Fandom Pulse reports that Peter Thiel tried to buy Baen Books, was rebuffed, and responded by poaching their top authors and editors for a new science fiction and fantasy publishing house.
Baen Books has fallen into the trap of a lot of mainstream publishing, not building up a stable of modern talent to come up as the next generation… Enter Peter Thiel, founder of PayPal and Donald Trump Advisor with his giant venture capital fund. While he’d been in publishing before, he came to Baen Books with an offer to buy the company and inject capital to modernize it and preserve Baen for the next generation. Fandom Pulse spoke with multiple industry insiders who confirmed this buyout offer. While the details of the offer are not known, Toni Weisskopf, Editor in Chief of Baen Books, reportedly declined, but that didn’t stop Thiel’s hunger to enter the science fiction and fantasy space.
One Baen Books author who asked to be anonymous told Fandom Pulse that the company has a “kill switch” clause in every author contract that would make such a buyout impossible. Fandom Pulse was told that in the event the company sells, rights to books automatically revert to authors. This effectively prevents a sale of the company from occurring, as it would be worthless without the contracts of its top authors in place.
Thiel and his investment group were not deterred but decided to take over genre fiction themselves in a move that would take a lot of Baen’s top remaining talent with them.
Ark Press was formed as Thiel and his investors began a new publishing company to run in tandem with Passage Press, whose face became former Baen author D.J. Butler. Butler had been rumored to be on the shortlist to take over Baen Books once Toni Weisskopf retired and is well-liked in author circles, best-known for his book Witchy Eye, which was highly promoted by his long-time friend Larry Correia.
Fandom Pulse reached out to Butler to confirm Thiel’s investment group involvement and he said, “we’re in the same corporate group [as Passage Press]. Ark has separate editorial and management from Passage. We wish those guys well, and we hope they feel benevolently disposed toward us.”
With the announcement of Ark Press came word that Larry Correia would be penning a new modern fantasy series in the vein of Monster Hunter International for the budding company. It appears that Thiel’s investment group, unable to procure Baen and the Monster Hunter series, decided to take the talent from Baen and directly compete as the Monster Hunter series is still under Baen’s contract.
Fandom Pulse learned that Correia pitched the new series to Baen Books and that Baen Books passed on the series. We reached out to Toni Weisskopf for comment on this and the purchase offer, but she has not responded as of this writing.
Thiel’s move didn’t stop with Baen talent D.J. Butler and Larry Correia, but he also brought Tony Daniel, one of Baen’s former top editors who had previously left for Regency as editor-in-chief of the new company, as well as Baen editor David Afsharirad.
It should be interesting to see how this plays out over time. Ark Press may or may not elect to cooperate with Castalia in the future, but even if they don’t, it’s not as if Baen, or Tor, or anyone else in our space ever has. Passage Press is competent, so I don’t see any reason to assume the Ark Press team won’t be as well. JDA says it’s game-changing, and given the feeble state of Tor Books and the rest of SF/F publishing, he may well be right.