Kevin, it's really dangerous to 'learn' publishing on other people's books. The Baen slushpile offers only a small part of what you need to learn, to begin publishing in this genre.
If I won 90 million dollars in the Powerball day after tomorrow and was daft enough to even think of starting my own publishing company, here is what I would do:
1. Research the hell out of this business, far more than I have as a writer. I'd look at successful newcomers to see how they approached their goals and dealt with setbacks. I'd look at troubled publishers here on AW's forums, to see common problems (undercapitalized, too big of a catalog, too many genres, poor money and time management, not enough effective promotion, low sales, etc.) I'd take a month off and read *every single page* of Teresa Nielsen Hayden's 'Making Light' blog and *all* of Writer Beware. I'd get a pro subscription to Publisher's Marketplace and read back issues for as many years as I could.
2. I'm forty-eight, and I've been reading at a very high skill level since I was nine or ten. That's thousands of books, articles, science journals, and online content both in fiction and non-fiction. I trained in technical writing and marketing in college. I have written winning grants proposals and successful sales/ad copy.
Even so, I skated through high-school English, and I could not formally break down a sentence now if you paid me. I'm barely qualified to revise my stuff, let alone edit it. When my first novel sold to Loose Id, I had an abrupt, brutal, and useful education in what editors actually do. I learned a lot. With my editors' help I not only improved that book, but my later writing.
If I started the hypothetical Filigree Press next week, I'd have to hire the best editors I could find. Not rely on friends, casual acquaintances found on Goodreads, or freelancers from Craigslist. *Hire*, as in contracts, pay packages, and business plans. The editors I'd approach would be people who have spent at least ten years already in notable science fiction and fantasy publishing, and they won't come cheap. (For my 45K self-pub fantasy novella, if my agent can't sell it first to a commercial imprint, I'm looking at having it edited for the bargain price of $1400 - $1800. And that's from a sympathetic freelance editor who was once the senior editor at a major SF&F imprint.)
You've made great allowances for your brain's quirks, and I applaud you for it. But right now, you are not qualified to be an editor - and that's the first thing a publisher has to be, as well as a production coordinator and a marketing wizard. If you can't be an editor, you have to hire trustworthy people.
3. Research your production methods. You cannot wave a magic wand and poof! a book appears. CreateSpace and other platforms make digital publishing and Print On Demand really easy. So easy, that most of what gets self-published or published by small, clueless publishers is unedited, unformatted, derivative crap. It's not politically correct to say, but it's true - and I'm one of the cheerleaders for informed self-publishing!
Again, you are probably not qualified to handle production minutiae, so you are going to have to hire people or outsource to companies that know what they're doing. Or spend more time researching the actual business.
4. Sales. This is where most self-publishers and small new pubs go to die. They simply cannot sell enough books to replace their initial capital outlay, much less grow the business. Sometimes they become vanity and subsidy publishers, hoping to get quick cash injections into what essentially becomes a Ponzi scheme. Sometimes they ramp up acquisitions, banking that five sales per book per year is a lot better if they have 700 books in their catalog. That may be enough for them, but their authors are going to get pissed off in a hurry. They will leave. They will bitch about you in public. They may even sue you. Please don't go into this thinking that your authors will be able to promote themselves at all - very few can.
How do you get sales, as a publisher? You get a track record for quality books. You advertise in national and international markets read by the people who influence bookstore purchasing and distribution. You get major awards and reviews in national magazines. You attend major national and international conventions in your genre. You leverage social media, with the understanding that social media is a chancy way to get eyeballs on books.
You probably won't get many sales and much public attention, if you don't pay attention to those big issues. So you are going to need to have your annual living and business funding requirements banked for two to five years out.
Even SF&F publishers who've won the Hugo and Nebula Awards have suffered shakeups, especially in this economy. And they have track records.
5. Experience. I'd probably just kick all that to the curb, and beg some already successful publisher to take me on as a silent partner, so I could learn from them. Once I had my experience in this weird business, I'd go off five or ten years later and create Filigree Press - or pitch it as an imprint for some established publisher.
6. Longevity, infrastructure, and successors. How is your health? How old are you? Do you have plans and qualified people in place to continue the business, if you cannot? Solvent or not, would a long illness crater your firm? These are all questions you need to answer now, not later.
Have you worked in commercial publishing? Do you know anyone who has? It's not an impossible dream, but the obstacles stacked up before you are immense.
We're not trying to scare you or insult you. It's just that we've seen hundreds of publishers implode for various reasons. What you do with your own time and money is your business. Destroying other authors' hard work is not. And that's what can happen when publishers go down the drain.
What can you realistically offer well-informed writers, that other new or established publishers cannot? Hint: friendly atmosphere and genre cheerleading are good perks, but money, distribution, and industry respect are the bottom line. If you can't show at least some good plans for earning profits for skilled authors, they'll go elsewhere. You may find a few gems among the remaining applicants, and maybe you and they will grow wealthy in the process.
But never, ever let wishful thinking be part of your business plan.
