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Originally Posted by BaenSidhe
That doesn't have to be true, at least for agents, editors, academics, and researchers....
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Yes, you can telecommute. But it is not a replacement for face-to-face contact. As evidenced by....
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Originally Posted by BaenSidhe
I think Jim Baen met David Weber for the first time at Chicon 2000.
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(I.e. you can face-to-face network once a year, or five times a week. Which offers an advantage?)
And keep in mind that a big pub like Random House is putting out well over 200 books in a typical week -- probably twice as many as Baen does in an entire year. A big pub requires the labor of a
lot of people, many of whom do need face-to-face contact in order to work optimally.
Agents
definitely benefit from being able to meet face-to-face quickly, as does, well, anyone who's doing business with agents.
Authors benefit by being closer to and networking with other media and periodicals, which often provides an additional source of work and exposure.
Baen can run their business just fine outside of a major publishing center, because they're a small genre publisher and (among other factors) only require a fraction of the resources of a larger firm. But I seriously doubt that they truly regard their business all that differently than any New York City publisher of the same size. Nor does it make sense to cite location as the reason why they have a different corporate culture than a company that is probably 100x its size....