Jim Baen
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 in the field of e-books.
Biography
Jim Baen left the house of his stepfather at the age of 17 and lived for several months on the road, until he joined the United States Army. His service he provided on a base in Bavaria. Subsequent stations were the City College of New York, Manager of the Basket House a Folk Music Cafe in Greenwich Village his first job in publishing was a place in the Appeal Division of Ace Books.
Time as an editor
He replaced 1973 Judy -Lynn del Rey as chief editor of the science fiction magazine Galaxy. In 1974, he joined the succession of Ejler Jakobsson as editor of If, another SF- Magzin on. During his time with Galaxy, he contributed much to the recent success of the magazine and moved among other things, Jerry Pournelle, Charles Sheffield, Joanna Russ, Spider Robinson, Algis Budrys and John Varley, also Galaxy has been nominated for several Hugo Awards.
1985 dedicated to Robert A. Heinlein 's novel The Cat Who Walks Through Walls Baen and eight other members of the CACNSP.
Time as a book publisher
1977 Jim Baen returned as chief editor of the science-fiction division back to Ace Books and worked closely with Tom Doherty together. As Doherty Ace left in 1980 to start his own project Tor Books, Baen followed him a short time later and took over again vie responsibility for the SF division. He seized the opportunity in 1983 to start his own publishing house, Baen Books. This was made possible. Contacts by his long-time friend Doherty to Pocket Books / Simon & Schuster, a distribution house for Literature Doherty Baen secured a long-term contract.
From the beginning, Baen Books has developed very quickly and received great response from the fans of science fiction literature. Baen managed to misplace also 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 Baens death caused Eric Flint's Author page on the online portal that the once small Baen Books has been selected to the second place of the most acclaimed sci-fi label. In this ranking Baen continuously increased to over fourth place from seventh place in 2004, 2003.
The rapid growth within a short time is due to visinärem electronic marketing concept primarily Baens. He ignored the possibilities of encryption and gave free tracks available on CD on. (see " Baens Marketing Strategy") The customers were allowed to keep the free spending, and then decide whether the purchase of the entire book is interesting. To achieve this, Baen published mostly in the sequel series, and gave some of the first parts of each as " appetizers " free of charge to readers on.
Furthermore, he never ceased to encourage young unknown authors and to lay. The most important thing that led to success was to move the vision of Jim Baen not for every reader, and thus will always staying true to myself. The politics and philosophy of the publishing house reflects the settings Baens in many things.
First anthologies
Baen has moved a number of anthologies. He tried to link the classic anthology with the format of a magazine. He introduced a system similar consecutively its publications a magazine. So its revisions included parts of Galaxy and If.
E -Books
Since 1999, he began an experiment and published publications in -coming medium of the Internet. Unlike the other vendors of e-books, he rejected the PDF format and encryption with DRM, because he was convinced that these limitations restrict the willingness of the audience. This strategy was considered highly controversial, however, with sales of its print output rose at Baen Books in direct relation to dr availability of free e-books, while sales of the competition stagnated or declined. His innovation won him respect in the Internet community, while the other vendors began to take over his strategy.
In the words of David Drake, who has published more than 50 books:
"The two books that have most influenced Jim are Fire -Hunter by Jim Kjelgaard and Against the Fall of Night by Arthur C. Clarke. The tenor of both novels is similar to: In an ailing society, the youth against long-standing knowledge and behavior leaning on and against all odds they break out of the daily grind. This is a very apt description of Baens activities in the SF: He was always the faithful, has always been a loner, and very often extremely successful because he did not listen to the conventional wisdom.
As an example be mentioned, that the conventional method of reading an electronic marketing material required encryption. Baen was of the opinion that it deters the reader, and described it as a big mistake of the publisher. He himself published without encryption and file formats that could read each and open. While other publishing houses considered electronic media as money and a waste of time, Baen continued his approach to and winnings consistently so. At the time of Baens death, the turnover was since inception increased by about ten times. In the course of development founded Baen the " Baen Free Library ". These authors use to offer books completely free, and get more attention from the reader in this way.
Forum activities and e - ARCs
Jim Baen was very active in his web forum that was launched in 1997 and was baptized by him, " Baens Bar ". Here he wrote with great interest on subjects such as biology, space technology, politics, military history and puns. Ben's activities in his forum eventually led that John Ringo and writer was also published. Ringo wrote in Baens bar and got there in the forum Baen know yourself, when both enrolled in a subject that dealt with the water monkey theory. Ringo's novel A Hymn Before Battle was rejected by the publisher Baens and not made public. Baen even read the manuscript and fired after the editor who had rejected it. He suggested Ringo a few changes and after he bought the manuscript. Another result of his activities in the forum was that the Barflies ( " Barfly " ) called user, Baen made the proposal to seek more about the publication of e-books. He called the result EARC (Advanced reading copy, a compilation of five books in electronic form ). There were serious doubts as to its marketing concept, but after three years increased its sales further and he began to make a profit, despite the free publication of many files. Thus, the competition and the doubters now had to admit that Baens concept worked.
1632
Due to the growing interest in Eric Flint's 1632er series he created another forum that dealt exclusively with topics about this universe and was " 1632 Tech Manual" called. The fans were so excited about Flint's universe that Baen Flint persuaded to release the basic framework of his universe, so that other authors could write topics therein. This happened at a time, which was long before the usual time frame to make this the other authors. The result was compiled by Flint anthology Ring of Fire. Meanwhile Baen had made the best-selling author David Weber Flint with a team of authors and a contract for five books of two closed together, the first result was the book in 1633. Flint had the idea to create your own e-zine for the short stories of the fans. He called The Grantville Gazettes The result. Baen published the works in part as anthologies in paper form. The fourth was the last Gazette, bought the Baen of Flint.
Jim Baen 's Universe
In 2005 jündigte Baen on a two-month online science fiction magazine which was originally called Baen 's Astounding Stories. According to copyright disputes with Dell Magazines ( publisher of the magazine Astounding SF ), Baens project in Jim Baen 's Universe has been renamed. The magazine was supervised by Eric Flint and the first issue was published in June 2006. Flint could win a lot of well-known authors of the first edition (including David Weber and Timothy Zahn ). In August 2009, however, announced that the continuation is set. Quote - " ... we were simply never able to get and retain subscribers enough to put us on a sales plateau did would allow us to continue publishing ... " something like: " we make it easy not to mobilize enough authors to cooperate, so that we see no way the product profitably to market. "
Family and death
Jim Baen had two daughters, born in 1977 Jessica with his first wife Madeline Gleich, and Katherine in 1992 with his second wife Toni Weisskopf. He apparently had a premonition of his own death and suffered a massive bilateral stroke on 12 June 2006 and died without having regained consciousness on June 28.