Privacy Policy | The Author Office

This is the plain version of what happens to the details you give us. The short of it: we collect only what we need to call you back about your book, we do not sell it, and you can ask us to delete it at any time. The rest of this page walks through each part.

01Who we are and how to reach us

The Author Office (also "we", "us" and "the studio") runs the website at https://theauthoroffice.com. We are a United States book-publishing-services studio for first-time authors: ghostwriting, editing, cover design, typesetting, publishing and distribution, hardcover printing, audiobooks and launch marketing.

This notice covers the website, the consultation form on it, the details you share with us afterwards by email and on the phone, and, if you hire us, the material we collect to make your book. The person responsible for your data at the studio can be reached at hello@theauthoroffice.com. Write to that address with any question, request or complaint about this notice.

02What the consultation form collects

We do not ask you to create an account, and you can read every page of this site without telling us anything. The one place on this website you give us personal information is the consultation form in Scene 09, the call sheet. Here is every field on it and why it is there.

Name: Required. The name you want on the call sheet. If you tried the spine in Scene 01, it is the same name, up to 28 characters.
Email: Required. So we can confirm the call and send you a written proposal.
Phone: Required. So a producer can call you. We ask for a number with the area code.
Tell us about your book: Required. At least one line, up to 600 characters, on what your book is and where you are with it. Please leave out anything you would not put in an ordinary email.
Where are you?: One of three answers: finished manuscript, partly written, or just the story. You may leave it blank.
What kind of book?: Memoir, legacy or business book, novel, family history, or not sure yet. You may leave it blank.
Best time to call: Morning, afternoon or evening.
Consent box: Your yes to being contacted by phone, text or email about your book. The form will not send without it. If you would rather not tick it, skip the form and email us instead; see Calls, texts and email below.
A hidden Company field: People are not shown this one. It is a trap for spam robots: a person does not normally fill it, robots do. If it is filled, the form pretends to send and sends nothing at all. If your browser fills forms for you automatically and your call sheet seems to go nowhere, email us instead.

When you press the button, the form sends those answers to our server. Our server adds the name of this website as the source and the date and time it received them, trims each answer to a sensible length, and checks that the name, email, phone and consent are present before it does anything else.

What we do not collect on this site

No account, username or password.
No payment or card details. Nothing is paid through this site; payment happens later, by the method set out in your written proposal.
No manuscript. There is nowhere on this site to upload a file.
No location tracking, no social-media logins, no advertising identifiers.

If you become a client

After the call, we collect what the project needs and nothing more: your manuscript, notes and photographs if you send them; interview recordings if we are ghostwriting your book; studio recordings if we are producing your audiobook; a postal address if we are sending you proofs or printed books; and the billing details your written proposal calls for. Payment is made by the method set out in your proposal, never through this website. All of it is used only to make and deliver your book, and it stays yours; see the Terms of Service for who owns what.

03Technical data the hosting provider logs

Like almost every website, this one is served by a hosting provider: Vercel Inc., with servers in the United States. To deliver the pages, their servers keep ordinary request logs: your IP address, the type of browser and device you use, the pages you asked for, the time you asked, and the page that sent you here, if any. We do not add tracking of our own on top of that.

This site does not use analytics tools, advertising pixels or social-media buttons, and it sets no cookies of its own. Our fonts are packaged with the site and served from our own hosting, so your browser does not call a fonts service to display this page.

04Why we use it

To call you back: Your name, phone, email and best time to call tell us who to ring and when.
To prepare a written proposal: What you tell us about your book, its stage and its kind lets a producer come to the call prepared and write a proposal for the services you actually need.
To make your book: If you become a client, your manuscript, notes, interview and session recordings, and delivery address are used to write, produce, print and deliver your book, and for nothing else.
To run the website: The hosting provider's request logs keep the site working, let us notice outages and attacks, and stop the spam robots the hidden field catches.
To meet legal duties: To keep the records a business must keep and to answer lawful requests.

We do not use your details to build a profile of you, to make automated decisions about you, or to show you advertising.

05How it is shared

Your call-sheet answers travel one of two ways:

When our inbox is connected, our server forwards your answers to a delivery service (an automation or messaging tool) that places them in the studio's inbox or customer list. We use that service only to get your answers to a producer, who reads them and calls you.
When it is not yet connected, the server cannot deliver your answers. A copy of them stays in the hosting provider's logs for the provider's short standard retention period and is then discarded. We may never see it, so the form tells you that your answers could not be delivered and asks you to email us instead. The same happens if a delivery fails on the way. If you would rather your copy were not there, email us and we will ask the provider to remove it as far as it allows. A lead that is delivered is not written to those logs.

The website itself, and the server that receives the form, are hosted by Vercel Inc., with servers in the United States. Your answers then live in the delivery tool, our email and our customer list, which are separate providers from our host. We also rely on professional advisers where the law requires it. Each of these providers is a separate company with its own security and privacy terms; we choose tools built for business use, we give them nothing beyond what the work needs, and if you ask we will tell you which ones we use at the time.

If you become a client, the material your project needs is shared only with the printers, narrators, retailers, distributors and other partners your proposal names, so they can produce and distribute your book, as the Terms of Service describe. Payments are handled by a payment processor, and if you dispute a charge we share with your card issuer and that processor the parts of your proposal, delivery record and correspondence the dispute needs, as the Refund & Cancellation Policy explains.

Beyond those, we would disclose personal information only if the law or a court required it, or to protect someone from harm. If the studio were ever sold or merged, your details would pass to the new owner under this same notice, and we would tell you first.

06How long we keep it

We keep your call-sheet answers while we are talking with you about your book and, if you become a client, for as long as we need them to serve you and to keep the records a business must keep. Interview and session recordings are kept with your project files for as long as the project needs them. If you do not go ahead, our aim is to review old leads at least once a year and delete the ones that went nowhere.

You do not have to wait. Email us and we will delete your details on request, as described under Your rights below. The hosting provider keeps its request and deployment logs only for its short standard period and then discards them.

07Browser storage

This site sets no cookies of its own. It does use a small piece of your browser's memory called session storage, which your browser ordinarily wipes when you close the tab. Four keys exist. Three of them (your name, stage and kind of book) go with the call sheet if you send it; the fourth is never sent:

tao_seen: Remembers that the opening title plate has already played or been skipped in this tab, so it does not play again when you return to the home page.
tao_name: The name you typed on the spine in Scene 01, so the rest of the film can use it and the call sheet can fill it in for you.
tao_stage: Your answer to "Where are you?", so it carries through to the call sheet.
tao_genre: Your answer to "What kind of book?", so it carries through to the call sheet.

Closing the tab ordinarily removes all four, and clearing your browser's site data always does. There is more detail in our Cookie Notice.

Beyond the hosting logs described above, no third party collects information about you here, and we do not track you across other websites, so a browser's Do Not Track or Global Privacy Control signal changes nothing on this site today. If that ever changes, we will treat Global Privacy Control as an opt-out and say so here first.

08Calls, texts and email

When you tick the box on the call sheet you agree that we may contact you by phone, text message or email about your book. That consent is not a condition of buying anything from us: you can book a consultation and decline texts, just tell the producer. If you would rather not tick the box at all, skip the form and email us at hello@theauthoroffice.com; we will still call you. Message and data rates from your carrier may apply to texts.

The box asks for your permission to be contacted about your book. It does not ask you to agree to automated or prerecorded marketing calls or texts, and we do not send them. If we ever use an automated texting system, we will change the wording of the box and update this notice first, so that what you agreed to is always what we do.

To stop texts, reply STOP to any message from us, or email us. We will send one confirmation and then nothing more.
For help with texts, reply HELP to any message from us, or email us. How often we text depends on where you are in the conversation about your book. Your mobile number and your text opt-in are never shared with anyone for their own marketing.
To stop emails, reply with the word unsubscribe, or email us. If we ever send marketing emails with an unsubscribe link, that link works too. Emails about an active project, such as proofs, schedules and invoices, continue until the work is finished.
To stop calls, tell the producer on the phone, or email us, and we will take your number off our call list.

We call during ordinary hours and we try to use the time of day you chose. We do not record the free consultation call. If you hire us to ghostwrite your book or produce an audiobook, interviews and studio sessions are recorded, because that is how the book gets written; we tell you before the recorder starts, the recordings are used only to make your book, and they are kept with your project files for as long as the project needs them.

Opt-out requests by email go to hello@theauthoroffice.com. Our aim is to act on them within a few business days, and sooner where we can.

09Your rights

Whoever you are and wherever you live, you can ask us to:

Tell you what personal information we hold about you and where it came from.
Correct anything that is wrong.
Delete it.
Stop contacting you.
Send you a copy of what you gave us.

To do any of these, email hello@theauthoroffice.com. To delete your details or to stop contact, it is enough to write from the address you gave us, or to tell us the name, email and phone number on your call sheet so we can find the right record. To receive a copy of what we hold, or to be told what it says, we send it only to the email address on your call sheet, never to a different one, so write from that address or ask us to send it there. We will not ask for more unless a request is unusual. We aim to confirm we have your request within two business days, as with any email, and in any case within ten business days, and to complete it within forty-five days (within one month if you are in the EU or UK). If we need longer, we will say so and why.

California residents

If you live in California, the CCPA and CPRA give you the right to know what personal information we collect and why, to delete it, to correct it, to opt out of its sale or sharing, and to limit the use of sensitive personal information. We do not sell or share personal information as those laws define it, so there is nothing to opt out of; you may still tell us to stop. We do not ask for sensitive personal information. If you include some in the lines about your book, we use it only to prepare for your call and for nothing else, which is a use the law allows without a separate opt-out; you may still ask us to delete it. The categories we collect are the ones listed under What the consultation form collects: your name and contact details, what you tell us about your book, and, if you become a client, the material your project needs.

An authorized agent may make a request for you. We will ask for written permission signed by you, and we may confirm the request with you directly. We will never treat you differently for exercising a right: same service, same price, same care.

Other US states

Several other states have privacy laws with similar rights. Whether or not they apply to a studio of our size, we extend the same rights to everyone. Ask by email and we will act. If we have to refuse a request, we will say why, and you may ask us to reconsider.

Children

This site is for adults writing their own books. It is not directed to children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 18. If you believe a minor has sent us the call sheet, email us and we will delete it.

10Visitors outside the United States

We offer our services to authors in the United States and do not market to people in the European Union or the United Kingdom. Anyone can read this site, though, and if you write to us from there anyway, we extend the following to you voluntarily.

Why we may use your details: We use your call-sheet answers because you asked us to contact you (your consent) and to take the steps that come before a possible contract. We rely on the hosting logs because we have a legitimate interest in running a secure website. We keep business records where the law requires it.
What you can ask: Access (see what we hold), correction, erasure, restriction (pause our use of it), portability (a copy you can take elsewhere), objection (tell us to stop), and the right to withdraw consent at any time. Withdrawing does not undo anything we did before. You may also complain to your local data-protection authority.
Where your details go: Your details come to the United States, where our servers are. US law may protect them differently from your own. We keep the amount of data small, use it only to call you back and prepare a proposal, and delete it when you ask.

Requests from outside the United States go to the same address: hello@theauthoroffice.com.

11Security, in honest terms

Everything between your browser and this site travels over HTTPS. Your call-sheet answers go only to the places described above, and only the people at the studio who need them to call you, and the providers described above, can see them. We keep the amount of data small, which is the best protection there is.

No method of sending or storing information is perfect, and we cannot promise that nothing will ever go wrong. If a breach affected your personal information, we would tell you, and the authorities, as the law requires.

12Changes to this notice, and how to reach us

This notice is effective as of the date at the top of the page. When we change it, we will update that date, and for any change that matters we will say at the top what changed. If a change would let us use your details in a new way, we will ask you before it applies to you.

Questions, requests or complaints: email hello@theauthoroffice.com, or use the call sheet at /#consult. The rest of the fine print lives in the Terms of Service, the Refund & Cancellation Policy, the Cookie Notice, the Accessibility Statement and the Contact page.