Baen Books, one of the innovators of publishing and marketing (or giving away) ebooks, is shifting over to the predominant sales model. Publisher Toni Weisskopf has announced, in a series of posts on Baen’s discussion forum, that the company will be shifting retailing of their ebooks over to Amazon.com and BarnesandNoble.com, making it easier for the majority of ebook readers, who use Kindles or Nooks. However, the shift will break some of the features Baen was able to offer readers, such as unlimited online access and wonderful bundles.

Baen will continue to offer eARCs — the pre-publication ebooks they’ve been selling at $15 a pop — since those will only be available on Baen’s site, thus not contravening the minimum pricing requirements of the big etailers.

Heralding the retailing change, Weisskopf announces that authors are getting an e-book royalty bump: “You should also know we are increasing across the board by 25% the ebook royalty rates to the authors, so not only should they get the benefit of what we will really hope will be a significantly larger market, but a larger cut, too.”

In a related announcement, Weisskopf anticipates the end of Baen CD releases bound into hardcover books. “The CDs were in part to train people up to use ebooks. Mission accomplished, there.”