What Baen Does Right

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

I’ve talked a lot about what publishers are doing wrong in the analysis of the current transformation of book marketing and publishing.

Let me talk about some things one of my publishers is doing very right.

First, let me admit to some built-in bias. For those who haven’t heard the sob story at cons or panels, my first book came out a month after 9/11. This was back when people – even I – still went to bookstores on a regular basis. Only at that time we didn’t. We sat at home and watched the news, and waited for the other shoe to drop. (Well, I did. While writing the third book of the series.)

Because of this, many of the copies weren’t even unpacked at the various bookstores; never made it to the shelves. The sell through was terrible, the laydown on the next book was lower and on the third lower still (according to the iron law of book death spins.)

After that, no one would touch me – yes, this was the year of the seventeen proposals. I could have been Shakespeare, Jane Austen and Robert A. Heinlein rolled into one, and NO ONE would have considered publishing me. Except… Baen did. Through a concatenation of events too long to recount, Dave Drake recommended me to then-publisher Jim Baen, who a few months later bought Draw One In The Dark, the first shifter novel (for now available only in e-format from the Baen website. Good price and no DRM.)

I don’t know if there was a connection, but once Baen had dipped its toe in, other houses bought me too. So, if you like my recent works, remember they wouldn’t exist if Baen hadn’t taken that chance back in… 03?

This is the sort of thing that can’t be paid back. I’ve said before and will continue to say: Baen can publish me as long as they wish to. I would agree to terms from them that I wouldn’t agree on from anyone else. (Not that they offer me worse deals than other houses, mind, but they could, if they needed to. [I can see Baen’s current publisher – Toni Weisskopf – who once told me NEVER to tell anyone I’d write anything for free scowling at me through the computer. I assume she’d tell me never to tell a publisher I’d sell something cheap. Sorry, Toni. It’s still true.])

However, there is a rational reason for my wishing to continue selling to Baen, beyond my gratitude to them.

Baen does a lot of things right. Not everything by any means. I’m a writer. I reserve the right to bitch about covers, grouse about copy editing and moan about distribution. BUT – but, Baen does do some things very right.

One of the things, started by Jim Baen, was the website, with an attached “bar” where the “barflies” gather. Early on I was given my own conference in the bar. The diner is quieter these days, in competition with sites such as facebook and twitter, but it is still a place where I know I can find die-hard fans when I need them. And sometimes I need their psychological support more than anything else.

The other thing Jim did was make stories available in non-DRM format, not treating his customers like dishonest people a-priori. It paid off. I’m not saying Baen is not pirated, but it’s not dying from piracy.

Another thing – and in this Toni is as good as Jim was – is the strong “personality” of the books published by Baen. A lot of people think Baen is only one political color. This is wrong. Regardless of the beliefs of the editors, Baen covers a gamut of beliefs among its writers. In fact, we could start our own UN complete with internal wars and backstabbing. We don’t, but we could. If we weren’t so busy writing.

But Baen books do have a certain – for lack of a better word – flavor. In a literary world in which SF/F is trying to buy a place at the academic table by flaunting pretty words and ignoring plot (not always, but it seems like that’s the preferred mode) Baen goes for story every time.

As a result, they’ve built a strong following that looks for the PUBLISHER’S brand, as well as the writer. If I had a dime for each new-acquired fan who tells me, “I didn’t think this would be my kind of thing, but it’s a Baen book, so I tried it,” I’d have a big pile of dimes.

This, as we go into a time when writers ask “what have you done for me lately?” and “Why shouldn’t I just publish myself?” is the type of thing that adds value and that makes writers think the publishers are earning their money. Brand building, which allows a not-so-well-known writer to find an audience is just the sort of thing e-publishers of the future WILL have to develop.

For now – and reverting to my lol-cat-persona – I’d have to say Baen, u iz doing it right.

Crossposted at Classical Values

UPDATE: thanks to Instapundit for the link! Here I was, cleaning the litter boxes and organizing my research materials in preparation for a weekend of writing and suddenly all these comments hit my inbox! Welcome instapundit readers. Do poke around. I’m sometimes amusing and often outrageous. :)

UPDATE II: Since you’re here and I can’t really serve you tea and cookies, you might as well have some free stuff to download and read. I have some free short stories here: http://cornerbooth.sarahahoyt.com/blueplate.html those links to your right. You can read them online, or you can download them. Sweet Alice is set in the world of Draw One In The Dark and Glentleman Takes A Chance. High Stakes and Neptune’s Orphans are in the world of Darkship Thieves (space opera) a few centuries earlier. (I’m trying to build my future history through shorts as well as novels.) For my historical writing, try The Private Wound, a collection of some (mostly Elizabethan) shorts.

To download — free, though they ask for a donation. It’s free, you do not have to give a donation — my first collection of short stories Crawling Between Heaven And Earth (Dark Regions press 2001) go here and look for my name. These stories were written between fifteen and ten years ago, and some are space opera, but others are fantasy or horror.

34 thoughts on “What Baen Does Right”

  1. Да, это правда
    You can have another dime or two from me. It took me a good 5 years to notice that the books I liked and reread were usually published by Baen. And then sometime after that I found out about Webscriptions and I think I’ve bought pretty much every ebook Baen published from that point on (as well as quite a few print editions).

    And yes their ebook strategy works very well. Sufficiently well that people don’t (for the most part) bother to pirate Baen books. And the eARC idea was a stroke of genius.

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  2. That’s how I found you. Well, actually, back in 2004 I was unemployed by choice for a few months, basically just burned out by working in high tech. So while I wasn’t broke, I was watching my outlays. And I saw the Baen Free Library referenced. And while reading on a PC isn’t the greatest experience, it was free, so I started working my way through them. And after awhile I noticed that I liked a much higher percentage of the books I was reading than typical.

    So after picking around the Free Library for awhile I got to David Weber, and the Honorverse books, which were just awesome. I read the free ones and decided to buy the rest, but as I was still watching my money, I decided to buy the entire Webscription for the books past the free library, figuring $10 or $15 for six books was an awesome deal, and I knew at this point I’d enjoy most of them.

    So Weber lead to Ringo. Ringo led to Doc Taylor. And “Draw One in the Dark” was on the Webscription month that I bought mainly to get Taylor’s, ‘Tau Ceti Agenda’. And I don’t typically read what would be categorized as ‘urban fantasy’, most of it is just awful dreck, so without the combination of Baen plus a Webscription month I wanted, I’d never have bought it. And it was decent, enjoyable. “Gentleman Takes a Chance” was in a month I primarily bought for the Moon book and the Taylor/Ringo book, and I enjoyed it as well. By the time “Darkship Thieves” came out it was one of the books I was actively looking forward to.

    And the really nice thing about Webscriptions is that I almost never have time to read all of the books in a given month. So at this point I’ve got a backlog of somewhere around a hundred books that, while they weren’t books I actively bought the month for, the odds are that if I run out of current things to read and dip in that I’m going to like whatever I read.

    As for the covers, I know some folks dislike Baen’s cover art, but I like the distinctive style, and it lets me know immediately when I’m browsing among the dead trees that it’s something I should look at. And conversely, I suppose, it tells people who are into post-modern, depressing, nihilistic anti-stories to stay the heck away. If only all publishers were like this.

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  3. Skip,

    I LOVE the cover to Darkship Thieves. To be honest, my only complaint about covers with Baen was the hardcover of Draw One In The Dark and that was a mess occasioned by Jim’s being very ill at the time and a less-than-sharp artist who thought it was more important to pretend she could understand English and use Alta Vista to translate the proposal, than to actually do an appropriate cover. (I could have given her the proposal translated into Spanish by a couple of my friends.)

    At any rate, I got a new cover for the paper back, so it’s moot. Neither it nor the cover to GTAC are typical UF covers, but then my books are NOT typical UF, so… meh. :)

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  4. Francis,

    I confess sometimes I get fan letters that make me feel like I forced poor people, unwilling, to sully themselves with fantasy. But these days most of the letters are demanding, cajoling and yelling at me to write faster, so I shall try to do so, after I clean cat boxes. :)

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  5. The access that Baen provides to the folks at the publisher and the authors is another reason ‘flies tend to be more loyal to Baen than fans of other publishing houses are. Afterall, when you’ve interacted with Toni and her entire stable of authors almost every day for years at a time you start to consider them friends, not just book-crack dealers. That being said, where’s Noah’s Boy? I need my patented Sarah A. Hoyt book crack! :)

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  6. I have to admit that I haven’t read any of your books. That will change. Ninety percent (OK, 99 %) of the SF I read is from Baen Books. I simply like the writers and the genre’s they write. The only problem I have is I read faster than the one’s I currently favor can write.

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  7. Do you have a link to your books on the Baen website? I can’t find it there at all… the link I get when I search for Draw One in the Dark is dead. Thanks!

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    1. I don’t have it on hand (I’m in the middle of cleaning the house to settle in for a long weekend of writing (Hey, each of us enjoys himself as best he pleases!) ) but I’m sure one of the regulars at the block does. I know that someone told me they just got it from webscriptions? Can one of you guys supply it? If not, I’ll get it tonight.

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  8. Baen’s Bar was originally located right next to Chaos Manor
    (Pournelle’s place :) in one of the original CyberSpaces: BIX,
    the Byte Information Exchange; His postings there showed
    the same hard-headed humanity that is evident in his
    publishing arrangements.

    P.S. AFAIK, the first ‘Bar’ stories were in ‘Tales from the White Hart’
    by Arthur C. Clarke.

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  9. I got here via Insty ( Thanks, Glenn ) and what I’ve seen will get me to look into Baen’s site, and, your books. A Tip O’ the Hatlo Hat to both of you.

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  10. Yes, Baen does know how to mark a clear brand. I even have a Darkship Thieves T-short Toni gave me one year. I’ve found some of my favorite authors by following the brand. When I finally get around to writing my first novel (I’m an academic and I’m working on that type of publishing right now) I will send it to Baen first, just because I’ve enjoyed so many of their titles.

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  11. “As a result, they’ve built a strong following that looks for the PUBLISHER’S brand, as well as the writer. ”

    So I’m not the only one? That’s a relief!

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  13. Your story is similar to musician Alison Krauss. No one would touch her, despite her obvious talent, but small Rounder Records took a chance. Alison hit it big, and the big labels came calling.

    To her credit, Alison stuck with Rounder because they stuck with her.

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  14. Since I got my Kindle last August, I have noticed I’ve bought more books from Baen than Amazon. Some of it is that I’ve always read so many of their authors, but a good part of it is that dealing with them is just less clunky. Once I figured that out, I searched the web for anyone else doing the kinds of things they are and was disappointed that they were alone.

    And promptly went back and bought another half dozen of Baen’s books.

    Yeah, they’re doing it right.

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  15. I’d like to add, one of the biggest draws to Baen for me, (as a reader), is their excellent free library, which served as my introduction to Eric Flint’s 1632 universe. Without which, there wouldn’t be several Baen published books taking up comfy positions in my overpopulated bookcase.

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  16. Well.

    I started buying books from Webscriptions from when it first started out I believe. I’ve got about a couple hundred Baen books now on my computer and with the advent of the netbook I’ve found reading my collection of sci-fi is pretty awesome. IMO my only wish on this score is converting a of the Gold and Silver age of sci-fi to the Baen model would be utterly fantastic.

    I’ve seen your books for sale and I think I have a couple of them. If not I’ll be sure to add some to my list for my next purchases. And that ultimately to me is the real genius behind Baen. The opportunity to get acquainted with a new author. This has happened to me so many times when reading my Webscription books. Books that I never thought I’d really get into I’ve found myself re-reading … and then going out and buying all the others available from that author.

    I’m glad it all turned out well and that your career is back on track and I hope that you’ll write many more such books in the future.

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  18. …add me to the list. I found Baen when I was out of work for a bit (2K tech bubble, anyone?) …and I’ve long since imprinted with the Baen brand, and the writer list.

    …I even turned my wife into a SF fan (through Weber’s Honorverse series: heck, she checks for release dates).

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  19. A David Drake recommendation? SOLD.

    That said…DRM is no more “accusing your readers of being thieves” than a lock on your front door is accusing your neighbors of being thieves.

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    1. DensityDuck,

      I’ve got to disagree with you about DRM. Taking your analogy with the lock on your front door as an example: it’s not illegal to break the lock on your house if you’ve lost the key. It is illegal (at least in the USA) do do this with DRM, even when the organization that sold the DRM item to you no longer exists and you have no other means of accessing material that you purchased. It’s not illegal for you to change the lock after you buy the house. It is illegal to change the encryption on a DRM item you’ve bought. No-one stops you opening your house to as many or as few people as you choose – but DRM forces that choice on you.

      So yes, DRM has the effect of treating customers like thieves – and that’s before the attendant frustrations of dealing with files that refuse to acknowledge your operating system, your hardware, and in extreme cases your existence. It doesn’t matter if the end result is deliberate or not: people prefer things that are easy. If they’re going to be effectively punished for buying DRM ebooks by having their books locked up or limited, they’ll look for ways to get them without the penalty.

      Oh, and for what it’s worth, I found Sarah’s work by a slightly more roundabout method involving Dave Freer (Yes, another Baen author). And am now a dedicated fan.

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  20. I’ve been reading Baen for years. Started with the Free Library on a laptop. Moved to a Palm. Then buying from Webscriptions on a newer Palm. Now I use both a Blackberry and a Kindle. I’ll keep you in mind next time I’m buying. What’s a good starter from your works?
    What the heck’s wrong with Tor? They inundate me with emails, but don’t want to sell ebooks. All these years before ebooks, it was Baen & Tor. Dead tree is dead to me.

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  21. Pingback: Top Posts — WordPress.com

  22. I found the Baen web site and took advantage of the free books. This is how I was enticed into buying the remainder of the Weber and Ringo series. It’s like the deer hunters in the mid west who own property. They bait a site with deer food for a couple of months, and when the season opens there are willing victims hanging around. This sounds harsh, but it’s effective with the deer (and me!). But I felt guilty about taking advantage of the free site and sent them some $ —I am such a softie.

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  24. For what it’s worth, I don’t think that Baen’s “honor system” would work for other publishers of mass books, but writers like Weber, Flint, Drake and Ringo develop such strong followings that it overcomes the whole “tragedy of the commons” problem.

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    1. I don’t know. All the authors I like and like to read and re-read have that sort of loyalty from me. You see, I’d like them to continue working. So I’ll buy multiple copies of their work, rather than just copy it. But yes, Baen is a special place.

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  25. What I love about Baen is the fact that as a publishing house it is more important to them that the author tell a good story than to try to change the world with her fiction. A good story may change the world (see: Uncle Tom’s Cabin), but it first and foremost has to be a good story, and Baen’s people know a good story when they see one.
    Sometimes when I buy a Baen e-book, it comes with a CD image of the disc included in the hardcover. These CDs contain most of the other books in the series as well as a few books by other authors. I usually end up reading some if not all of those “free” books as well as the one I bought. I must confess, however, to having not read any of yours. Do you know if any of your books have wound up on one of those CDs? If so, I”ll load it up and give it a try.

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  26. M. Report: A quick check of Wikipedia confirms my recollection that the Clarke White Hart tales follows the Gavagan’s Bar stories of Pratt & DeCamp, although they were nearly contemporaneous (Clarke seems to have been published in 1953; Pratt & DeCamp’s tales first appeared in 1950.) But both were (as I vaguely recollected) modeled on the Jorkens yarns of Lord Dunsany.

    And I discovered I had become Baenitized when I realized one evening at my local Borders that somewhere around the “G”s I had started selecting books by the Baen rocket on the spine. Baen wasn’t the first publisher to nail me that way — back in the late 60’s I was actively seeking Ballantine’s “unicorn” logo — but Baen is the only publisher I know of now whose business plan is based on respect for me, the reader/buyer, and providing what I want, not what will impress other publishers and book reviewers.

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  27. I have been buying Baen ebooks since 2000. At first, I downloaded them in the mobipocket format, since that was what my ebook reader used. I also bought some DRM’d ebooks from Fictionwise. However, when I had to change readers, there was such a hassle changing the permitted reader that I gave up on that, and any other DRM’s ebooks. After my 2nd ebook reader died, there was nothing much available until the kindle, and then the nook, became available. I bought a Nook, basically because I could get it in a bricks-and-mortar store where, if there was a problem, I could go and scream at people. There was a problem, and B&N corrected extremely fast. I now have 640 books on my Nook, about 630 from Baen. Baen let me re-download ALL my ebooks in EPUB format, as well as html format. The only books I got from B&N were the free ones that they were giving away. Whenever I am in the store, I emphasize to the Nook people that I won’t buy any of their ebooks until the DRM is removed, even though I love their reader. That means that many books that I want I have to buy in dead tree format, even if the font in the books is sometimes too small for my 72 year old eyes.
    I still won’t buy a book that is DRM’d.

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