Template:Baen's Bar
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This important website is documented as a sidebar, as the deletionists conspiracy somehow figured a website that produced at least six best selling novels is "unnotable". Go figure. // FrankB 01:28, 1 December 2007 (UTC)
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Baen's Bar is an online community created around Baen Books' author to fan discussion forums where each author has at least one of their own (originally implimented as Bulletin board system), or with sufficient interest in their works, perhaps several. It has survived numerous crashes and the critical illness of Baen's original main webmaster. There are three ways of accessing it: via e-mail, an NNTP (newsgroup) interface, and a website based on MPNews which replaced the previous two versions of Akiva Corporation WebBoard (in use since the upgrade from text BBS system at least 1997). Baen's Bar is best browsed using a newsreader, for message threads frequently repeat snippets from prior posts as lead ins. While it is a members-only site, the only cost is the momentary "fee" of registering one's email address and responding to a validation message before one can access the inner sanctum. Forum regulars include a number of New York Times bestselling writers (including David Weber, Eric Flint, and John Ringo), other writers who publish through Baen, formerly, the founder/co-owner/CEO the late Jim Baen, various employees including Toni Weisskopf— who has succeed Baen as publisher in chief, and a large active number of readers. Members of this community are referred to as barflies. The bar is divided into several sections—some for administrivia, but most concerning specific authors and their fictional universes. Popular forums include Flint's 1632 Tech Manual, Ringo's Ringo's Tavern, Weber's Honorverse and Sarah Hoyt's Diner.
Baen's Bar is the only submission mechanisms for submitting stories to two professional SF Magazines. All stories submitted to the Grantville Gazette must be submitted through the 1632 Slush conference on the Bar, and all stories submitted for the "introducing" slots in Jim Baen's Universe must be submitted through the Universe Slush conference.
Baen was not shy about harnessing the tools of technology to further the company, and having already placed on line Webscriptions to sell e-books, E-ARCs for readers who couldn't wait (or those who just liked the five for one bargain pricing) the popularity of, demand for more of, and production bottlenecks facing the Ring of Fire series plus a soft demand overall in publishing for anthologies lead him to agree to a trial of the experimental Grantville Gazettes — which became a e-zine serialized in three installments as are the E-ARCs — and which became a self-sustaining success and revenue producer. The History there, is much tied in with that of the 1632 Tech Manual, where hundreds of collaborators have carefully put their collective brainpower together to explore what technology and what effect it would likely have on the new history of the 1632-verse world. See 1632 Editorial Board for a further description of the creation of collaborative fiction on going in Eric Flint's 1632 series—a collaboration which has lead now to a handful of best sellers in rapid succession, and continued quarterly sales growth of the flagship novel and all it's sequels when most books' sales would have tapered off to nothing. Before Baen's death, the sixth (Grantville Gazette VI) was the last published as an adapted E-ARC, primarily because Baen Books was not geared up to deal with the deadlines implicit in magazine formats. After Baen's passing, the Grantville Gazettes were spun off as a separately operated entity on a paid subscription basis and are currently publishing a new issue every other month. While a Baen's experiment, editor Eric Flint had hoped to reach a rate of three to four per year, but that pace could not be supported by Baen's.
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