This notice explains what The Author Office does, and does not do, with cookies and other storage in your browser when you visit theauthoroffice.com. We have written it to match the site as it is built today, and we will change it before the site changes. If you want the full picture of how we handle personal information, read the Privacy Policy; this page covers only what happens inside your browser.
02What this site uses today
The honest answer is: almost nothing. Our own code sets no cookies. There is no analytics (a tool that counts and traces visits), no advertising pixel (an invisible image an ad network uses to recognize you), no social-media button that reports back to its network, no embedded video or map, and no chat widget. The pages are built in advance and served as plain files, and the only scripts that run are our own: they animate the site, run the consultation form, and glance at how fast your device is so the animation can be toned down on slower ones. That check happens on your device and is never reported to us.
Because there are no tracking cookies, there is no cookie banner. We would rather not ask you to click "accept" on something that does not exist.
03The four notes we keep in your browser
The home page is built like a short film. While it is open, the scenes share what you typed in the page's own memory. So that a reload, or a visit to one of these appendix pages and back, does not make you start over, the site also writes four small values to your browser's session storage. They stay on your device, and none of them is sent anywhere unless you send the consultation form in Scene 09; then the name, stage and kind of book you chose go with it, as described in section 05.
Ordinarily they vanish when the tab closes; if your browser restores a closed tab, it may bring these four values back with it.
- tao_seen
- Set to "1" once the opening title sequence has played, or been skipped (it is also set if you land on one of these appendix pages before the home page, or if your device asks for reduced motion). On your next page load in the same tab the opening is skipped so you are not made to sit through it again. It holds no information about you.
- tao_name
- The name you type into the "Your name as it will appear on the spine" box on the home page, so the book in later scenes can show it. It is capped at 28 characters and stays on this page, exactly as the caption under the box says. It is not sent anywhere until you fill in the consultation form and press send.
- tao_stage
- Which stage you chose for your book (finished manuscript, partly written, or just the story), so the page can keep that choice as you scroll. It goes with the form if you send it.
- tao_genre
- The kind of book you chose (memoir, legacy or business book, novel, family history, or not sure yet), for the same reason. It goes with the form if you send it.
Everything else you can play with on the page, such as the cloth, foil, jacket and ribbon choices in the printing scene, the day-and-night tone, and the motion setting, lives only in the page's memory while it is open. Reload the page and those choices start fresh.
If your browser blocks storage, for example in a private window, the site still works. The opening sequence may simply play again, and if you reload the page or come back to it from another page, the name and choices you made will not be remembered.
04Fonts, scripts and third parties
The typefaces on this site are packaged with the site itself when it is built and served from the same place as the pages. Your browser does not make a request to Google Fonts or any other font service while you read, so no font provider sees your visit.
No third-party script runs on this site. The animation library and the scrolling library are part of our own code and do not contact anyone. There are no social-media embeds (pieces of another company's site placed inside ours), no advertising networks, no customer-chat tools and no tag managers (tools that load other companies' trackers).
05What happens when you send the consultation form
The form is the one moment the site sends anything you typed anywhere, and it only does so when you press the button. It sends your name, email address, phone number, a line about your book, where you are with it, the kind of book, the time of day you prefer to be called, and your consent to be contacted, together with the time it arrived. The form also contains a hidden "company" field that people never see; if a bot fills it in, the submission is quietly discarded.
Our server checks the submission, then passes it to the studio through a webhook (an automatic hand-off from our server to our inbox or the contact list we keep) when one is configured. If that connection is not set up, or the hand-off fails, the page tells you plainly that nothing was sent and asks you to email us instead. In both cases our server also writes what you typed into our hosting provider's private logs, which the provider keeps for its own standard period and then discards. If you would rather it were not there, email us and we will ask for it to be removed as far as the provider allows. None of this sets a cookie. How we then use and keep what you sent is described in the Privacy Policy.
06What our hosting provider may log
The site is hosted by Vercel Inc., with servers in the United States. Like any web host, it may keep ordinary server logs of each request: the page asked for, the time, your IP address, your browser type and the page that sent you here. These logs exist to run the service, keep it secure and diagnose problems. We do not use them to build a profile of you, and we do not combine them with anything you type into the site.
We do not control our host's own cookie or data practices, and we have not turned on any of its optional analytics products. If we do, this notice will say so first.
07If we add analytics or advertising later
We may one day want to know which pages people read or whether an advertisement brought them here. If that day comes, we commit to doing three things before any analytics tool or advertising pixel goes live on theauthoroffice.com:
- Update this notice with the name of the tool, what it collects and how long it keeps it.
- Give you a real control: a way to say no to any cookie that is not strictly necessary to run the site, and a way to change your mind later.
- Treat a browser's Global Privacy Control signal as a request to opt out of any sale of your information, or sharing of it for advertising, in the way California's privacy law describes, whether or not that law applies to a studio our size.
08How to clear or block browser storage
The simplest way to clear what this site keeps is to close the tab: session storage is ordinarily wiped automatically. If you would like to clear it sooner, or block storage altogether, every major browser lets you. The menus move around between versions, but the path is usually one of these:
- Chrome: Settings, then Privacy and security, then Delete browsing data, and tick "Cookies and other site data".
- Safari (Mac): Safari menu, then Settings, then Privacy, then Manage Website Data. On iPhone and iPad: Settings, then Safari, then Advanced, then Website Data.
- Firefox: Settings, then Privacy & Security, then Cookies and Site Data, then Clear Data.
- Edge: Settings, then Privacy, search, and services, then Clear browsing data.
Most browsers also let you block storage for a single site, or for every site, in the same settings area. Blocking storage here will not break the site; see section 03 for what changes.
09Do Not Track and Global Privacy Control
Some browsers can send a "Do Not Track" setting or a Global Privacy Control signal to every site you visit. We want to be straight with you about what those signals mean here: today there is nothing to turn off. We do not track you across websites, we do not sell your personal information or share it for advertising, and we set no cookies, so the signal has no effect because there is no tracking for it to act on.
If we ever add a tracker, we will treat a Global Privacy Control signal as a valid request to opt out of any sale of your information, or sharing of it for advertising. We will say so here, and we will update the Privacy Policy to match.
10Changes to this notice
When we change this notice, we will change the date at the top of the page. If the change is more than a correction, for example because a new tool is added, we will make it before the tool goes live. The current version is always the one on this page.
11Contact
Questions about cookies, browser storage, or anything on this page can go to hello@theauthoroffice.com. For how quickly we reply, see the Contact page. For questions about your personal information more broadly, including your rights under California and other privacy laws, start with the Privacy Policy.