Yeah, chances are most of their titles will never be published as printed books, anymore. The rights are all being reverted back to the authors.
That means the authors now have to try and shop their books around and that ain't going to be pretty. Most will probably turn to online publishing, specifically Amazon Kindle.
Many of the books can easily be found online in .pdf format, already. Up until a couple of years ago, Paladin aggressively enforced their publishers/printing rights. Recently, that has gone by the wayside as they slowly and inevitably faded away.
Part of their problem was the decision to sell directly to Amazon. Originally, they only sold through their website or over the phone through ads in magazines and via catalog. They then went and sold to dealers who quickly turned online to Amazon and Ebay. For the longest time, Paladin did not sell through Amazon. They were too "nichey" for Amazon's tastes.
Up until 2005, you could seldom find any "New" Paladin Books online. Most were resold by individuals or second-hand book stores. Then one company went and opened the "niche" and sold Paladin books brand new via Amazon. From 2006 until around 2012, they were the only consistent sellers of Paladin's entire catalog on Amazon. In 2012, however, others started selling and then two things happened: First, larger international sellers, usually a quiet division of book distributors who would sell the books online, took notice and started selling. About the same time, Amazon came forward to Paladin and offered to carry the titles, directly.
This led to a major price war. With only one or two sellers, the prices of Paladin's books and DVD's remained within 10-15% of the retail prices. When Amazon started selling, though, those prices dropped practically overnight to around 50% to 45% of advertised retail cost.
Paladin was never set up to sell high volumes of books at wholesale prices. With more and more people buying directly from Amazon and with Paladin's own inability to compete with their own customers, profits took a MASSIVE nosedive. Add in some of Amazon's back-handed tactics such as not paying within the promised time or (my personal favorite):
Amazon might place one order for, say, 100 books of each title. The agreement Amazon generally makes is that they'll keep those books for 90 days and then return whatever doesn't sell. In both cases, the publisher has to eat the shipping costs.
So, Amazon will then say they will take 90 days to pay from the final date. They will tally up how many sold in that time and remit payment 90 days after they ship the books back. Meanwhile, 30 days before the original 90 days is up, they'll place another order for 100 books of each title and want them there a week or more before the original order is sent back (otherwise, there may be a gap in sales). So, the publisher then has to ship another 100 titles out. They won't get paid for AT LEAST 180 days from the original order, but will end up carrying a minimum of two large purchases, plus the shipping and handling.
And THEN, they have to try and compete with Amazon's prices. For example, The Ultimate Sniper retailed at $71 + Shipping and Handling if you purchased it directly from Paladin. After Amazon started carrying it, they dropped the price IMMEDIATELY to around $42 + Free Shipping. Several of the larger sellers dropped prices lower than that to compete with Amazon's back-stabbing listing policy of posting their prices first unless the other sellers' prices were cheaper than their price, minus the $3.99 shipping and handling fee (In other words, Amazon's prices would always be at the top at, say, $42. If another seller had the lower price of $40.99, it would still not lead the listing. Only a seller who had a price of $38 ($42 minus $3.99 and minus an additional penny) would show above the Amazon price. Amazon justified this by claiming that they were giving free shipping, so the $40.99 was still more expensive than what they offered).
Now, imagine a publishing house who had to carry half a year's sales consistently AND lost their retail sales to the people they were providing books to.
Paladin once had a massive 30,000 square foot facility just outside Boulder, Colorado and had upwards, IIRC, of 20 employees. Just before the owner died, I believe they had something like six people crammed into an 1100 square foot rented facility in town and resorted to having a single distributor do most of their storage and shipping.
This was, in my professional opinion, inevitable. Amazon has destroyed the print publishing industry as was evidenced about 5-7 years ago with many of the major publishing houses closing their doors. Most of them had their business plans based upon direct consumer sales. It was originally unimaginable that the consumer would be able to buy their books at 30%-50% off even on release day.
Some publishers were able to adapt and continue on, but not many. Paladin, in my personal opinion, seemed to refuse to adapt even though they were given answers on how to fix their problem (the answer was simple: stop selling directly to Amazon). But, several people were of the opinion that when Amazon finally did pay, it was a rather large sum of money and the powers-that-were at Paladin were afraid of losing it.
Additionally, the owner(s) of Paladin were getting old. They had barely weathered the Hit Man lawsuit of 1999 and were unable to quickly sell their aforementioned 30,000 square-foot facility, even at a time when storage space was at a ridiculous premium in Colorado due to the new pot laws.
Many of the original upper management left Paladin starting about 2012. At the end, it was (to the best of my knowledge) only the owner and his wife making the final decisions. They seemed to stubbornly stick to their 1980's heyday direct sales plan, doing what they had to do to keep a healthy check coming in. But, their products were still based upon a 30-40 year old concept and it seemed they almost refused to bring it into the 21st Century (e.g., better video editing techniques, new product lines, different advertising venues, etc.).
Don't get me wrong, they were not bad people. In fact the owner was, IIRC, originally an American Special Forces Advisor in Viet Nam and did some merc work for a while. He did a lot of stuff with Robert K. Brown, the owner of Soldier of Fortune magazine back in the 60's, 70's and 80's that was, to many, real alpha-male stuff. He was also an all-around nice guy, especially to his friends. But, sometimes inertia is hard to fight, especially when you're not open-minded enough to change a way of doing things that have been done a certain way for over 40 years.
I'm sad to see them go, but not surprised. They lasted two more years than I originally predicted under their own momentum. Grab their books, it's doubtful you'll ever see some of them, again.
Just some random thoughts from a person who was once in a position to know these things.
The Professor
