Jim Baen

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

James Patrick "Jim" Baen (born October 22, 1943 in Pennsylvania , † June 28, 2006 in Raleigh , North Carolina ) was an American publisher and editor . In 1983 he founded his own publishing house, Baen Books . He specialized in adventure , science fiction , fantasy literature. In 1999 he expanded his publications to include e-books.

biography

Jim Baen left his stepfather's home at the age of 17 and lived on the streets for a few months before joining the United States Army . He performed his service on a base in Bavaria . Later positions were at the City College of New York , manager of the Basket House, a folk music cafe in Greenwich Village. His first job in the publishing industry was a position in the complaints department of Ace Books .

Time as an editor

In 1973, he replaced Judy-Lynn del Rey as editor-in-chief of the science fiction magazine Galaxy . In 1974 he succeeded Ejler Jakobsson as editor of If , another SF magazine. During his time at Galaxy , he made a major contribution to the magazine's renewed success and published, among others, Jerry Pournelle , Charles Sheffield , Joanna Russ , Spider Robinson , Algis Budrys and John Varley , and Galaxy has been nominated for several Hugo Awards .

In 1985 Robert A. Heinlein dedicated his novel The Cat Who Walks Through Walls to Baen and eight other members of the CACNSP .

Time as a book publisher

In 1977, Jim Baen returned to Ace Books as editor-in-chief of the science fiction division and worked closely with Tom Doherty. When Doherty left Ace in 1980 to start his own Tor Books project , Baen followed him a short time later and took over responsibility for the SF division. He seized the opportunity in 1983 to start his own publishing house, Baen Books. This was made possible by the contacts of his long-time friend Doherty with Pocket Books / Simon & Schuster , a sales company for literature. Doherty secured a long-term contract for Baen.

From the beginning, Baen Books developed very quickly and received great acclaim from fans of science fiction literature. Baen also managed to publish works by established authors such as David Weber , John Ringo , Eric Flint , David Drake , Lois McMaster Bujold , Elizabeth Moon , Mercedes Lackey , Larry Niven and many others. After Baen's death, Eric Flint's author page on the online portal ensured that the formerly small Baen Books was ranked second among the most respected science fiction labels. In this ranking, Baen rose continuously from seventh place in 2003 to fourth place in 2004.

The rapid growth within a very short time is primarily thanks to Baen's visionary electronic marketing concept. He ignored the possibilities of encryption and gave free titles on CD . Customers were allowed to keep the free editions and then decide whether it would be interesting to buy the entire book. In order to achieve this, Baen published mostly in series, and gave some of the first parts as "appetizers" free of charge to the readership.

Furthermore, he never stopped promoting and publishing young unknown authors. The most important thing that led to success was not to misplace the vision of Jim Baen for every reader and then to always remain true to yourself. The politics and philosophy of the publisher reflect Baen's attitudes in many ways.

First anthologies

Baen has published a number of anthologies . He tried to link the classic anthology with the format of a magazine. He introduced a system to number his publications like a magazine. His revisions included parts from Galaxy and If .

E-books

Since 1999 he started an experiment and published publications in the emerging medium of the Internet . Unlike the other providers of e-books, he rejected the pdf format and encryption with DRM because he was convinced that these restrictions would reduce the readiness of the readership. This strategy was considered very controversial, but sales of print editions at Baen Books rose in direct relation to the availability of free e-books, while sales of the competition stagnated or fell. His innovation earned him respect in the internet community while the other vendors began to adopt his strategy.

In the words of David Drake, who has published over 50 books:

“The two books that influenced Jim the most are Fire-Hunter by Jim Kjelgaard and Against the Fall of Night by Arthur C Clarke. The tenor of both novels is similar: In an ailing society, young people rebel against traditional knowledge and behavior, and against all odds they break out of their daily routine. This is a very apt description of Baen's activities in the SF: He always remained true to himself, was always a loner, and very often extremely successful because he did not listen to popular opinion. "

As an example, the traditional way of marketing electronic reading material required encryption. Baen thought it put the reader off and said it was a major mistake by publishers. He himself published without encryption and in file formats that anyone could read and open. While other publishing houses viewed electronic media as a waste of money and time, Baen consistently implemented his concept and made profits with it. At the time of Baen's death, sales had increased tenfold since it was founded. In the course of development, Baen founded the "Baen Free Library". Authors use these to offer books completely free of charge and in this way to get more attention from readers.

Forum activities and e-ARCs

Jim Baen was very active in his web forum, which started in 1997 and named "Baens Bar" by him. Here he wrote with great interest on subjects such as biology , space technology , politics , military history and puns . Baen's activities in his forum ultimately led to the fact that John Ringo became a writer and also published. Ringo wrote in Baens Bar and got to know Baen himself in the forum when both wrote on a topic that dealt with the water monkey theory . Ringo's novel A Hymn Before Battle was rejected by Baens and not published. Baen then read the manuscript himself and then fired the editor who had turned it down. He suggested a few changes to Ringo, and then bought the manuscript. Another result of his activities in the forum was that the users called Barflies (“bar stools”) suggested Baen to try more to publish e-books. He called the result eARC (Advanced reading copy, a compilation of five books in electronic form). There were strong doubts about his approach to marketing, but after three years his sales continued to grow and he started making a profit despite the free publication of many files. The competition and the doubters now had to admit that Baen's concept worked.

1632

Because of the growing interest in Eric Flint's 1632 series , he created another forum that dealt exclusively with topics around this universe and was called "1632 Tech Manual". The fans were so excited about Flint's universe that Baen persuaded Flint to release the framework of his universe so that other authors could write topics in it. This happened at a point in time that was long before the usual time frame at which other authors do this. The result was the Ring of Fire anthology compiled by Flint . In the meantime, Baen had made the bestselling author David Weber a team of authors with Flint and signed a joint contract for five books, the first result of which was the book in 1633 . Flint came up with the idea of ​​creating their own e-zine for the fans' short stories. He called the result The Grantville Gazettes . Baen published extracts of the works as anthologies in paper form. The fourth Gazette was the last Baen bought from Flint.

Jim Baen's Universe

In 2005, Baen launched a two-month online science fiction magazine that was originally to be called Baen's Astounding Stories . After a copyright dispute with Dell Magazines (publisher of SF magazine Astounding ), Baen's project was renamed Jim Baen's Universe . The magazine was edited by Eric Flint and the first issue appeared in June 2006. Flint was able to attract a number of well-known authors for the first edition (including David Weber and Timothy Zahn ). However, it was announced in August 2009 that the continuation would be discontinued. Quotation - "... we were simply never able to get and retain enough subscribers to put us on a sales plateau that would allow us to continue publishing ..." something like: "We simply do not manage to win and retain enough subscribers so that we see no possibility to market the product profitably ”.

Family and death

Jim Baen had two daughters, Jessica, born in 1977 with his first wife Madeline Gleich, and Katherine with his second wife Toni Weisskopf in 1992 . He apparently had a premonition of his own death and suffered a massive bilateral stroke on June 12, 2006, and died on June 28 without regaining consciousness.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Heinlein, Robert A: The Cat Who Walks Through Walls . New England Library, 1986, ISBN 0-450-39315-1 .
  2. ↑ Heinlein's Dedications Page Jane Davitt & Tim Morgan Accessed August 20 2008
  3. ↑ a b c d JIM BAEN October 22, 1943 - June 28, 2006. ( Memento of February 28, 2009 in the Internet Archive ), Baen's obituary by David Drake, david-drake.com.
  4. ^ The World According to Quinn: John Ringo and Deidre Knight on Writing
  5. ↑ Eric Flint: Universe Closing. In: Jim Baen's Universe. August 1, 2009, archived from the original on July 20, 2011 ; accessed on July 20, 2011 (English).
  6. ↑ Jim Baen's death
  7. ↑ Jim Baen's death

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Baen, Jim
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Baen, James Patrick
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American publisher and editor
DATE OF BIRTH October 22, 1943
PLACE OF BIRTH Pennsylvania
DATE OF DEATH June 28, 2006
Place of death Raleigh , North Carolina