Return of the Son of E-Book Maniac

In our last paranoid episode, long-time readers may recall the little SROPites freaked out and smashed our Catalog to smithereens with a hammer, left the shards around to get under peoples' feet, and dove under the roots of a pear tree for the winter.

Now that "spring" is in the air quotes of our fingers if not in the air some places, we've decided to stick our nose back out and sniff the scent of the city. Hmm. It's still a little polluted. But even so, we're feeling slightly less paranoid than we were a few months ago...

A few days ago, perhaps fewer than several, I wondered aloud whether there might be a retailer out there that meets the rigid SROP criteria for excellence, privacy, and non-interference. I was looking for some retailer that upholds the Star Trek prime directive, I suppose. LOL. As predicted, none appeared. Smashwords sent a nice, discouraging and basically unhelpful reply. (And, by the way, after reading their Terms of Service I concluded that like everyone else, they are extremely paranoid about what kinds of erotic fiction they will handle. Just in case you were looking for somewhere the thought police won't find you... that ain't it.)

I learned that DeviantArt might actually work for SROP purposes with their Premium Content facility; except that their Terms of Service exclude certain things that for some reason seem to abound in SROP titles, and I couldn't in good conscience post some books there because they contain, you know, people experiencing "certain things" with the lights on while cameras roll and stuff like that.

Other places, meh. Some charge money to put up catalogs of stuff for the convenience they offer in having shopping cart software. And everyone and their pet monkey wants to interfere in the content of the product. They all have some conformist agenda. They dislike the rogue, the renegade, and apparently the Rodentia.

In the end, it was our friend and commentator PJ who suggested what about Paypal? So that's what we're trying. This experiment may turn out somewhat like a Peabody and Sherman episode, but we'll give it a shot anyway.

We have restored the SROP Catalog to its former glory, with all links intact for paperback versions of everything. But nobody buys paper (even if it's an awesome SROP paperback designed for pleasurable reading without spine bending) when they could make do with electrons... So we have also instituted a SROP in-house fulfillment service. What!? How does that work? Well, after perusing the SROP Catalog you go to the e-book ordering page on the SROP site and use one of our handy Paypal buttons to order e-books. This completely cuts out the middle-people and leaves us in control of the entire content and format. If an order comes in, then we have our delivery rodents scurry about and send each book individually. This is not your standard instant delivery service this is real service in which a sentient creature groks your desire and makes it happen by laying hands upon electrons and e-mailing or uploading, treating each customer with white gloves and a cheery smile. And the books are still cheap—if you live in the USA, you've tipped waiters more for giving worse service, I'm sure.

If you're still looking for free, you could try our Speakeasy service.


And that's how we spent our Saturday Afternoon.