Publishing Firearms & Shooting that sells
From 1970 to 2017 the original Paladin Press in Boulder published books and instructional videos on shooting, and that back catalog still lives in our archive under Firearms, Combat Shooting and Sniping. Today we sit on the other side of the desk. We are a publishing services company, and we help people who know this subject turn their knowledge into a book with their own name on the cover.
Our authors include range instructors, match shooters, hunting guides, gunsmiths, collectors, retired soldiers and novelists who want their gunfights to read true. Some arrive with a finished manuscript. Others bring lesson plans, match notes or a shoebox of photographs and ask our ghostwriting team to shape it. We also handle neighboring work, from shop-floor technical guides to military fiction that needs a consultant who knows a magazine from a clip.
In firearms book publishing, accuracy is what sells. Shooting readers spot a wrong caliber, a misnamed part or a muzzle pointed at the photographer within seconds, and one review that says so can stall a book for years. That is why every firearms manuscript we take on gets a technical read from a reviewer with real trigger time in the discipline, on top of normal editing.
We are a safety-first, law-abiding shop. Every instructional book we produce keeps the four universal safety rules visible, and we decline material that teaches illegal modification, unlicensed manufacture or ways around the law. That protects readers and you, because major retailers apply their own content policies to firearms titles and remove books that cross them.
A good shooting book is built the way a good shooter trains: fundamentals first, safety always, and every claim tested before it goes public. Here is how we take a firearms manuscript from notes to bookstore.
Pick your reader and your discipline first. Firearms is not one market. A new concealed-carry permit holder, a USPSA Grand Master, an elk hunter and a Winchester collector all browse the same shelf and want completely different books. Before anyone writes a chapter, we pin down who the reader is, what they can already do and what they should be able to do after the last page.
That decision shapes everything else: vocabulary, photo count, trim size, even price. A beginner's marksmanship primer needs short chapters and plenty of images. A collector's reference needs tables, serial number ranges and an index that actually works. If you are unsure where your idea fits, send it for a free manuscript review and we will tell you honestly.
Readers of instructional shooting books want to know why they should trust you, so tell them early and specifically. Name the certifications you hold, whether from NRA Training, USCCA, a police academy or a manufacturer's armorer course, and list the classes you have taught, the matches you have shot or the seasons you have spent guiding hunters.
Memoir authors earn trust a different way, with dates, units, places and the small physical details only someone who was there remembers. We help you surface those details in interviews without inflating anything, because the shooting community checks.
Safety belongs on every page. The four rules are short: treat every gun as loaded, never point the muzzle at anything you are not willing to destroy, keep your finger off the trigger until your sights are on target, and be sure of your target and what is beyond it. Organizations word them a little differently, and the NSSF's rules for safe gun handling expand them to ten. Your book should honor them in every chapter, not only in a front-matter disclaimer.
We check photos for muzzle direction and trigger finger placement, confirm that eye and ear protection appear wherever live fire does, and make sure drills call for a proper range and qualified supervision where appropriate. Dry-fire sections remind readers to clear all ammunition from the room.
After developmental work, a technical reviewer reads the full manuscript against manufacturer documentation, historical records and the discipline's own rulebooks. Our line and technical editing then fixes terminology, so a part carries the same name on page 12 and page 212.
Some content gets extra care. Reloading data should come only from current published load manuals, with the source cited and a clear instruction to start low. Gunsmithing chapters stay within lawful maintenance, repair and accurizing, and anything touching National Firearms Act items is framed as history or regulation, never as a how-to. We do not publish instructions for illegal conversion or manufacture.
Former military and intelligence personnel may owe prepublication review, for example through the Defense Office of Prepublication and Security Review, and serving officers often need agency sign-off. We build that time into the schedule.
Photos, diagrams and layout do much of the teaching. Shooting is visual. Grip, stance, sight picture and malfunction clearing are far easier to learn from a sequence of clean images than from a paragraph. We plan shot lists with you, and our book illustrators can draw exploded views, reticle diagrams and target overlays where photography falls short.
Then interior formatting keeps each image beside the text that explains it, sets data tables so they read on a phone as well as in print, and gives reference books the index and cross-references collectors expect.
Amazon, Apple Books, Barnes & Noble and library distributors each publish content guidelines, and firearms titles get more scrutiny than most. Clear safety framing, lawful content and accurate descriptions keep your book listed. Our publishing and distribution team picks BISAC and store categories such as shooting, hunting or military history, so the book lands where its readers browse.
The best audiences already exist: gun clubs, practical shooting leagues, trap and skeet ranges, hunting forums, collector shows and student lists. A marketing plan built around those groups usually outperforms broad ads. Many instructors also pair the book with an instructional video course, a format with deep roots in the Paladin catalog.
Your book stays yours. Authors keep 100% of their rights and royalties, and after a free consultation you receive a fixed quote for the work your manuscript actually needs, nothing padded.
What Firearms & Shooting readers expect
Services for Firearms & Shooting authors
Firearms & Shooting on our shelf
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Firearms & Shooting publishing questions
Yes. We publish lawful, safety-first firearms books: marksmanship and defensive training texts, competition guides, hunting books, collecting references, firearms history, gunsmithing within the law, shooter and sniper memoirs, and fiction that needs technical accuracy. Today we provide writing, editing, design and distribution services while you keep full rights.
Mainstream retailers sell many firearms books, including instruction, hunting, history and reference titles. They do apply content policies, and books with illegal or dangerous instructions have been removed in the past. We review your manuscript and metadata against current retailer guidelines before release, frame safety clearly and choose accurate categories so your book is listed and stays listed.
Not for every kind of book. Memoirs, histories, collecting guides and fiction rely on experience and research rather than certificates. For instructional books, credentials matter a great deal to readers, so we recommend stating any instructor certifications, competition results or professional service clearly. If you lack them, a credentialed technical reviewer or co-author can add authority.
A technical reviewer experienced in your discipline reads the full manuscript alongside our editors. They verify calibers, part names, specifications, dates, competition rules and safety practice against manufacturer documentation and reliable historical sources. You receive a marked-up manuscript with clear queries, and nothing in your book changes without your approval.
Yes. We do not publish instructions for illegal modification, conversion or manufacture of firearms, methods for evading the law, or content that encourages violence. We also avoid unsourced reloading data. Within those lines there is a huge range of lawful, valuable work, from beginner marksmanship to century-old military rifles, and we can help reshape borderline material into a compliant form.
It might. Many former military and intelligence personnel signed agreements that require prepublication review, often through the Defense Office of Prepublication and Security Review or their agency's own board. Serving police and military members usually need permission under agency policy. We do not give legal advice, but we help you identify the requirement early and build review time into your schedule.
Cost depends on length, how much writing or editing the manuscript needs, the number of photos and illustrations, and the formats you want. After a free consultation we give you a fixed quote with no hidden fees, so you know the total before work begins. You keep all rights and 100% of your royalties from every sale.
More Action & Expertise genres
Your Firearms book belongs on the shelf
Free consultationFrom the Paladin library
Paladin Press has published practical, expert-led books for decades. A few classics from the back catalog:
