Simon & Schuster was undergoing massive reorganization and wanted to hire Baen to head and revitalize the science fiction line of its Pocket Books division.

[citation needed] Initially, the company invested resources in "Baen's Bar", its online community service that provides a forum for customers, authors, and editors to interact, beginning as a BBS.

Since he was interested, and since several of those authors (like Jerry Pournelle, a former columnist for Byte Magazine, for instance) were very Internet savvy, he did.

"[6] On February 15, 2021, American author Jason Sanford posted via Patreon "Baen Books Forum Being Used to Advocate for Political Violence".

[10] In addition to selling individual titles in electronic format, Baen has distributed serialized e-book versions of new books at reduced prices in monthly bundles.

Webscription.net was implemented by Baen's preferred website expert, Arnold Bailey, who also sold e-books for other publishers.

Despite the new name, Baen Ebooks continues to sell e-books for other publishers, notably science fiction genre rival Night Shade Books.

Another avenue for distribution that Baen uses for some of its new titles is the offering of eARCs (electronic advance reading copies) 3 to 5 months prior to publication.

Marketed as a premium product for the fans who absolutely positively have to read it now, they are priced at $15 per single title and can differ from the final text (as they are electronic proofs).

Baen instituted a parallel practice of using promotional CD-ROMs with permissive copyright licenses containing many of its stable of authors' works.

The great majority of books published by Baen are still available as e-books, long after the hardcover or paperback versions have gone out of print.

Baen also provides free electronic copies of its books to readers who are blind, paralyzed, dyslexic, or are amputees.

Baen's began the experimental publication of The Grantville Gazette, an e-magazine anthology series specifically related to the popular Ring of Fire alternate history plenum.

At approximately 120,000 words, this latter publication is unusually large when compared to most traditional print editions of science fiction magazines, and the average size of the newly reconfigured Gazettes is similarly generous.