Ronin_Publishing
Ronin Publishing
American book publisher
Ronin Publishing, Inc. is a small press in Berkeley, California, founded in 1983 and incorporated in 1985, which publishes books as tools for personal development, visionary alternatives, and expanded consciousness. The company's tagline is "Life Skills with Attitude!" In a 1996 Publishers Weekly profile, the company describes itself as a "strong player in the hemp and psychedelia market" that has little competition from major publishers.[2]
Ronin's catalog includes the Leary Library,[3][4] The Lilly Library, The Fringe Series,[5] The Entheo-Spirituality Series, and various books on psychedelia.
The company has been subpoenaed by the Drug Enforcement Administration to provide names and addresses for people having purchased their books on marijuana horticulture.[6][7][8] A number of their books are reprints of out-of-print works from the 1960s and 1970s — including a number of titles published by Ronin's predecessor, And/Or Press[9] — on the psychedelic experience and related subjects.
In 2006, Ronin republished the 1963 Discordian religious text Principia Discordia with altered text, altered images, and a new name, so Ronin could copyright the work. This action offended many fans of the original work,[10] whose authors, Greg Hill (Malaclypse the Younger) and Kerry Thornley, had died several years previously. Malaclypse the Younger, et el purposefully put their book, Principle Discordia into the public domain outside of copyright. Beverly Potter then created a derivative of the work, as she did with eleven Timothy Leary and three John C. Lilly works.