From his days in magazine publishing, Jim Baen had a reputation for being able to recognize a gem in the rough and the ability to take a new author and nurture and train him up able to write salable material, and establish himself, which were some of the qualities desired by Simon and Schuster on their team.

Because these multiple formats complicate the issue of identifying electronic versions, Baen and Webscriptions did not use DOIs to properly identify their e-books ( even though some of their books had DOIs ).

The market for anthologies in fiction is but a small percentage of the market for novels, and the alternate history genre is a smallish niche to begin with — leading publisher Jim Baen to " hold up " the Ring of Fire collection to see if the series would get a boost from New York Times best selling author David Weber, who had just contracted to do five novels with Flint.

Jim Baen, with financial backing from some friends, counter-offered with a proposal to start up a new company named Baen Books and provide Simon & Schuster with a SF line to distribute instead.

Consequently, Baen also makes its entire catalog available in multiple formats for downloading and typically prices electronic versions of its books at or below that of paperback editions — and makes a profit doing it .</ span > According to essays on Baen's science fiction e-magazine Jim Baen's Universe, also edited by Flint, the strategy is if anything, getting stronger and more fruitful with the passage of time, especially with the advent of e-book readers such as the Amazon Kindle, and the Barnes & Noble Nook.

The Monthly Baen Bundles installments are as follows: first includes roughly a half of every book in the bundle, second includes roughly three quarters, and the third, coinciding with the print release, includes the full text.

After print publication, the " cleaned up and finalized " electronic copy is available both on line through the monthly bundle or as a single title ( priced variably $ 3 – 6 ) and through the parallel practice Baen instituted of using promotional CD-ROMs with permissive copyright licenses with many of its stable of authors works.

In the early 2000s, Baen tried magazine-like publishing again, establishing two self-sustaining e-zine enterprises with a separate staff for each, both spearheaded by Eric Flint: Jim Baen's Universe and the Grantville Gazette series, which was reconfigured after Grantville Gazette V.

In 2005 Baen moved up to the eighth position in the total books published with 72 books published ( of which 40 were original titles ).

* Wing Commander: Baen published seven Wing Commander novels from 1992 to 1999 ( starting with Freedom Flight by Mercedes Lackey and Ellen Guon, and ending with False Colors by William R. Forstchen and Andrew Keith ), including the novelizations of two of the games, Wing Commander III: Heart of the Tiger and Wing Commander IV: The Price of Freedom.

In 1985 he co-wrote, with SF author Dean Ing, a popularization of this and other unconventional propulsion concepts in " The Future of Flight ", published by Baen.

* The Black Throne ( with Roger Zelazny ), ( Baen Oct. 1990 )

The three Baen titles used matching cover art by Gary Ruddell with differences in jacket design.

It is in print with a paperback edition issued by Baen Books in 2010 with ISBN 978-1-4391-3377-4.

In early 1974 Jim Baen took over from Jakobsson as editor, but increasing paper costs meant that UPD could no longer afford to publish both Galaxy and If.

It recovered under James Baen, who took over in mid-1974, but when he left at the end of 1977 the deterioration resumed, and there were financial problems — writers were not paid on time and the schedule became erratic.

* Prologue and first nine chapters at Baen Ebooks

* Catalog at Baen books

Baen has distributed serialized e-book versions of new books at reduced prices.

Baen's first run at magazine-style book publishing took place in the late 1970s, in the form of Destinies, a quarterly ' bookazine ' that featured fiction and non-fiction by well-known and new authors that Baen was promoting.

It was published by Ace, where Baen was employed at the time.

From 1999 to 2011, Baen's e-books were produced by Webscriptions under contract for Baen Books in various ( at least five ) common digital formats.

* Baen Free Library at Baen Ebooks

* Index of Baen on-line resources at www. allensmith. net

* Free Baen materials for the disabled at www. ReadAssist. org

* Full text of story at Baen Ebooks

* " Baen's Barfly ", one who browses the internet at publisher Baen Books ' author and fan website and forum known as " Baen's Bar "

* Heinlein's Future History chart at Baen Ebooks

The first four are in the Baen Free Library or the entire series can be found at Joe Buckley's Fifth Imperium website.

* The David Weber page at the Baen Free Library — available books include On Basilisk Station, The Honor of the Queen and Changer of Worlds, the third of an Honorverse anthology series.

Many of Weber's books are available at the Baen Free Library ; chapters of some texts are otherwise available online.

First published in book form in 1960 by Doubleday, it has been published in ( at least ) 1968, 1983, 1991 ( by the SFBC and again by Baen Books ), 2003, and most recently in 2010.

Jim Baen left his stepfather's home at the age of 17 and lived on the streets for several months before joining the United States Army where he served in Bavaria.

Baen was Judy-Lynn del Rey's replacement as managing editor at Galaxy Science Fiction in 1973.

* An excerpt of In Death Ground is available for download or reading online at the Baen Free Library here.

An excerpt of The Shiva Option is available for download or reading online at the Baen Free Library here.

* The complete text of On Basilisk Station is available for download or reading online at the Baen Free Library here.

She was briefly replaced by Albert Dytch, but within four months Dytch in turn left, and in August 1973 James Baen joined UPD.

Charles N. Brown, publisher of Locus Magazine, has praised Baen's approach in an interview in The New York Times, saying " Baen has shown that putting up electronic versions of books doesn't cost you sales.

It was founded in autumn 1999 by science fiction writer Eric Flint and publisher Jim Baen to determine whether the availability of books free of charge on the Internet encourages or discourages the sale of their paper books.

Each month, whatever books Baen has coming out in paper ( paperback or hardcover, new or reissued ) are put together in a fixed price ( currently $ 18 ) bundle regardless of a number of books ( historically 4-9 books, average 5-6 ).