions, which was not formally part of Baen Books, but in effect an independent e-publisher). Baen and his successors believe that DRM does more harm than good to a publisher. Consequently, Baen also makes its entire catalog available in multiple formats for downloading and typically prices electronic versions of its books at or below that of paperback editions—and makes a profit doing it.^[3] According to essays on Baen's science fiction e-magazine Jim Baen's Universe, also edited by Flint, the strategy is if anything, getting stronger and more fruitful with the passage of time, especially with the advent of e-book readers such as the Amazon Kindle, and the Barnes & Noble Nook.

Baen's Webscriptions

Baen has distributed serialized e-book versions of new books at reduced prices. These have been scheduled three months in advance of print publication. Baen called this Webscriptions. It was implemented by Baen's preferred website expert, Arnold Bailey, who also sold e-books for other publishers. At the start of 2012, the Webscription.net website was redesigned, renamed to Baen Ebooks and moved to http://www.baenebooks.com/. Despite the new name, Baen Ebooks continue to sell e-books for other publishers, notably SF genre rival Night Shade Books.

Baen's standard setup is based on monthly bundles. Each month, whatever books Baen has coming out in paper (paperback or hardcover, new or reissued) are put together in a fixed price (currently $18) bundle regardless of a number of books (historically 4–9 books, average 5–6). The Monthly Baen Bundles installments are as follows: first includes roughly a half of every book in the bundle, second includes roughly three quarters, and the third, coinciding with the print release, includes the full text. The first two installments are generally available only as HTML, while the last includes all formats supported. Each bundle can only be bought until the middle of the preceding month, which is about the time the printed books reach retailers.^[4] (Until December 2012, bundles remained on sale indefinitely.)

Another avenue for distribution that Baen uses for some of its new titles is the offering of Electronic Advance Reader Copies (ARCs), or eARCs 3–5 months prior to actual publication. Marketed as a premium product for the fans who absolutely positively have to read it now, they are priced at full $15 per single title and can in fact differ from the final text (as they are in fact electronic proofs). What it means is that some authors (and Baen) can get paid as many as three times for the same book: the eARC, part of the monthly bundle, and actual printed book.

The electronic versions by Baen are produced in five common formats (HTML, Palm Pilot/Mobipocket/Kindle format, Rocketbook, EPUB/Stanza, Sony LRF, RTF and MS Reader versions), all unencrypted in drastic contrast to the rest of the e-publishing industries strategy. Jim Baen disliked Adobe's Portable Document Format (PDF) for reading purposes, but Baen Ebooks offers some non-Baen titles in that format. When customers purchases a title from Baen, they can read it online or download in any format they want as often as you want.

After print publication, the "cleaned up and finalized" electronic copy is available both on line through the monthly bundle or as a single title (priced variably $3–6) and through the parallel practice Baen instituted of using promotional CD-ROMs with permissive copyright licenses with many of its stable of authors works. Whether downloaded or by CD-ROM, the source material is available in all the formats Baen supports, which includes some for e-book readers.

The great majority of books published by Baen are still available as e-books, long after the hardcover or paperback versions have gone out of print. This is especially important for midlist titles, which rarely get reprinted. Until December 2012, it was also possible to purchase older monthly bundles.

Baen has made liberal use of free content in its marketing efforts. For example, free sample chapters of its books are typically available on the Baen Web site. The "Baen Free Library" allows free access to dozens of titles from the company's backlist, often the first book published in a series by a Baen author. Baen also provides free electronic copies of its books to readers who are blind, paralyzed, dyslexic, or are amputees.

Baen's emphasis on electronic publishing has generated press coverage for the company. In 2001, Wired magazine described Webscriptions as "innovative".^[5] Charles N. Brown, publisher of Locus Magazine, has praised Baen's approach in an interview in The New York Times, saying "Baen has shown that putting up electronic versions of books doesn't cost you sales. It gains you a larger audience for all of your books. As a result, they've done quite well."^[6]

Magazine experiments

Baen's first run at magazine-style book publishing took place in the late 1970s, in the form of Destinies, a quarterly 'bookazine' that featured fiction and non-fiction by well-known and new authors that Baen was promoting. It was published by Ace, where Baen was employed at the time. Under the aegis of Baen Books in the 1980s he published two more bookazine series. The first was Far Frontiers. The second was New Destinies, edited by Baen, Elizabeth Mitchell, and Michael A. Banks.

The Grantville Gazettes

Baen's began the experimental publication of The Grantville Gazette, an e-magazine anthology series specifically related to the popular Ring of Fire alternate history plenum.

Jim Baen's Universe

In the early 2000s, Baen tried magazine-like publishing again, establishing two self-sustaining e-zine enterprises with a separate staff for each, both spearheaded by Eric Flint: Jim Baen's Universe and the Grantville Gazette series, which was reconfigured after Grantville Gazette V.

The general audience speculative fiction anthology Baen's Universe is available only on-line. At approximately 120,000 words, this latter publication is unusually large when compared to most traditional print editions of science fiction magazines, and the average size of the newly reconfigured Gazettes is similarly generous.

Baen Digital Object Identifiers (DOI)

From 1999 to 2011, Baen's e-books were produced by Webscriptions under contract for Baen Books in various (at least five) common digital formats. Because these multiple formats complicate the issue of identifying electronic versions, Baen and Webscriptions did not use DOIs to properly identify their e-books (even though some of their books had DOIs). The electronic e-ARC practices also complicates things in "publications dates", since the first released text starts two to three months before the release of the print copy, though the released text is not guaranteed to be fully copy edited—and so occasionally differs from the final released fully copy edited versions. Thus, like the Grantville Gazettes the e-publication date antedates the print copy by about two months—the interval before the release of the last third and the hardcover print edition is simultaneously released.

Baen Books authors

Baen authors include:

The market for SF in the United States

In 2004, more than 2,500 titles in the genres of science fiction, fantasy and horror were published in the U.S. by 248 publishers. According to the 2004 Book Summary,^[7] Baen Books was the ninth most active publisher in terms of most books published in the genres indicated, and the fifth most active publisher of the dedicated SF imprints, publishing a total of 67 titles (of which 40 were original titles). It is difficult to judge the issue of quality but, based on the number of times a title published by Baen Books appeared in the bestseller lists produced by the major bookselling chains, it is ranked the seventh most popular SF publisher. In 2005 Baen moved up to the eighth position in the total books published with 72 books published (of which 40 were original titles).^[8] It was the sixth most active publisher of the dedicated SF imprints, and the fifth most popular SF publisher based on the number of bestseller list appearances.

Baen Books series

A partial list includes:

• 1632 series/Ring of Fire series
• The Bard's Tale: A series of books based on the RPG computer game series of the same name.
• Belisarius series: The premise of this science fiction (more specifically alternate history) series is that a war between two competing societies in the future spills over to 6th century Earth.
• Bolo
• Chicks in Chainmail: A series of anthologies centered around this theme, edited by Esther Friesner.
• Freehold War
• Heroes in Hell
• Honorverse (Honor Harrington)
• Legacy of the Aldenata
• Liaden universe
• The Man-Kzin Wars: A shared universe based on the Kzinti Conflicts in Larry Niven's Known Space universe, featuring writers personally selected by Niven
• March Upcountry Series
• Raj Whitehall
• Vorkosigan Saga
• Wing Commander: Baen published seven Wing Commander novels from 1992 to 1999 (starting with Freedom Flight by Mercedes Lackey and Ellen Guon, and ending with False Colors by William R. Forstchen and Andrew Keith), including the novelizations of two of the games, Wing Commander III: Heart of the Tiger and Wing Commander IV: The Price of Freedom.

References

External links

• Baen Books official Web site
• Baen's Grantville Gazettes—First (originally experimental) e-zine, the gazette is unique in that it is canonical for the best selling Ring of Fire series.
• Jim Baen's UNIVERSE the publishers second foray into e-zine publishing.
• Jim Baen's UNIVERSE Columns archives—various columns, Editors and otherwise, no subscription needed.
• Prime Palaver essays, most discussing copy protection and Baen's e-policies.
• Editor's columns of JBU—"Salvos Against Big Brother" and "The Editor's Page"; "Salvos" are similar essays by editor Flint specifically focused on DRM and Baen's electronic publishing policies.
• Baen's Bar Online—All e-manuscript submissions for either of the above e-zines have to go through this door into the two sub-forums 1632 Slush or JBU "Universe Slush" conference. Baen's Bar is the only submission mechanism for submitting stories to two professional SF magazines.
• Baen Ebooks website
• Baen Free Library at Baen Ebooks
• Index of Baen on-line resources at www.allensmith.net
• Free Baen materials for the disabled at www.ReadAssist.org