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One reason I think Baen comes up so often in these conversations is that science fiction readers were ebook fans long before the rest of the population. As in, back in the days of hand-typing books and sharing them on BBS sites over 300 baud modems, and reading them on monochrome CRT screens. This is a population of readers that has shown a willingness to switch to the ebook format for a long time. I'm pleased to see romance readers and publishers joining them (even though I don't read romance myself), but I think the SF crowd will always be a bit avant garde when it comes to book reading technology. That makes them a good group to watch when trying to predict market direction.
As far as defensiveness in tone or whatever, mrkai, don't you think it's worth considering that just maybe some other folks do know a little something about the book publishing business? The success of the Baen model has been discussed at length around here. Whether you like their content lineup or not, dismissing them as a successful retailer of ebooks doesn't exactly enhance your credentials to moderate a discussion on this topic.
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