Quote:
Originally Posted by Xenophon
No, Baen Books is not part of Tor. Rumor has it that the founder of Tor was one of the major investors in Baen Books (back when Baen was getting started), but that's as an individual investor rather than corporate ownership. Assuming, that is, that both rumor and my recollection of it are correct.
Further, Baen's system has survived: - The death of the founder and publisher (Jim Baen)
- The retirement of Baen's original web and ebook guy: Arnold Bailey of WebScriptions, which is (or was, or... ??) a separate company.
- An "on, and off, and on again, and off again, and now in limbo" deal to retail ebook versions of Tor SF novels.
- And who (other than insiders) knows what else.
Baen's paper books are distributed by Simon&Schuster. In that sense Baen serves as the SF line for S&S. Nevertheless, Baen is an independent company and is not one of the "Agency N." |
Correct on all counts, I believe. Note, however, that Baen's small size is not an insignificant detail. A while back, a senior person at Baen remarked to me, "One tornado in the wrong place in Tennessee, and Webscription would cease to exist." They did
not have a secure infrastructure. That
may have changed within the last year, since various notes to me about glitches with my own books have involved "recent changes in the servers" and "backups."
Also, while I love 'em as a book customer, they don't exactly set the house afire with their royalty rates to authors. Bottom line, Baen is good, but sometimes folks on MR have a tendency to idealize them beyond a reasonable reality test.