Frequently Asked Questions
Is ordering on your Web site safe?
Yes! To protect your information, all orders are processed on our secure server. For your convenience, you can choose to have us remember your shipping and billing information, but, for your security, we will not save your credit card information.
Will I be charged sales tax?
By law, we must charge state sales tax on all applicable products shipped to customers who are located in Minnesota, California, Texas, and Illinois unless they have a valid sale/use tax-exemption number. If you are not a resident of these four states, you will not be charged sales tax. If you are from one of these four states and have a tax-exempt number, you will be prompted to enter that number during the checkout process.
Can I get a sample copy for review?
Certainly! Institutions (parishes, dioceses, and schools) can request a copy of our Bibles or curriculum for review, and we will be happy to send you a sample pack of that particular title to consider for adoption. For more information, please contact our Customer Care team.
I am a Catholic high school teacher. Can I request complimentary examination copies of textbooks and teaching manuals?
Complimentary copies of textbooks and teaching manuals are available to high school teachers considering materials for classroom adoption. To receive your free examination copy of student texts and teaching manuals, please call our customer care department at 800-533-8095
I would like to reprint a section from a book published by Saint Mary's Press. How do I get permission to do this?
See our Permission Requests page or contact our permissions editor at 800-533-8095. We will need to know what materials and pages you want permission to copy, how the reprint will be used, where the reprint will appear, and how many copies will be made.
How do I navigate the site?
Most of the links on our Web site are underlined. You will also notice your mouse changes when you are hovering over a link. Clicking once on any link will take you to that page. For example, the words at the bottom of this Web page are links for easy access to several Saint Mary's Press Web pages: "Contact Us," "About Saint Mary's Press," "Author Guidelines," "Employment," and "Privacy Statement."
You may also use the navigation bar that appears on the top of the screen to browse by subject, and at any time you may click on the Saint Mary's Press logo in the upper left corner to return to the home page.
Why does it take so long for a Web page to fully appear on my computer screen?
This question cannot be answered easily. It depends not only on how fast your data connection is to your local Internet provider, but also on how many people are trying to access the page, how many people are using the Internet in general, and how much content is on that page.
How can I send a comment or question about any problem I have while using this site?
Click on the "Contact Us" link below and choose how you'd like to contact us. Please feel free to e-mail your comments anytime to smpress@smp.org, or phone our customer care team at 800-533-8095 between 7:30 a.m. and 4:30 p.m. Central Standard Time, Monday through Friday. We welcome your feedback!
How do I find more information about your authors?
Many of our authors have a brief biography and a photo in our Web catalog. To find more information about an author and to see a list of all the titles by that author, type the author's name in the "Quick Search" box. If you are looking at a description of a book in our catalog, click on the underlined author's name to get more information.
What are Web "samplers" of books?
Many of our titles have electronic samplers that can be viewed with Adobe Reader. You can find these samplers by searching for specific titles or topics and clicking into the product description. If the product has an electronic sampler, you will see a "sampler" link on the right side of the screen, under "more information." When you click the "sampler" link for a specific product, you'll get a note that you need Adobe Reader to view the electronic sampler. If you do not have Adobe Reader, or the newest version of Adobe Reader, installed on your computer, you can click on the Adobe icon to download a free copy of the reader for viewing the samplers. If you do not use the newest version of Adobe Reader, the samplers may not display properly on your screen. Even if you are using the newest version, some typefaces may still not display the way they look in the printed book (this is an industry-wide problem, not your computer).
Note that a sampler can take from a few seconds to 30 minutes to download. How long it takes depends on the size of each sampler, the speed of your modem, and how busy your Internet service is. For a large sampler of one megabyte (MB), on an average three-speed modem, estimate 5 to 10 minutes to download.
Once the sampler has loaded onto your screen, you will see a new toolbar for the Adobe Reader. You will see, usually along the top toolbar, the option to "print" the sampler. Another helpful tool (sometimes found at the bottom of the window) is the option to increase or decrease the size of the image on the screen, and another option to "fit to window," which automatically resizes the image so that it fits in the window on your screen.
