Jim Baen, again.

[eponymousarchon]

It's been noted that folks might not know of Baen, so here's the quick off-the-cuff and totally biased summary I produced for the first  person who asked, only slightly expanded ;)
 The obituary linked to in the last edit says it much better, mind you. :)

He was a long-time editor and publisher - Baen Books was his imprint that you might recognise, but he was doing the business a long time before that. He gave a lot of writers their breaks and supported and encouraged. The industry would be a smaller place without him.

He was an innovator in a conservative field (Publishing)

By way of example: Not *that* long ago, he re-thought the SF magazine concept to make a regular *paperback book* (book-thickness) SF Magazine, cock full-o-speculation and science features and much longer works than a traditional magazine can carry.

It didn't work in the long run, but that's hardly the point (It only failed in fact when he was offered his own imprint, Baen Books, with it's own remit to publish and encourage what he thought was good in the field - he couldn't do that *and* edit Destinies.)

In his later years, he even started an ebook service with a large free list (when most other publishers were terrified of having their market usurped by such) to promote newer authors and keep older 'classics' available to readers when they'd dropped out of print. G'wan - go along to http://www.webscription.net/free/ and try something new - that's a large part of what he was all about.

One of the good guys.