Your job, such as it is - and do please smack me on the nose if I’m crossing a line here - is to write books that your readers want and will love. Baen’s job in this equation is to publish those books in a way that makes them accessible to your readers.

This is certainly my understanding. Apparently, it is also Baen's understanding, as they've just contracted for two more novels, which means we have six books under contract, and a guarantee of work through 2018.

Publishers publish authors who make money for the house. This just seems. . .very straightforward to me. Authors hand in their books on time, and what they do in their down-time -- I mean, for ghod's sake, Steve plays chess -- is what they do.

All this living out loud on the internets had certainly produced some. . .interesting results.