This is a fact-packed, paranoiac posting in lieu of a FAQ, because almost nobody gets far enough to read the FAQ page. But most of our potential readers trip over us on Goodreads, so it's worth posting this to clarify things.

Looking for a SROP Book?

First, you should ask yourself if you specifically want a book from Smashed-Rat-on-Press, or if you want something else, because there are a zillion more fish in the sea.

SROP is a small-time hobbyist outfit that offers contraptions (not products), and we offer them at the cost of production, or less. SROP books have never been available through the "big" e-book distribution channels such as Amazon, B&N, Kobo, Smashwords, and so forth. But at the end of 2013 we took the unprecented step of removing the books even from the Lulu.com public search space. We took down the SROP spotlight page and delisted all the ordering URLs.

We had no public catalog that pointed at our offerings, and they are still rather difficult to find. You have to know where to look. We're about as far underground as we can get and still breathe. (But we have sneakily left "official URL" pointers on Goodreads for each of the SROP paperback books currently in print via Lulu.com. So if you want to spend money on paper books, you can check those URLs which go directly to individual pages at Lulu.com, our "printing service". We do not generally advise potential readers to go that route, and it is of no financial benefit to us. But you will also find book previews there, and that's the only place you can "look inside" a SROP book without either buying a copy or obtaining an e-book from us.)

You will not find our e-books for sale anywhere except directly on the SROP site, through our RED and GREEN catalog pages or our e-book ordering page. This is the twenty-first century and the wave of the future is in electronic books, so of course we have them. All books in the SROP catalog are available in EPUB/MOBI format, but you can't buy them just anywhere. We don't sell them elsewhere. Sometimes we even have to send them to potential readers individually.

Can I Get a Free Sample of a SROP Book?

Yes! If you visit the Lulu.com page for any of our books (by clicking on the book cover in our catalog), you can see a free preview. If you want more of a downloadable sample from the printed edition of any book, we do have a free SAMPLES page here. When you click on that link it will ask for a pass word, so you just enter the word "srop" in both of the fields. Then you can look at the sample PDF files available. If a sample isn't enough, please keep reading...

How Can I Get a Whole SROP Book?

Sometimes people actually ask that question, believe it or not. Welcome to the nuthouse.

Now that our e-book ordering page is online, along with our handy RED and GREEN catalog pages, you can just order e-books that way and pay for them. But please be aware of all the fine print on the ordering page! Oh, wait, you want a free e-book? Please read on...

We're well aware that not every book is suitable for every person, but most SROP books are less suitable than many books for a general audience. So we make them difficult to accidentally obtain and read. (The Rodent originally ended up on Goodreads not to flaunt SROP books but merely to fix some incorrect bibliographic data that mysteriously arrived there; and then, like a needy guest, we stayed for the fine company.)

Can You Tell Me About Free SROP books?

If you're still interested in obtaining one of our books for free, please remember that we have to think about it on a case-by-case basis. We're never really sure if we want people to wander in off the streets of Laredo and read these books anyway. (We're not professionals, remember? And they're not suitable books for most readers.)

If you just ask us for a free book and you meet the following criteria, we'll consider sending an e-book to you, absolutely free of charge:

1. You are over 30 years of age and (for the most part) live in North America.

What!? Why? The age restriction is to assure ourselves of your maturity. Like when you go into a rowdy bar and they have a sign posted saying if you look like you're under 40 they'll card you. Because many of our books are bannable, censorable, or punishable in some countries or jurisdictions, we will not send certain e-books outside North America. (There are even places in North America where we won't send e-books, but that's a different story. On rare occasions, we're sorry to turn down eager readers, but mostly this policy makes no difference to anyone.) For specific restrictions that we impose on distribution per book, please see our Imprints Page, which has the key to images used in our general catalog.

2. You have read and understood the SROP Disclosure Statement in its entirety.

Why? Because we don't want readers to have heart attacks or automobile accidents when they get into a SROP book and discover something they find really objectionable, shocking, heretical, or gross, and then come back to tell us they had no idea what might be in the book. If you grok the disclaimer, you'll know the outer limits.

3. You plan to try reading the book within 3 days of receipt.

Why? Sorry to say, we're tired of giving away books that just go onto peoples' disk drives or e-readers (or physical shelves, for that matter) and never get read. We've given away hundreds of books, physical and electronic, and we almost never hear back from people who get them. That's pouring atoms into a black hole and not worth the hassle because we're not professionals who are trying to infect lots of disks with our books, or squeeze them into lots of eyeballs. Please waste your space on something else, and don't waste our time if you aren't even going to attempt to read the book we sent.

4. You are not a journalist or member of the press.

Why? We like being under our rock, even if we do invite friends in occasionally. We do not make press statements or give interviews; we're paranoid a lot; we despise bright lights; and we don't like to be mentioned, even obliquely, in any trade rags because we're not professionals trying to duke it out in the market place with big-muscled publishers. OK, we'll make exceptions for readers who just have a casual fun-blog, as long as it's not some big review blog with a lot of readers.

If you made it this far, you might yet arrive at the goal of having a SROP book in hand... And we won't even make you sit through a word from our sponsor. We have no sponsors, and hope never to have any. We're not trying to make money from you, or push other peoples' products on you.

If we decide to send you a book under the conditions above, you are under no obligation to do anything with it. You don't have to read it, or like it, or review it, or anything else. We never ask or require people to review books we send. But we do ask that you at least make an attempt to read it. If you don't like it, fine; stop reading. Throw it away. Eat some ice cream instead. Life is too short to waste on icky books, and we know that. You won't be out any money, so we won't feel as if we're smarmy sales-creatures who tricked you into buying some inferior shoddy Earthling product. And we won't feel like we've wasted our time and energy getting the book into your hands. In simple terms: if we send you a thing, you agree to taste it. You can spit it out if it's crap. Is that fair? (Oh, but also... If we send an e-book, we do ask you not to sell or give it away to anyone else, so please see the FAQ page.)

Oh, so your original question has not yet been answered? To obtain a SROP title, you simply send us a message or e-mail and make a request. We will need to know which book you want, whether you require EPUB (for most devices) or MOBI (for Kindle), and whether you'd like fries or onion rings or neither.