Are there publishers like Baen but for other genres?

[rleguillow]

Found this site: http://www.ebooksjustpublished.com/ via a link from an author on another thread here at MR. New, DRM-free ebooks, some of them free. Including mysteries. Maybe you'll find something to your taste here.

[Worldwalker]

I'm looking through the mystery section and some of those blurbs for the books scare me. If an author can't write a grammatically correct paragraph when it's that critical -- when it's the one thing that will make a prospective reader check out the book or move on -- what will I find inside the book? Do they care that little about their own writing?

For example:

Having lived through the horrors that can come from the hands of someone you thought loved you; she decided never loving again would prevent more emotional scarring.

Somewhere, a comma is crying.

I'll admit, sheepishly, to being a fanfiction reader (and worse, an occasional writer of the stuff). Sturgeon's Law is not only fully in effect in fanfic, it's probably squared. Maybe cubed. Bratty teenagers who have proven themselves unable to construct a simple English sentence often defend their broken writing with "You know what I'm saying, so how I put the words together doesn't matter. Besides, the idea is the only thing that's important, not how I write it." It's highly disturbing to see the same type of poor writing in the work of would-be professionals. I wonder, if questioned about those badly-written blurbs, would they make the same excuses?

Is this what writing is coming to? A few decades from now, will publishers' catalogs look like fanfiction.net? The mere thought of it makes me shudder.

[SensualPoet]

This is one of the most remarkable threads ever! The OP asked clearly in the title: "Are there publishers like Baen but for other genres?" and then went on to praise the webscriptions model of Baen, specifically asking about the "mystery genre".

Several posts later the OP was accused of pooh-poohing "military SF". It didn't matter if the OP returned to notes this was a new term. Later it was suggested the OP write to info@ Baen to see if they knew of another publisher ... good grief!

The simple answer is "No" and several think it's a fine idea -- and some smart publisher ought to do launch such a thing. And that includes me.

[Angst]

It's not an exact match for what you are looking for, but if you like short stories you can buy Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, Interzone Science Fiction Magazine and Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine subscriptions at Fictionwise.

[SameOldStory]

Originally Posted by SensualPoet

This is one of the most remarkable threads ever! The OP asked clearly in the title: "Are there publishers like Baen but for other genres?" and then went on to praise the webscriptions model of Baen, specifically asking about the "mystery genre".

Several posts later the OP was accused of pooh-poohing "military SF". It didn't matter if the OP returned to notes this was a new term. Later it was suggested the OP write to info@ Baen to see if they knew of another publisher ... good grief!

The simple answer is "No" and several think it's a fine idea -- and some smart publisher ought to do launch such a thing. And that includes me.

New here. What’s an "OP"?

Excuse me for saying this but ALL of the threads on this site wander all over the spectrum. I was just reading a thread about national IDs. Now THAT was remarkable. Talk about animosity!

HorridRedDog does have one good question - Has anyone written to them? info@baen.com

I like Baen books and even though their web site is screwy they do have good prices.

But if they aren’t carrying the books that you want why not write to them and ask them to expand into mystery or whatever?

[Worldwalker]

"OP" = Original Poster.

I suspect Baen knows the market far better than we do, especially their corner of the market, and knows what their customers want. They do SF/fantasy, and they do it very well, and if they're smart, they'll stick to their strengths. I've seen plenty of companies (several of them former employers) who tried to do otherwise. The outcomes were not good. They're no longer in business.

Besides, all the mystery series I really want to read as ebooks belong to other publishers already. Even if the authors aren't under contract for future books, they wouldn't be able to take their backlist to Baen for years.

It might be more practical to write to the publishers of those series and plead with them to release books that are both reasonably priced and not DRM-restricted. There are two chances of this happening, though: fat and slim.

[Blue Tyson]

Ereads has a multi-genre approach - and also some books at webscriptions. DRM free. So check them out, too.

[DawnFalcon]

Originally Posted by SameOldStory

But if they aren’t carrying the books that you want why not write to them and ask them to expand into mystery or whatever?

They don't have the capacity. Heck, they're backlogged with their core market as it is. But.

Webscriptions | Baen. While Baen is their largest customer, they're not the only one, and if a mystery publisher approached Webscriptions...

[Critteranne]

I know people have mentioned E-Reads in this thread, but have you checked out their site? They have a Mystery category:
http://ereads.com/ecms/genre.php?cat=14

And a suspense category:
http://ereads.com/ecms/genre.php?cat=19

Unlike Baen, they don't publish new books as far as I know. The E-Reads titles are all previously published books that came out in print first, sometimes quite recently, some years ago. For example, they have everything from cozy mysteries by Jacqueline Girdner to the early Destroyer novels.

Also, Belgrave House started out reprinting out-of-print Regency romances, but they have some mysteries as well, including historical mysteries:
http://www.belgravehouse.com/booksto...okjtmcs6d2rro0

I liked Lora Roberts' Murder in a Nice Neighborhood, by the way. I read it when it first came out in paperback. The heroine is unusual because she is essentially homeless, a freelance author living out of an old VW bus.

Like Baen, both publishers put out DRM-free editions in multiple formats.

Now we need more print publishers putting out affordable non-DRM e-book editions of new books.

[Worldwalker]

I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong, but when I went to buy a book from Ereads (which, by the way, wouldn't even give me a price), depending on format I got transferred either to Sony or Fictionwise. Both DRM-restricted. So either Critteranne is missing something, or I am.

[Blue Tyson]

Originally Posted by Worldwalker

I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong, but when I went to buy a book from Ereads (which, by the way, wouldn't even give me a price), depending on format I got transferred either to Sony or Fictionwise. Both DRM-restricted. So either Critteranne is missing something, or I am.

You were buying at the ereads site then, not the webscriptions site, presumably?

[Blue Tyson]

Don't think you were doing anything wrong, the ereads one is a fictionwise software sub-store type thing.

[AnemicOak]

Originally Posted by Worldwalker

I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong, but when I went to buy a book from Ereads (which, by the way, wouldn't even give me a price), depending on format I got transferred either to Sony or Fictionwise. Both DRM-restricted. So either Critteranne is missing something, or I am.

All the eReads books I've ever seen at Fictionwise are Multiformat. Multiformat books are DRM free. Which book were you looking at that had DRM?

[Worldwalker]

This is the book I was looking at:
http://store.fictionwise.com/ebooks/b1161/?si=37

It makes a big deal about how printing is disabled, read-aloud is disabled, etc., in the various formats. I didn't investigate further, since they want nine bucks for a cheap summer read, but that seemed to me to indicate that they were locked formats.

[Elfwreck]

Multiformat is unencrypted/non-DRM'd. The ebooks may have printing/read-aloud turned off in their settings, but should be convertible to other formats without those restrictions. Multiformat PDFs are locked to prevent editing (and read-aloud etc.), but there's software available that will remove the lock.

I don't believe PalmDOC PDB can have that kind of restrictions. And some of them only have them "disabled" because the software that reads them, doesn't have any kind of read-aloud or print function. (.RB and .IMP don't have read-aloud software.)