Controlled Exit Through The Basement

In our last exciting episode, we were discussing leakage and pollution, as well as paranoia. Now The Rodent has discovered that some of our titles are showing up on sites like Amazon.co.uk. That makes no sense at all because the books are listed as "unavailable" and have no associated information. And we didn't put them there -- we've even avoided Amazon and other outlets entirely. Why would they include such listings? Same with a few other sites: listings with no relevant information but just saying "unavailable". Oh, some of them offer to e-mail the user when the title becomes available again. Srsly? The titles will never be for sale there.

Furthermore, in Google search results, we find some of our titles listed in the strangest of places. For example, an Australian site that displays one of our beautiful Christine Larsen covers next to a totally unrelated blurb about something else, and a download link that apparently tries to load some virus. WTF? As far as we're concerned, that's just network pollution.

Honestly, we're not luddites; not afraid of technology per se; not out to smash computers or whatever. But stupid is just stupid. The world is running blindfolded into the wind with its tongue hanging out.

Here at SROP, we like to think of ourselves as avant garde underground publishers. We're very snooty and secretive. And now it's time to return to our roots, out of sight, back into our comfortable hobbit hole beneath the forest floor. We've been out in the sun too long, looking for fruit that isn't there. We're burned to a crisp. All five of us have discussed the issues and reached the same conclusion...

The whole public presence catalog book sales blah blah advertise blah blah giveaway blah and try to reach blah blah readers yada yada is not contributing to our overall happiness. We aren't really looking for lots of readers and never have been. We have scoured the places we're willing to go, and have concluded that there aren't any readers in those places. They may be elsewhere, but we're not going to venture any further out of our "comfort zone" to find them. In some ways, we feel like a group of lightweights who have woken up to find themselves hung-over alcoholics and aren't sure how we got here. There exists no audience for SROP books, beyond the individuals involved in production. Why pretend there is?

The search for readers has become too annoying and distracting from our central mission, which is writing books and having fun and putting them on the shelf. We're beginning to fall into the trap of thinking that having readers would somehow validate what we're doing and increase our general happiness quotient. But that's not really the case when the search for that questionable goal consumes energy that would be better directed toward the mission itself. It is better to have written than to have been read. (I can't speak for Broadwick, but like most people, life is depressing enough without adding the possibility of attracting unsympathetic readers by dangling unsuitable books in front of them. I've never "needed" an audience to validate what I'm doing, but I've always dreaded an unsympathetic one.)

Beginning January 1, 2014, we are planning a controlled exit. (No, silly rabbit, we're not suicidal, LOL. Far from it.) After that date, Smashed-Rat-on-Press titles will no longer be available for purchase by the general public. Potential readers will need to work even harder to get one of our books.

We have already removed everything from the SROP "author spotlight" at Lulu.com (our printer), and removed all of the SROP titles from the Lulu.com general catalog. Now they can only be found by knowing the direct URL. We're hoping the search engine results soon stop caching them, and they'll disappear. At the end of the year, we will shunt the SROP general catalog onto a siding by removing the URL pointers to the print editions and whatever EPUB editions are currently for sale. If possible, we'll remove the "official URL" listings for SROP titles here on Goodreads.

We will certainly continue to announce new titles -- one way of parading our vanity, I suppose--and probably post a lot of paranoid rants so our handful of fans can enjoy the glimpses into our zany subterranean world.