Privacy Policy

1. Information We Collect

We collect the following types of information to create and deliver personalized books:

1.1 Personal Information You Provide

We may collect your name, both the recipient's name (for gift books) and your own. Your email address is collected for communication purposes, order confirmations, digital delivery of your book, and occasional follow-up emails related to your order or experience with our services. Your shipping address is required for physical book delivery. During the book creation process, we collect story details, preferences, and personalization information you provide. If you choose to upload images for your book cover or dedication page, we will collect those as well.

1.2 Payment Information

We collect payment details, including billing and shipping addresses. Payment processing is handled securely by Stripe. We do not store your complete payment information directly as it is handled entirely by our payment processor.

1.3 Cookies and Local Storage

We use cookies and local storage on our website for the following purposes:

• Essential Cookies: These are necessary for the website to function properly. They include session management and authentication cookies provided by our hosting platform (Supabase), as well as local storage used to save your book creation progress so you can resume if interrupted.
• Analytics Cookies: We use PostHog to understand how visitors interact with our website. This helps us identify areas for improvement and enhance the user experience. Analytics data is used in aggregate form and is not sold to third parties.
• Marketing Cookies: We use Meta Pixel (Facebook Pixel) to measure the effectiveness of our advertising campaigns and to deliver relevant ads. This technology may collect information about your browsing activity on our website and share it with Meta (Facebook) for ad targeting and measurement purposes.

2. How We Use Your Information

The information we collect is used strictly for:

• Creating and personalizing your book using AI technology
• Generating custom book covers based on your preferences
• Sending order confirmations and digital copies of your book
• Sending follow-up emails related to your order, including reminders if an order is not completed
• Processing secure payments through Stripe
• Printing and shipping physical books to your specified address
• Providing customer support and responding to inquiries
• Improving our services and user experience

We do not sell or rent your data. We may use your email to send order-related follow-ups and service communications. You can opt out of non-essential emails at any time using the unsubscribe link included in every email.

3. Sharing Information with Third Parties

We only share your information with trusted third parties essential to fulfilling your order:

• Printing & Shipping (Lulu): We share necessary details such as your name, address, and book content, including any photograph used on your cover, with our print-on-demand partner to produce and deliver your physical book. Lulu processes this information as our data processor under Lulu's Data Processing Addendum.
• Payment Processing (Stripe): Payments are securely processed through Stripe, which complies with industry-leading encryption and security standards.
• AI Services (OpenAI, Anthropic): Story content and the preferences you provide are processed through our AI providers to generate your book. Any photograph you upload is processed by OpenAI to generate your cover artwork.
• Email Delivery (Resend): We share your email address and order details in order to send order confirmations, delivery notifications, and support correspondence.
• Error Monitoring (Sentry): Technical diagnostic data, which may include limited account identifiers, is processed so that we can detect and fix faults in our service.
• Advertising Measurement (Meta, TikTok): We share hashed identifiers derived from your email address and, where you provide one, your phone number, so that we can measure the performance of our advertising. These identifiers are irreversibly hashed before they are sent.
• Analytics (PostHog): Usage data is processed to help us understand how visitors interact with our website.
• Hosting (Vercel & Supabase): Your data is securely stored on industry-leading cloud platforms with robust security measures.
• Performance Monitoring (Vercel Speed Insights): Page load measurements are collected to help us keep the site fast. This is cookieless and is not used to identify you or to follow you between pages: it records the page address, your connection speed, and your browser, device, operating system and country.

We share your information only with the providers listed above, and only as necessary to operate our services and fulfill your order. We do not sell your personal information.

4. Data Usage and Responsibility

We collect and use your personal information strictly for the purpose of creating and delivering your personalized book. Your information is stored when you create an account or place an order, and it is used solely to process your payment, create your personalized book, and ship your order. We retain draft information to allow you to resume book creation at any time. If you have questions about the information you provided or require assistance, please contact us.

5. Data Retention and Security

Personal data is stored securely to track orders, facilitate future orders, and ensure service quality. Our website operates over HTTPS, ensuring all data transmitted between you and our servers is encrypted. All data is stored on secure platforms (Supabase) with industry-standard encryption and access controls. You may request deletion of your account and associated data by contacting our support team.

Photographs. See the section below, which sets out how we handle photographs specifically.

Photographs and Images

To create your cover, you upload a photograph of yourself or of the person the book is about. Because a photograph of a face can identify a specific individual, we treat uploaded images as sensitive personal information, and we handle them as set out here.

Your consent, and the consent of the person shown. By uploading an image you consent to our processing it, and to our sharing it with the AI provider that generates your cover artwork and with our printing partner. You also confirm that you are an adult, that you hold the permission of every identifiable person appearing in the image, and that where the person shown is under 18 you are their parent or legal guardian or hold that parent or guardian's permission.

Your images are not used to train AI models. We use our AI providers through their commercial APIs, under terms which provide that content submitted this way is not used to train or improve their models. We do not sell your images, and we do not use them in our marketing without your separate, express permission.

How long we keep them. We keep your photograph for as long as you have an account with us, so that you can order additional copies or create another book without having to upload it again. We do not use it for any purpose other than creating and producing your books.

We will delete it as soon as you ask us to. We will also delete it without you having to ask, no later than three (3) years after your last interaction with us. We may keep a record of the cover that was printed, and the order details associated with it, so that we can establish what was produced if a question arises later.

Deleting an image. You may ask us to delete an uploaded photograph at any time by contacting support@betheauthor.com. If the person shown in an image contacts us and objects to its use, we will delete it and may decline to produce or reproduce the book. Where a book has already been printed, deleting the photograph from our systems does not recall copies that have already been manufactured or delivered.

6. Your Rights

Depending on your location, you may have certain rights regarding your personal data, including:

• The right to access your personal information
• The right to correct inaccurate information
• The right to request deletion of your data
• The right to object to certain processing activities
• The right to data portability

To exercise any of these rights, please contact us at support@betheauthor.com.

7. Legal Compliance

BeTheAuthor strives to comply with applicable privacy laws, including GDPR for European users and CCPA for California residents. If additional regulations become applicable to our business, we will update this policy accordingly and notify users of any significant changes.

8. Children's Privacy

BeTheAuthor is intended for users aged 18 and older. While our platform can be used to create children's books, the service itself is designed for adult users. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under the age of 13.

Books about children. Our service can be used to create a book about a child, which means we may receive a child's name, photograph, and personal details from the adult placing the order. Where you provide us with information about a child, you confirm that you are that child's parent or legal guardian, or that you have their parent or legal guardian's permission, as set out in our Terms of Service. A parent or guardian may contact us at any time to access, correct, or delete information we hold about their child.

If we become aware that we have collected personal information from a child under 13 without verification of parental consent, we will take steps to promptly delete that information from our servers.

If you are a parent or guardian and believe that your child under 13 has provided personal information to us, please contact us at support@betheauthor.com so we can take appropriate action.

9. Policy Updates

This Privacy Policy may be updated periodically to reflect changes in our practices or legal requirements. Significant updates will be communicated through our website. Updates will include a new effective date at the top of the policy. We encourage you to review this Privacy Policy periodically to stay informed about how we protect your data.

10. Contact Us

For any questions or concerns regarding this Privacy Policy, please contact us:

• Email: support@betheauthor.com
• Contact Form: Contact Us Page

We are committed to addressing your inquiries transparently and promptly.