I am now skeptical that Baen Books will last the year, given the latest news from Fandom Pulse
Jason Cordova, the unofficial second in command of the publishing company, is leaving Baen Books. The announcement came out of Liberty Con this weekend, confirmed by sources on the ground, and it lands at a moment when Baen can least afford another loss.
Cordova had been the engine running much of Baen’s day-to-day publishing operation. By most accounts, he was doing ninety percent of the backend work, from acquisitions to editorial to what little marketing the house managed to push out. He was widely viewed inside the industry as the heir apparent to Toni Weisskopf, who has run Baen for decades and is approaching retirement age with no clear succession plan in place.
First Correia, now Cordova. The prognosis is not positive. Our long-term strategy at Castalia House has always been to outlast our competitors, because we knew that both a) this economic crisis and b) the effects of Kindle Unlimited were going to have strongly negative effects on publishing. But I don’t think I thought we’d already be collectively at the point that we are now in the industry, which tends to suggest that a lot of these publishers have been surviving on little more than smoke, mirrors, and past reputation for a while now.
As I said months ago, those authors and publishers who disdain the use of AI are not likely to survive the next five years. Because the way to survive in a contraction is to be leaner and faster than everyone else, while still maintaining a reliable level of quality. And the good news is that those who survive the stresses of the contractionary period tend to be tomorrow’s market leaders.
Thanks to our readers, backers, and supporters, Castalia is not merely going to survive, it is going to thrive. Here is the latest piece of evidence fresh from one of the world’s only surviving independent binderies:
