Talk:Baen Books/Archive 1

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Archive 1

2 Things.

The "Market for SF" section: does that section belong in this article at all?
Who was the "liberal author" that switched publishers due to Jim Baen's politics? If that statement's to stay, I believe it should specify who the author was (linking as "liberal [[article about author|author]] would be fine), in addition to having a source cited.

The Literate Engineer 05:08, 4 November 2005 (UTC)

As to your first question, the figures are included to show more precisely the scale of Baen's publishing activities. I think that it is encyclopaedic to say how many books per year the publisher produces and how this compares with others in the genre field in which they specialise. As to the second, I think it is relevant to identify a political bias implicit in the works published. Militaristic material which emphasises a heroic role for the soldier tends to be more right than left wing. Hence, I think it is relevant to say that this editorial preference has led to an author moving to another publisher. However, identifying that author is more problematic. The page is inclusively about the publisher and the authors who are published under that imprint. Actual and potential fans therefore know the common theme running through all that work and can decide whether to make further investigation of the website to read the sample materials provided. To that extent, this and all other comparable pages are a form of advertising. However, identifying a person who prefered not to be published does not fit because:

the inuendo is that this author publishes left rather than right wing material which may alienate some existing or potential readers. So while not directly defamatory, it may nevertheless be damaging to that person's readership base.

Under the circumstances, I prefer not to name this author to avoid possible legal problems. The information was published in an authoritative, but small circulation, periodical which is, for the most part, read only by interested specialists. Under the circumstances, you may think it appropriate simply to delete the sentence and I will not object. David91 02:19, 5 November 2005 (UTC)

I would leave the sentence, as there is more than one author who has left Baen Books due to Jim Baen's personal political persuasion, mostly from 2004 to early 2006. If anything, I would change the sentence to read "more than one" or "several" and change the noun to the plural. Editrx 03:03, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

What a lot of empty defensivenesss, without the guts to identify the actual author. The person in question was Mercedes Lackey, and she is identified as such by John Ringo (self-annointed king of Baen's author stable) in one of the FAQs at Baen's website. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 138.23.246.17 (talk) 14:12, August 29, 2007 (UTC)

Merge suggestion

Merge, please. There's a big section of the e-book article that expands on Baen's contributions to e-book publishing, which I think would be more appropriate here. I believe it puts way too much focus on one vendor to belong in the e-book entry. ♥ Her Pegship♥ 22:45, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

Keep as is consider: (Obituary to Jim Baen[1])

For example, the traditional model of electronic publishing required that the works be encrypted. Jim thought that just made it hard for people to read books, the worst mistake a publisher could make. His e-texts were clear and in a variety of common formats. While e-publishing has been a costly waste of effort for others, Baen Books quickly began earning more from electronic sales than it did from Canada . By the time of Jim's death, the figure had risen to ten times that.

This death was news to me (Mostly on wikibreak), but much of what is there is said well briefly by this professional writer. Repeat: e-publishing has been a costly waste of effort for others, which is what that section is all about in contrast to all the cryptocrap of the rest of the industry. But feel free to clean it up. My prose is hardly ever precious! <g> // FrankB 20:16, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

Cite Needed, {{Fact}} applied

Unfortunately, at least one author has disagreed with the universally-applied electronic rights policy of Baen, under past contract restrictions, and as such removed backlist and any future books from the publisher.

For starters, the Prime Palavar essays in the Baen Free Library directly contradict this statement. So does Drakes eulogy, which notes the influence the Free Library had on sales... which any sane author would love. The problem in the arts is always to be noticed, as is amply documented in Prime Palavar #11, which is by a musician, not Flint.
Assuming good faith, or mere misinformation, when such is to be added, the writer ought to be mentioned with a cite or two supporting whether that was what the dispute was about, plus a name. Otherwise it's POV all over again, just like the slimey press.
I haven't got the leisure time to run down who you were, so I'll give it a week or so hoping you'll see this.
The only writer I know to have left Baen was Leo Frankowski, over an arguement as to whether his Mary-sue's were the quality the Jim Baen expected after a generous advance and republishing some of the Cross-Time Engineer series in expensive hardcover versions, albeit as omnibus editions.

In sum, essentially, Jim fired him, unless he wrote less schtick and more quality into his work. // FrankB 23:10, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

I suspect the author in question may be Elizabeth Moon; I was reading her SFFnet newsgroup way back around the time of the original Free Library and Webscriptions coming out, and she was highly critical of the practice of publishing the books without DRM protection; her ebooks come out through eReader now. But this was at the very beginning, before there was time for much of the proof that was covered in the Prime Palavers to be accrued. One other author, Lois McMaster Bujold, is cited in the early New York Times article in the links section as being highly dubious of giving books away for free--but several years later even she jumped on the bandwagon, adding her Mountains of Mourning novella to the Free Library. I do know of at least one other author who left Baen in a huff, but it was for reasons having nothing to do with Webscriptions and she has not pulled her books. --Robotech_Master 14:27, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

I can affirm the citation of Elizabeth Moon leaving for reasons of the ebook distribution model. Same for explanation of Leo Frankowski. Though Jim also "fired" John Dalmas, but for no reason cited other than he didn't want any more of his books in the future. (To be fair, this was as Jim was apparently having ministrokes towards the end. He argued with just about everyone in the last 9 months of his life, including Spider Robinson and others.) (from: Baen production manager & prepress producer for Baen, 1989-2005) Editrx 20:06, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

More refs?

The NYT article is quite interesting, but it is from 2001. Are there any other articles (news or academic), or even books, mentioning Baen's stroy (and how is it doing)? Even some press releases or postings from Baen itself would be useful.--_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus | talk} 20:07, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

out of e-books

the above discussion in many ways makes it clear that this is a publisher of specialized interests, albeit in a field where the WP is very strong. (and a field I like, for that matter--I don't think any prejudice is involved) Let the afficionados debate the details of who it was who got hired and fired, and deal with the qy of whether this is advertising. DGG 05:27, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

If no one objects,

I assume consensus for removeal from ebooks. I'll leave a link. This article is more than sufficient. DGG 06:23, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

I have done the deletion, and left more than a link-- I have excerpted one paragraph & put it in an appropriate place, where people can also add other notable publishers in special fields. Baen will make an excellent prototype for the others.

I hope the knowledgable will change the wording to more appropriately represent the publisher, if I have not got it quite right. They're the experts!. DGG 06:31, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

Founding of Baen Books

Would anyone object if I more accurately edited this to read that Jim started the company "with the collabortion and financial backing" of some friends? The company isn't solely owned: there are three stockholders to this day, which is why it was far more accurate to say that Toni Weisskopf was "appointed" publisher -- it had to be voted on by the stockholders. --Editrx 18:50, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

Advance Reader Copy?

Why does the ARC entry redirect here, and is that really appropriate? Wouldn't it be more reasonable for Advance Reader Copy to redirect to Advance copy instead? 65.25.107.20 15:57, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

Baen's Bar's software

The Baen's Bar forum runs on WebBoard. This software is an attempt to merge the features of e-mail list subscriptions, usenet and web forums. Unfortunately it does very well... at combining the WORST features of the three.

What's wrong with WebBoard?

Replies to posts get inserted immediately after the post replied to, not at the end of the thread. Just try finding it in a 10 page long thread.
In the 'new style' interface, there's no reply with quote option. Old style has that, but it's still not as good as forum software like phpbb.
The e-mail notification of replies is completely useless. It tells you there's a reply and in which sub-forum, but ALL notification e-mails contain the same link to the ROOT LEVEL of the forum. It's up to you to not only go to the correct subforum, but you then have to find the message thread on your own.
The button to show new posts doesn't actually do that. It just takes you to the root level of the forum.
When you start a new thread in a forum, it's hit or miss whether or not it will show up right away. Sometimes it will, sometimes it will in a few hours or a day, or longer, or never.
There's no way, in either style, to show a list of all posts you've made, threads you started, or replies to your posts.
Frequently, threads that show up right after you started them, or search results, 'don't exist' when clicked on. This also often happens immediately after you've just been reading a thread, gone somewhere else in the Bar, then returned to the first thread.

There's much, much more extremely wrong and buggy about WebBoard, but the people who run the admin side of the Bar don't seem to be interested in replacing it.

Simple Machine Forum would be far better, and it's open source freeware. If it doesn't have the ability NOW to allow subscriptions and replies by e-mail, without ever having to use the web interface, there's a large number of people developing add-ons and modules for SMF. It wouldn't take long to add everything WebBoard tries to do (and fails horrendously) to SMF, and do it right.

So what? What does this rant have to do with a discussion about the history of Baen Book? You may want to post your rant over on the forum in question as it's very much out of place here. Drmike 21:51, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

Article gutted

About half of the content was removed in September. It should be restored.--_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus | talk} 17:54, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

Baen Books DOI's

This notice duplicated to Wikipedia:WikiProject_Novels/GeneralForum here

If you all hadn't noticed, the Digital Object Identifier (DOI) listed by Baen Books and affiliate Webscriptions has essentially no chance of returning meaningful information from the {{DOI}} search template (or DOI website ...e.g. DOI: doi:10.1125/0008). Contrarily, some older Baen DOI's may work, or once have worked but I haven't found one that does.

So shortly before Christmas, I looked into this when frustrated again by an attempt at verification and invested in a phone call to find out why. The result is that Baen DOI's simply aren't DOI's at all, in the sense of being a registered unique ID number, and if I understand things properly, Baen's is further using "DOI", a registered trademark (a surmise), improperly. The most recent Baen DOI's are in fact, the ten digit ISBN of the printed work, a different registration system.

In any event, on the Ring of Fire series books I'll be editing systematically to avoid the confusion to our readers and substituting the template {{Baen DOI}} as a prefix where we document their listed (non) DOI. Webscriptions itself, who produce the e-published versions in the multiple formats have pretty much eliminated the DOI term on their webpages, using instead the term "SKU". I further suggest that any cited reference based on their content include that prefix after the {{Baen DOI}} template, should that page be the information cited (e.g. checking a electronic copyright, but not wanting to by the book—the SKU page is open content and costs nothing! On the other hand, one cannot read content, but catalog!). I see no way to cure the potential confusion and "conflict issue" originating in that Webscriptions and Baen attach different "linking identifiers" (and url's) for what is content generated from the same digital source file. Webscription SKU's are simply catalog numbers, and I suspect but can't prove the same source files are in play when down loading or previewing, albeit through a webpage "Frame". There is a distinct difference in looking through a frame reading on line, say at a book on the Baen Free Library, and one which is downloaded. In the latter case, the e-copy title data is available... in some cases, it isn't when read online.

In that sense, the titlepage information from a SKU# accessed and downloaded page from webscriptions will and should contain the Baen DOI (unless the page is a Baen e-ARC, or "preview sampler", which by definition is a temporary webpage or downloaded version!), but this is surmise, and untested beyond a small sampling. I haven't verified to my own satisfaction versus CDROM versions yet either... (Sorry- my interest was more on making an ordered table and "sense" of actual dates of first publication, regardless of formats.)

Baen CDROM copies like their website seem to carry the same DOI as one can access online via the Baen website, but this state is based on a small sample at the moment, for I've done no systematic cross checking. I have checked enough to know NOT to rely on a Baen DOI as an official registered DOI, and that is the message. DOI's and what Baen calls DOI's are as Apples and oranges.

The Template:Baen DOI

Consequently, I've written the "handle this explaination" template to be multipurpose, three modes of which can be used as boilerplate, plus the 'main mode' usage as a pre-fix. The prefix mode generates a link to the template text, thus giving the same explaination if the link is followed. The "visualized use" there is in infoboxes.

Two of the three boilerplate modes are seen in these edits:

The parameters '1632', 'indent' and {{{1}}} are tested so that specifying either '1632' or anything as {{{1}}} displays the text as modified by specifying 'indent'. One of the two, the novel article 1633, uses indent and one does not. The indent mode uses a bullet prefix and a smaller font. Both use the '1632' switched logic, which merely adds the last paragraph about the Grantville Gazettes... presuming such a paragraph would be both useless and a total non sequitur in books or series by other Baen authors like honorverse, I wrote the template so it must be asked for.

Best regards, and happy New Year! // FrankB 22:21, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

Date of founding?

This page says 1983, but I've got an obit from Publisher's Weekly (Jim Baen, 63. Publishers Weekly, 00000019, 7/10/2006, Vol. 253, Issue 27) that gives a date of 1984. (Baen began his publishing career at Ace and worked at Galaxy magazine and Tor Books before founding Baen Books in 1984.) Anyone know which is right? Alessandriana (talk) 22:50, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

Untitled

For arguments against merger, see Talk:Baen's Bar. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 20:10, 7 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Advertising copy

I regret to say that this page reads as no more than advertising copy. I have replaced it with a neutral and factual description of this publisher. I apologise that this is a drastic revision.

4 November 2005‎ David91

Strange page formatting

This page has the "Baen's Bar" section, in a long sidebar. The main content of the article starting with Jim Baen's Universe follows from the sidebar, I think. In addition, calling Arnold Bailey a "guru" is an interesting choice in an unbiased article. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.101.10.207 (talk) 21:27, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

This 'odd formatting' seems to have been due to creation of a template {{Baen's Bar}} in an end run on the article deletion policy, and transclusion of that template in this article alone. Information on the Baen's Bar article was merged into the related Baen Books articles. I've flagged the template on Wikipedia:Templates_for_deletion#Template:Baen.27s_Bar. --Barberio (talk) 19:42, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

And this has now been corrected, and brought into line with the standing content policies and guidelines. --Barberio (talk) 23:09, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

Webscriptions → Baen Ebooks

Baen have revamped their e-books operation, renaming it from Webscriptions to Baen Ebooks and moving to the domain name BaenEbooks.com. I've moved our "Webscriptions" article to Baen Ebooks and updated all the articles that wikilinked to Webscriptions accordingly. In updating this article, I found some messy stuff (eg., 3 separate descriptions of Webscriptions), so I did a fairly rough clean-up. Please check my work, correct whatever mistakes I made and further improve the article. Cheers, CWC 15:56, 6 January 2012 (UTC)