Good point with Baen. They’re on my radar, for sure. Jim’s in good hands now.
I’ll definitely consider submitting to Baen in the future. Since I’m only on my third query, I want to see what kind of agent feedback I can get first. Half of the time agents just send form rejections, but my first two were personal. The second agent actually read some of the material and provided some comments - none of which were really negative. Woot!
“Half of the time agents just send form rejections, but my first two were personal.”
If you are getting personal responses then you are almost there.
The path followed by many starting authors today is:
1. Write a book.
2. Send it to publishers.
3. Have publisher reject ms, send to new publisher.
4. Finally have publisher accept ms.
5. Find agent to negotiate contract (having a letter from a major publisher helps there).
6. Submit subsequent ms’s through agent.
Once you are a (6) it becomes a breeze. Getting there . . . that’s the hard part.