James Patrick Baen (| beɪn |; October 22, 1943 – June 28, 2006) was a U.S. science fiction publisher and editor. In 1983, he founded his own publishing house, Baen Books, specializing in the adventure, fantasy, military science fiction, and space opera genres. Baen also founded the video game publisher Baen Software. In late 1999, he started an electronic publishing business called Webscriptions (since renamed to Baen Ebooks), which is considered to be the first profitable e-book vendor.
Jim Baen was born in Pennsylvania. He left his stepfather's home at the age of 17 and lived on the streets for several months before joining the United States Army; he served in Bavaria.
After stints at City College of New York and as the manager of a folk music coffee shop (a "basket house") in Greenwich Village in the 1960s, he started his publishing career in the complaints department of Ace Books. In 1972, he got the job of an assistant Gothics editor.
Baen was Judy-Lynn del Rey's replacement as managing editor at Galaxy Science Fiction in 1973. He succeeded Ejler Jakobsson as editor of Galaxy and If in 1974. While at Galaxy (which absorbed If from 1975) he largely revitalised it, publishing such authors as Jerry Pournelle, Charles Sheffield, Joanna Russ, Spider Robinson, Algis Budrys, and John Varley, and was nominated for several Hugo Awards.
Pournelle, in 1983, described Baen as "arguably one of the best science-fiction editors in the world. Certainly Larry Niven and I regard him among the top two or three we've ever worked with". Robert A. Heinlein dedicated his 1985 novel The Cat Who Walks Through Walls to
Baen and eight of the other members of the Citizens' Advisory Council on National Space Policy.
In 1977, he returned to Ace to head their science fiction line, working with publisher Tom Doherty. When Doherty left to start Tor Books in 1980, Baen shortly followed and started the SF line there.
In 1983, he had the opportunity to start his own independent company, Baen Books, distributed then and now by Pocket Books/Simon & Schuster; this was possible in part thanks to release from a long-term contract by his good friend Doherty.
Baen Books has grown steadily since and established a large readership among fans of accessible adventure SF, publishing books by authors such as David Weber, John Ringo, Eric Flint, David Drake, Lois McMaster Bujold, Elizabeth Moon, Mercedes Lackey, Larry Niven, and many more. According to Eric Flint's "Editor's Page" column just after Baen's death, once-tiny Baen Books had been voted the second most looked for "label" among science fiction fans – up from fourth in 2004 and seventh in 2003. The rapid growth was credited as being due to Jim Baen's electronic marketing strategy – by seeming to court piracy, ignoring encryption, and giving away free titles on CD-ROM (See "Electronic marketing strategy" under Baen Books), by offering bundled "bargain samplers" and e-ARCs – Baen's e-marketing pulled in sales. People could sample the wares, decide they liked it, and pick up a tangible book to read – which given the series orientation of the SF genre, translated into more than one book. In short, even as the average small town library is trimming titles carried and stocking up on audio-visual media, Baen took advantage of technology to counteract the former "boost" gotten from libraries buying titles and keeping them around. According to David Drake:
Even more than had been the case at Ace and Tor, Jim was his own art director at Baen Books—and he really directed rather than viewing his job as one of coddling artists. Baen Books gained a distinct look. Like the book contents, the covers weren't to everyone's taste—but they worked.
Jim had the advantage over some editors in that he knew what a story is. He had the advantage over most editors in being able to spot talent before somebody else had published it. (Lois Bujold, Eric Flint, John Ringo, and Dave Weber were all Baen discoveries whom Jim promoted to stardom.)
Furthermore, he never stopped developing new writers. The week before his stroke, Jim bought a first novel from a writer whom Baen Books had been grooming through short stories over the past year.
The most important quality that Jim brought to his company was a personal vision. Baen Books didn't try to be for everybody, but it was always true to itself. In that as in so many other ways, the company mirrored Jim himself.
Baen edited several anthology series in paperback format, trying to combine the feeling of an anthology and a magazine. To achieve this, they were numbered and dated like a magazine and contained many magazine features: Destinies (Ace, 11 issues 1978-81), Far Frontiers (Baen, 7 issues 1985-6), and New Destinies (Baen, 8 issues numbered I to IV and VI to IX 1987-90). He also edited several volumes of reprints from Galaxy and If in the 1970s.
After hearing Pournelle praise writing with a computer, Baen purchased an IBM PC in the early 1980s. Disliking the layout of the IBM PC keyboard, he commissioned and published Magic Keyboard, a utility to remap its keys. Baen started an experimental web publishing business called Webscriptions in late 1999. (It was relaunched as Baen Ebooks at the start of 2012.) Unlike other eBook publishers, Baen flatly refused to use encryption or even Adobe's Portable Document Format (PDF), regarding digital rights management (DRM) as harmful not just to readers but also to authors and publishers. This stance was quite controversial at the time, but Baen Book's hardcover sales numbers have soared in direct relation to the number of titles available as inexpensive e-books, while the competition's remained flat or declined in the same period. As another measure, in comparison, e-royalties paid by Baen run circa 5% of a hardcover royalty over the same period, other publishers have paid out less than 1% comparatively on average — typical period numbers are a difference of four figures to two figures in e-royalties.
Critics at the time also dismissed the e-book market as too small. Instead, it is one of the few such enterprises that regularly turn a profit, breaking even in its first year.
These innovations earned him respect in the technological community, and increasing disbelief in the publishing trade with perhaps the best comment of all – others began to mimic him, or place e-titles with Webscriptions themselves. One such title was even offered by Webscriptions using the despised (by J. Baen) Adobe PDF format, at its publishers insistence. Webscriptions is generally considered to be both the first e-books-for-money service whose product completely lacks encryption (in fact, Webscriptions makes each book available in a wide range of openly readable formats) and one of the first e-book publishing services to become profitable. (Indeed, it broke even in its first year and is likely the most profitable such service). In the words of David Drake, a writer with more than fifty books published:
The two books Jim most remembered as formative influences were Fire-Hunter by Jim Kjelgaard and Against the Fall of Night by Arthur C Clarke. The theme of both short novels is a youth from a decaying culture escapes the trap of accepted wisdom and saves his people despite themselves. This is a fair description of Jim's life in SF: he was always his own man, always a maverick, and often brilliantly successful because he didn't listen to what other people thought.