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==Electronic publishing strategy==
==Electronic publishing strategy==
In recent years, Baen has emphasized [[electronic publishing]] and Internet-focused promotions for its publications. Baen's electronic strategy emphasizes distribution of unencrypted digital versions of its works free of [[Digital Rights Management]] copy protection schemes. 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.
{{advertisement|section}}
Baen Books may justly claim an innovative approach to marketing through the Internet on several levels. The most innovative aspects of Baen's electronic publishing policy are these:


Other electronic marketing tactics Baen employs include distributing [[e-book]] versions of advance reader copys at premium prices, the use of promotional [[CD-ROM]]s with permissive [[copyright]] licenses, and publication of an [[e-magazine]] anthology entitled ''[[The Grantville Gazette]]''. Serials of this anthology have also been released in print editions subsequent to the electronic versions. In contrast, the anthology ''[[Jim Baen's Universe|Baen's Universe]]'' is available only on-line. At approximately 120,000 words, this latter publication is unusually large when compared to most tradtional print editions of [[science fiction magazine]]s.
* all digitally published titles ([[e-book|e-books]]) are unencrypted -- not "protected" by [[Digital Rights Management|DRM]]


In 1999, Baen launched it's "[[Webscriptions]]" service, which provides subscribers with monthly electronic releases from Baen's catalog. Because Baen subsequently maintains these electronically released publications on it's Web site for purchase, the publishing house has been able to make [[midlist]] titles available to readers long after they would typically have gone [[out of print]] under tradtional publishing practices.
* all books are available in a variety of formats, and with each online purchase or download, '''all''' of five formats (immediately or eventually) become available and remain available to the purchaser for repeat downloading as desired


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 copys of its books to readers who are blind, paralyzed, dyslexic, or are amputees.
* the majority of these e-books are priced at or under the cost of a paperback edition


Finally, the company has invested resources in "Baen's Bar", it's [[online community]] service that provides a forum for customers, authors and editors to interact.
* Baen also provides "its books to fans who are blind, paralyzed, or dyslexic, or are amputees, in electronic form free of charge, effective immediately" (announced on [[November 14]], [[2006]] in the Webscriptions portal).


Baen's emphasis on electronic publishing has generated press coverage for the company. Wired magazine has described Baen's Webscriptions service as "innovative."[http://www.wired.com/culture/lifestyle/news/2001/03/42350] [[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." ({{Citation
These policies contrast significantly against those of most other publishers, who have entered the electronic publishing market in a manner that can be judged as less enthusiastic (obviously fearful of the ways in which computer users can redistribute digital versions of copyrighted works via [[Usenet]] postings with binary content attachments or peer-to-peer [P2P] [[file sharing]]). The supposition at Baen Books has been that these sales to the ebook-buying community helps to stimulate an online "word-of-mouth" advertising effect.
| last = O'Connell

| first = Pamela LiCalzi
At the same time, the availability of these high quality digital files tends to discourage clumsy [[Copyright infringement|bootlegging]] by way of scanning and encoding printed pages (something to which the works of all publishers are subject today), ensuring that copyright violaters who '''do''' download digital versions of Baen's intellectual properties don't encounter technical glitches that they subconsciously associate with [[quality assurance|QA]] failings on the part of Baen Books.
| author-link =

| last2 =
Besides, [[Jim Baen]] had concluded, many of the e-book readers "recrutited" either through purchase or piracy would want to own printed copies of the books they favored most.
| first2 =

| author2-link =
His faith in his patrons (and in his knowledge of [[Science fiction fandom|fannish]] psychology) has been more than justified. Here are some of the specific projects introduced by Baen Books:
| title =Publisher's Web Books Spur Hardcover Sales

| newspaper =[[The New York Times]]
===Free Sample Chapters===
| pages =

| year =
From the publication schedule on the main Baen Web site, readers can view sample chapters of many upcoming works. This is a practice growing more common among other publishers (in print and online), but typically making only the first chapter or two available. In contrast, Baen Books releases as much as one quarter of the upcoming book for open viewing.
| date =March 19, 2001

| url = http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/19/technology/19BAEN.html?ex=1189828800&en=4fd03f4d4c4264af&ei=5070}})
===Webscriptions===

Baen Books had primarily been a [[paperback]] publishing house until [[1999]], when [[Webscriptions]] was introduced. For a fee, a customer subscribes to a set of approximately five [[novel]]s and/or [[anthology|anthologies]] "bundled" electronically in a discounted package that differs from one month to another. Each package is commonly a mix of new releases and older titles, with the upcoming works released to the subscriber in increments in advance of the publication month. The common scheduling method is to make the work available for download in [[HTML]]-only encoding with the first two portions (50% of the work two months in advance, 75% becoming accessible one month prior to bookshelf release), and then the complete text becomes available in multiple digital formats in the month of publication.

The subscription aspect of the term "Webscription" refers not only to this serial manner of release, but also to the way in which the purchaser is obliged to accept '''all''' of the selections in a particular monthly package, in much the same way as he/she would accept all of an editor's choices when buying a copy of a monthly [[science fiction magazine]]. This actively encourages purchasers to read outside their usual preferences by making available to them works by authors (and subgenres of [[speculative fiction]]) that would not likely have come into their hands any other way.

The "Webscription" service is not (at the time of this writing) set up on a [[Push technology|push]] basis, and the purchaser must actively log in at the Web site periodically to check on the availability of each increment. This has the effect of obliging customers to see what upcoming monthly packages are scheduled, and enables Baen Books to easily advertise the new titles coming up the publishing pipeline.

All of the packages offered since the onset of the Webscription service (December 1999) are available for purchase. Given that the common practice in the publishing industry is to allow [[midlist]] titles to go out-of-print less than a year after release, this sort of easy digital availability is regarded by many readers as an important convenience.

===Baen Free Library===

''The [[Baen Free Library]]'' allows free access to dozens of titles (more than eighty at the time of this writing) from the company's backlist. Each such title is made available only with the permission of the author (or, in come cases, the author's estate). These are usually the first work of a series written by that author, and serves as an easily accessible (and very attractive) sample of the multivolume offering.

This strategy has seen commercial success, with sales improved not only within the supported series but also through increased author exposure. As with the Webscriptions titles, readers commonly use the [[Baen Free Library|free access]] mechanism to sample an unfamiliar writer or a series of works before purchasing hardcopy editions.

Interestingly, the subsequent sales among these free-access titles has proven to be surprisingly better than might have been expected, raising them to a kind of "evergreen" status by enabling them to attract new readers.

At least one author has disagreed with the universally-applied electronic rights Baen Books policy, under past contract restrictions, and as such removed backlist and any future books from the publisher.{{Fact|date=February 2007}}

===E-ARC===

In publishing, an '''ARC''' is an '''Advance Reader Copy''' (sometimes called "bound galleys"). These are short-run, printed (but not fully copyedited) editions of the book. These are usually handed out for promotional or review purposes. An E-ARC is the electronic equivalent -- not fully copyedited, but available well ahead of the formal release date. This, however, sells for a premium price compared to the other e-books offered by Baen Books (the E-ARC price of a title is comparable to that of a hardback edition, and this purchase does '''not''' entitle the customer to access the finished e-book versions of the title when they become available).

This notwithstanding, this sort of offering satisfies the desires of the most avid readers of an author or a series, who are perfectly willing to pay extra for the sort of "first look" privileges access to an ARC confers.

===The Grantville Gazette===

Many forms of literature will generate discussion far beyond the narrow circle of writers and editors responsible for what goes between the covers. One of the surprising developments following the publication of the novel ''[[1632 (novel)|1632]]'' (in February 2000) has been the proliferation of [[fan fiction]] set in the same [[1632 series]] plenum and interest in active collaboration with the authors enrolled in expanding this bestselling series.

This phenomenon, coupled with Baen Books editors' Internet savvy and their accessibility in online discussion groups maintained by the company, resulted in the development of a subsidiary series of irregularly published electronic anthologies, ''The Grantville Gazettes''. E-publishing brought with it relatively low costs, enabling Baen Books to collect into each edition short fiction (most of it [[fan fiction|fanfic]]) and factual articles pertinent to everything from 17th Century history and technology to conditions in the stratosphere during that era which would make communication by radio over long distances more difficult than it is today.

These proved far more successful than the publisher and the editors had anticipated, and several volumes of ''The Grantville Gazette'' have been uttered in [[hardcover]] editions with good returns. (See: [[1632 Editorial Board]] for detail).

===Promotional CD-ROMs===

Baen Books also binds [[CD-ROM]]s into some of their hardcover first printings (including best selling titles by [[David Weber]], [[John Ringo]], [[Eric Flint]], [[David Drake]], and [[Mercedes Lackey]]<!--- If she's redlinked, she needs more output for this list of noatbles! and [[Roberta Gellis]])----->. These CD-ROMs commonly contain the complete series of novels preceding the printed book (for those books that were the latest in a series), other works by the same author, and works by other authors who have consented to be included. Some also contain [[mp3]] songs or [[audiobook]] readings. The CD-ROMs are prominently labelled with a permissive [[copyright]] [[license]] and their rapid copying by [[peer-to-peer]] networks, and streaming via [[BitTorrent]] has represented significant free advertising for Baen authors and increased sales of their backlist titles.

===''Jim Baen's Universe''===

Baen's latest endeavor in electronic publishing is '''[[Jim Baen's Universe|Baen's Universe]]''', an anthology magazine published entirely on-line. As with all other Baen electronic material, it is unencrypted and downloadable in a variety of formats. The content of an issue of Baen's Universe is roughly 120,000 words (some earlier issues are more). This is approximately 50% larger than the average paper science fiction & fantasy magazine.

===Baen's Bar===
[[Image:Baensbarnewstyle.jpg|thumb|Baen's Bar]]
[[Image:baensbaroldstyle.jpg|thumb|Previous style for Baen's Bar]]

Baen Books also hosts a large [[online community]], in which the publisher, authors, and many readers take part via Baen's Bar, an [[internet forum]] with personal forums (sub-forums) for the late publisher, the chief editor, and many authors in the Baen stable of writers.

Baen's Bar is an [[online community]] created around [[Baen Books]]' [[message board]] (originally [[Bulletin board system|BBS]]).

It has survived numerous crashes and the critical illness of Baen's original main webmaster. There are five ways of accessing it: via [[e-mail]], via two separate [[Network News Transfer Protocol|NNTP]] ([[newsgroup]]) interfaces, and via two different [[website]] interfaces using the [[WebBoard]] software package from the [[Akiva Corporation]]&mdash;"Old style" (in use since at least [[1997]]) and the default "New style" (in use since [[2003]]).

The Bar's internal NNTP interface may be accessed by [[newsreader]] via '''bar.baen.com''', using the same login ID and [[password]] one uses to access the bar's web interface. However, since it is only an interface to a non-NNTP bulletin board system, this is somewhat slow and may deliver incorrect article counts. A much faster NNTP [[mirror]] has been set up at '''news.sector14.net'''; this does not require use of the bar's userID and password to read; however, to post articles one must be a registered member of the Bar and be posting from the same e-mail address with which one subscribed.

Forum regulars include a number of ''[[New York Times]]'' [[bestseller|bestselling]] writers (including [[David Weber]], [[Eric Flint]], and [[John Ringo]]), other writers who publish through Baen, founder/co-owner/CEO [[Jim Baen]] (before his death), various employees, and a growing number of readers. Members of this community are referred to as ''[[barfly|barflies]]''.

The bar is divided into several sections&mdash;some for administrivia, but most concerning specific authors and their fictional universes. Popular forums include Flint's [[1632 series|1632 Tech Manual]], Ringo's [[Legacy of the Aldenata|Ringo's Tavern]], Weber's [[Honorverse]] and Sarah Hoyt's Diner.


== External links ==
== External links ==

Revision as of 18:18, 13 September 2007

Baen Books logo

Baen Books is an American publishing company established in 1983 by SF publishing industry long-timer Jim Baen (1943–2006). It is a science fiction and fantasy publishing house that emphasizes space opera, hard science fiction, military science fiction, and fantasy (though it does not restrict itself to these subgenres). Jim Baen was succeeded as publisher in 2006 by the appointment of 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 their Science Fiction line in their 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 an SF line to distribute instead.[1]

The market for SF in America

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" (Locus February, 2005. Vol. 54. No. 2, 50/54), 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, (Locus February 2006, Vol.56, No.2, 50/53) Baen improved to eighth position in the total books published with 72 books published (of which 40 were original titles). 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 Authors

Although Baen himself was politically conservative (which has led to friction with and departures by at least one liberal author, Mercedes Lackey), Baen Books has published works covering a broad spectrum of political philosophies.

Baen authors include:

Baen Books Series

the first of several planned Assiti Shards mechanism books, of which two others are in production or under contract

Electronic publishing strategy

In recent years, Baen has emphasized electronic publishing and Internet-focused promotions for its publications. Baen's electronic strategy emphasizes distribution of unencrypted digital versions of its works free of Digital Rights Management copy protection schemes. 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.

Other electronic marketing tactics Baen employs include distributing e-book versions of advance reader copys at premium prices, the use of promotional CD-ROMs with permissive copyright licenses, and publication of an e-magazine anthology entitled The Grantville Gazette. Serials of this anthology have also been released in print editions subsequent to the electronic versions. In contrast, the anthology Baen's Universe is available only on-line. At approximately 120,000 words, this latter publication is unusually large when compared to most tradtional print editions of science fiction magazines.

In 1999, Baen launched it's "Webscriptions" service, which provides subscribers with monthly electronic releases from Baen's catalog. Because Baen subsequently maintains these electronically released publications on it's Web site for purchase, the publishing house has been able to make midlist titles available to readers long after they would typically have gone out of print under tradtional publishing practices.

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 copys of its books to readers who are blind, paralyzed, dyslexic, or are amputees.

Finally, the company has invested resources in "Baen's Bar", it's online community service that provides a forum for customers, authors and editors to interact.

Baen's emphasis on electronic publishing has generated press coverage for the company. Wired magazine has described Baen's Webscriptions service as "innovative."[2] 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." (O'Connell, Pamela LiCalzi (March 19, 2001), "Publisher's Web Books Spur Hardcover Sales", The New York Times)

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