Paladin Press
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Paladin Press "Publishers of the Action Library", is a book publishing firm founded in 1970 by Peter Lund and Robert K. Brown.[1] The company is a leading publisher of non-fiction books and videos covering a wide range of specialty topics,[2] including (but not limited to) personal and financial freedom, survivalism and preparedness, firearms and shooting, martial arts, ninjitsu, and self-defense, military and police tactics, knives and knife fighting, and even explosives, cannibalism, and murder, not to mention a variety of other "action topics" (though the availability of books on topics like improvised explosives has been severely curtailed in recent years).[citation needed]
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[edit] Hit Man: A Technical Manual for Independent Contractors
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Paladin Press is perhaps best known for publishing the book Hit Man: A Technical Manual for Independent Contractors by Rex Feral. The book is written to be a how-to manual on contract killers, though in reality it is rumored to have been written by a housewife who simply fabricated the material it contains from mystery novels and movies about the topic. 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 (despite its status as non-fiction).
[edit] 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.[citation needed] In 1999, Paladin Press' insurance company (much to the chagrin of the company itself, which wanted to fight the lawsuit) settled out of court and agreed to pay several million dollars to the families of the victims.[citation needed] The settlement also included taking the book out of print and destroying all copies of the book in the possession of the publisher.[citation needed] Copies exist on the Internet (notably IRC), often accompanied by the claim that the book is now in the public domain, but Paladin Press has said the rights are still held by the author.[citation needed]
[edit] 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, 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.[3] 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.[4]
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.
