Larry Correia has finally embraced crowdfunding and independent publishing:
Larry Correia has made waves this year, breaking from Baen Books for his next releases with Ark Press and Aethon Books, diversifying away from a company that seems to be in trouble, and now he’s revealed he’s going to Kickstarter for his new book as well as revealing the name and cover.
While Larry Correia may have been one of the last traditional publishing authors in speculative fiction to make money, he’s now embraced the future of indie publishing in many ways. He’s moved his next releases to two different upstart presses who are making waves in modern fiction, and is now announcing he’s going to be Kickstarting his new book, as so many others have been doing to great success in recent years.
This comes soon after he announced he wouldn’t be working on new Monster Hunter International material anytime soon, the series that has kept both him and Baen Books afloat over the last several years. With Ark Press having poached several editors and Baen Books’ top talent in Larry Correia, it’s created a number of industry rumblings about the future of the company.
Now, Correia has fueled the flame, showing that independent releases and crowdfunding are the future of publishing, adopting the model that many have succeeded in.
It’s obviously not Larry’s intention to harm Baen. And he owes them absolutely nothing. I think he’s going to absolutely crush it, and well he should! But the indisputable fact is that aside from signing Larry, Baen did a terrible job of replacing the previous generation of authors; the authors that it should have pursued, it spurned for political and ideological reasons, while it signed a panoply of mediocrities who could never have even begun to replace the likes of Jerry Pournelle, John Ringo, and other Baen greats.
The usual suspects can posture and bluster all they like, but I would not expect Baen Books to survive as an operative concern for another 18 months.