Paladin Press

Paladin Press, is a book publishing firm founded in 1970 by Peder Lund and Robert K. Brown. The company publishes non-fiction books and videos covering a wide range of specialty topics, including (but not limited to) personal and financial freedom, survivalism and preparedness, firearms and shooting, various martial arts and self-defense, military and police tactics, investigation techniques, spying, lockpicking, sabotage, revenge, knives and knife fighting, explosives, and (oddly enough) cannibalism, not to mention a variety of other "action topics" (though the availability of books on topics like improvised explosives has, for obvious reasons, been severely curtailed in recent years).

Current publishing ventures

Paladin Press currently publishes (or has formerly published) work from a variety of well-known and notable figures in the firearms, martial arts, self-defense, and survival fields, among them figures like John Plaster, Kelly McCann, Ragnar Benson, Jim Cirillo, Louis Awerbuck, Marc MacYoung, Sammy Franco, Jeff Cooper, Col. Rex Applegate, William E. Fairbairn, Michael Janich, and Phil Elmore. Paladin is also a former publisher of Ashida Kim, whose dispute with the company (over royalty payments) is loudly proclaimed on Kim's website. In the spring of 2006, Paladin announced that it had acquired the rights to reprint 40 books previously published by Loompanics Unlimited, including the works of Claire Wolfe, Eddie the Wire, and other popular anti-authoritarian writers.

A new in-house printing press has enabled Paladin to launch an ambitious program to reprint classic combat books in the public domain as well as bring back into print select titles it had dropped over the years. To date, the company has reprinted previously hard-to-find books on World War II hand-to-hand combat, firearms, combat shooting, counterinsurgency, martial arts, survival, boxing, wrestling, and self-defense.

Controversial publications

Paladin Press published the book Hit Man: A Technical Manual for Independent Contractors under the author's psuedonym "Rex Feral". The book is written as if by an actual experienced assassin, as a how-to manual on contract killing. It was actually written by a divorced mother-of-two who simply fabricated much of the material it contains based on mystery novels and movies. The book goes on at length about studying "the mark," learning that "mark's" movements and routine, and silently moving in for the profitable kill, offering advice on weapon selection and techniques.

Legal issues

Paladin was sued by the family of a victim whose murderer is alleged to have used this book as a guideline in three 1993 murders. In 1999, Paladin Press' insurance company settled out of court and agreed to pay several million dollars to the families of the victims, against the wishes of Paladin Press themselves, who wanted to fight the lawsuit on First Amendment grounds. Paladin no longer publishes the book, and allowed the remaining copies to sell out Copies exist on the Internet (notably IRC), often accompanied by the spurious claim that the book is now in the public domain. Paladin Press claims that the rights are still held by the author.

External links

• Paladin Press Website
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