Baen Books Editor Jason Cordova Responds To Speculation Surrounding Larry Correia's Ark Press Announcement: "I Guess It's Time I Risk My Job At Baen"

After our article regarding Peter Thiel and his investment group starting Ark Press and getting a new modern fantasy series from Larry Correia, Baen Books editor Jason Cordova has responded with a lengthy Facebook post clarifying what he sees going on with the situation.

Cordova posted to Facebook,

Well, I typically don't respond to Jon del Arroz attacks because, well, I have things to do. But since he's now lobbing my name out there because I groused last week about dealing with his drama is affecting my cancer treatments (he emailed me the next day about it), I guess it's time to risk my job at Baen to clear the air and get a lot of facts straight.

Guys, if you're going to grab screenshots of my posts here to pass them along to others, at least be open and say it? I don't care if you're open about it.

For starters, I don't speak for Baen Books or Toni at all. This is me and only me. I'm probably going to get chewed out for this, but not fired. Hopefully. Been chewed out before.

Probably will be chewed out again.

In his articles, del Arroz implied that there is a culture war between Peter Thiel and Baen Books. I have no idea where this came from. I didn't even know who Peter Thiel is before the article was published. The accusation that Ark was formed as a response of a failed purchase of Baen, and they immediately started poaching authors, is interesting, but could only come from the mind of a person who thinks publishing is nothing but destroying everyone else who might be a competitor. I was told back when I was first hired that people make offers to buy Baen all the time. **shrug** If the Ark thing is true and they were created solely because we refused their purchase off, then Baen must have spawned off a hell of a lot of publishing companies purely out of spite.

Go us?

His attacks on Larry Correia and Sara Hoyt are both annoying and false. First off, him stating Sarah is not an American in his most recent article is false. She might not have been born here, but she legally immigrated and worked hard to earn her citizenship. That makes her an American. That sort of blood purity thing is strange coming from someone like Jon. I thought that we wanted people here legally, immigrants who work hard and follow the rules on their path to citizenship?

As for Larry, well, I've known Jon to be antagonistic towards Larry for years and I take everything he says about Larry with a grain of salt. In fact, the rift which occurred between Jon and myself happened because he attacked Larry, who has been one of my closest friends and supporters for 15 years now. Larry's reasons for agreeing to write for Ark are his own (as was his decision to write for Aethon). But as I've been telling Larry for 15 years (and Larry has always known this, so it wasn't like it's news to him or anything) you never want to have all your eggs in one basket. I've been published by 12 different publishers over the years with various projects, maybe more. I stopped counting awhile ago. If one of them were to fail (as one did two years ago), then it would be prudent to have other publishers you're already working with.

Now, the irritating thing about all this is that Jon brought me up in his article posted over the weekend, when I usually don't check my work email because I need a day off every one in a while. Jon tried to play coy by asking what Peter Thiel and his investment group had to do with my response to his article, but Jon (who spoke with Sean Korsgaard... the original article stated that Sean was reluctant to talk to Jon, but in this latest one he stated Sean refused to comment, so some wires might have been crossed here) knows that I am the one running Baen's social media accounts. I've been running it for about two years now. Any sort of thing that happens to Baen on social media is something I have to stay on top of. Otherwise I wouldn't be doing my job. The fact that this all dropped the day before my most recent infusion was only the icing on the cake that broke the table of patience.

I'll also address the whole "standing order" thing about authors not talking to Fandom Pulse. We have no standing order from Toni regarding any science fiction or fantasy magazine, ezine, or anything else prohibiting authors from speaking with anyone. If authors want to talk to any magazine or ezine, or vice versa, part of my job is to make the connection happen and provide the interviewer with whatever they need, be it professional headshot of the author, book covers, publishing schedules, permission to use quotes or snippets from the book, etc.

Jon was blocked from Baen's Twitter/X account by me, not Toni, after I'd unblocked it because the last person running the account had blocked him, and had only done that because the person before... you see where this is going. We've bounced back and forth between blocked and unblocked with Jon over the years because he does what is called "engagement farming" on Twitter/X. It's a simple trick used by applying the "@" towards someone, which gets it viewed by those who follow the targeted person. So Jon tagged Baen regularly to engagement farm, and while we had him muted so we couldn't see, it was still showing up to those who follow us. This used to not be the case, but the rules have changed. So instead of allowing him to continue using the Baen handle to farm himself more clicks, I chose to block him. I informed Toni of my decision, and she asked me why. I explained the methodology behind it, and she simply said it was my decision.

This next bit is what pissed me off today and prompted this response. Now, no authors in the history of EVER are stating that I am the one who is taking over from Toni Weisskopf when she retires from Baen. I would refuse the job if offered because I never wanted to be an editor in the first place. I only recently accepted the job title of "Associate Editor" because Toni got tired of me introducing myself as "Office War Monkey" to everyone at conventions. She asks for a little bit of decorum from me, so I obliged, even if it meant accepting a job title I am not entirely comfortable with.

People may think this is the case, though, because we learned that after 30 years of Toni having the same email address at Baen, it's gotten... crowded. Toni doesn't like deleting emails, and her spam filter works hard, so sometimes she misses emails. Authors are now CC'ing me on their emails to Toni because I've only been employed by Baen for 3 years now and my inbox is nowhere near as crowded. This allows me to message Toni and ask if she saw an email. If she missed it, then we've fixed the issue. If she saw it, then we're good either way.

I don't see how that means I'm taking over...

I will say this, though. Thank you, Jon, for wishing me good health. The road to recovery is slow but ongoing, and Baen's support in my needing days off from work to recover from infusions and doctor appointments has confirmed that this is still the best place I've ever worked, hands down.

The response is interesting on a number of points, confirming that Baen Books has in fact had purchase offers for the company. Fandom Pulse, however never implied there was a culture war between Ark Press and Baen Books, even though several Baen employees and authors have made that implication as a result of the article.

It is a fact that Ark Press has taken some of Baen’s top talent over to their company, however, which has implications for Baen’s future. We’ve reached out to publisher Toni Weisskopf at Baen for her to elaborate on what Baen’s future might entail, but she has not responded as of this writing.

As a clarification again — in both our articles, we reached out to Sean Korsgaard, former Baen publicist, for comment. In both instances, he declined to comment. Our sources include 10 Baen authors and related sources who asked to remain anonymous so they would not be “chewed out” in the manner Cordova described and risk any repercussions for speaking with us on the topic, as Cordova himself admits he risks his job to post this content.

Some of those authors are also responsible for speculating that Cordova would be on the shortlist to take over Baen Books upon Weisskopf’s retirement, despite his stating that no one would say such.

It is good to know there is no standing order for Baen Books authors to speak with Fandom Pulse. As a result, we will be reaching out to several Baen authors to conduct interviews to promote new releases in the near future as we celebrate all conservative and Christian creators in science fiction and fantasy.

We continue to wish Cordova well and have found he has a GoFundMe available for his cancer treatments, which you can support here.

What do you think of Bean Books editor Jason Cordova’s Facebook rant? Leave a comment and let us know.

For a great Christian-themed sci-fi that packs an action punch, read Justified: Saga of the Nano Templar on Amazon and support Fandom Pulse!

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