This is how The Author Office handles your money if a project pauses, changes, or stops. We wrote it to be read, not skimmed. If anything here is unclear, email hello@theauthoroffice.com and a person will answer.
01The Principle
The consultation is free. After it, you receive a written proposal that lists the services you chose, the milestones they are delivered in, the schedule, and the price. Nothing is charged until you have that proposal and have signed it.
Payments follow the milestones in the proposal. Each payment covers a stage of the work, and you only ever pay for work you have agreed to. That one idea runs through every section below.
Whatever happens to a project, the book stays yours. Your manuscript, your story and your chapters were yours before we met, and the designs and files we make for you belong to you once they are delivered, as the Terms of Service explain. Cancelling does not change that.
02Changing Your Mind Before Work Starts
You can cancel for any reason and receive a full refund of everything you have paid us for our own work, if you cancel within 14 days of your first payment and work has not started. You do not need to give a reason, though we will ask, kindly, so we can learn from it.
Work has started when we have begun a milestone from your proposal: the first interview for a ghostwritten book, the first pass of an edit, the first cover concept, or the first page of a typeset interior. Scheduling a call or exchanging emails about the plan is not work starting.
During this window we do not pay any third-party fee on your behalf (an ISBN, a distribution set-up, an advertising deposit) unless you have told us in writing to go ahead with that particular fee. If you do, and then cancel, that fee follows the Third-Party Fees section below and everything else comes back in full.
You never have to guess whether the window is still open. We tell you in writing on the day work on a milestone starts, and until you have that note from us, work has not started for the purposes of this policy. If you would like the full 14 days to think before anything begins, say so when you sign, and we will set the start date after them.
The Terms of Service say we may begin a milestone once its payment has cleared; the written note is how we tell you we have. If the Terms and this page ever differ on when work started, the date in our note is the one that counts.
Once the 14 days have passed, the milestone rules in the next section apply. Because nothing has started, that still means every payment for a milestone we have not begun comes back to you in full.
03After Work Starts: Refunds by Milestone
Once work has started, you can still cancel at any time. We refund the unearned portion of what you have paid, measured by the milestones listed in your proposal. At the moment you cancel, every milestone is in one of three states. Milestones we have completed and delivered are earned. Milestones we have not started are not earned, and that money comes back to you. Milestones we have started but not finished are refunded in proportion, under the rule below.
You keep everything we have delivered up to that point: the outline, the chapters, the edited pages, the cover files, the interior layout, whatever stage the book had reached. Cancelling never takes finished work away from you.
A milestone that is part-finished
If a milestone is part-finished when you cancel, we refund that milestone's price in proportion to the work not yet done, counted by the deliverables your proposal lists for it: chapters delivered out of chapters due, for example, or cover concepts presented out of concepts promised. You receive everything completed so far. Your proposal may set a different rule for a particular milestone, and if it does, the proposal applies. Where a milestone has no countable parts, we count the share of its scheduled work that is done, for example by the pages or sections completed, and show our working in the written decision. Either way, our written decision shows the count, so you can check it.
A worked example, in words
Say your proposal for a ghostwritten memoir lists four milestones: the outline, the first half of the draft, the second half of the draft, and the final edit. You paid for the outline and for the first half of the draft, and both were delivered, so those payments are earned and the pages are yours to keep. If you had also paid ahead for the second half or the final edit, that money comes back to you in full. And if we were three chapters into a ten-chapter second half when you stopped, you would receive those three chapters and a refund of the seven tenths of that milestone's price we had not yet earned.
Pausing instead of cancelling
You can also ask to pause. While a project is paused we keep what you have paid, do no further work, and restart on a date we agree with you in writing; the dates in your proposal move by the same amount. You can turn a pause into a cancellation at any time by emailing us, and this policy then applies as of the day your email arrives.
04Printing and Proofs
Printing is the stage where a third party commits materials the moment we place the order, so the rules are stricter and we want you to see them clearly.
The cost of the print run is refundable in full until the run order is placed with the printer. Once that order has been placed, the cost of the run cannot be refunded, because the cloth, the paper and the press time have been committed to your book. If the printer lets us cancel or reduce the order and returns any of that money to us, we pass it on to you.
Printed proofs are not the print run. A proof that has been printed and sent to you is delivered work, so its cost, as listed in your proposal, is earned like any other delivered milestone. The cost of the run itself stays refundable until we place the run order.
That is why printed proofs go into your hands before the run. You hold the proof, you approve it in writing, and only then do we place the run order. Your written approval of the proof is what lets us place that order, and we may place it as soon as that approval arrives. Until we have confirmed to you in writing that the order is placed, you can still stop us by email. We tell you when we ask for your approval that the order follows it, and we confirm the date we place it, so it is never a surprise.
If copies arrive defective, we reprint them at our cost. A defect is a fault in how the book was made, not a change of heart about what was approved:
- A defect
- Misprinted, missing, blank or duplicated pages. Binding that splits or pages that fall out in normal handling. Cloth, foil, jacket or paper stock that does not match the proof you approved. Text, images or layout that differ from the proof you approved. Copies damaged before they reached you. We reprint these at our cost. If we cannot reprint within a reasonable time, or a reprint would no longer be of use to you, we refund the cost of the defective copies instead.
- A change of mind
- A typo that was in the proof you approved. A different cloth color, foil or jacket than the one you chose. New text, a new cover or a new title after the proof was signed off. These are not defects, and a reprint for them is quoted as new work.
If you believe copies are defective, email us with photographs and a short description as soon as you can after they arrive. We may ask you to return the affected copies so the printer can inspect them; if we do, the return shipping is at our cost.
05Third-Party Fees
Some costs in a proposal are not ours. They are fees we pay on your behalf to other companies so the book can exist in the world: an ISBN, a distribution account set-up, advertising spend on a retailer or a platform.
These fees are non-refundable once they have been paid out and used, because the company that received them has done its part and does not refund us: an ISBN, once issued, cannot be handed back, and a distribution account, once set up, is set up. Where a third-party fee has been collected but not yet paid out when you cancel, it is refunded along with the rest of the unearned portion. And if a platform lets us recover an unspent balance, such as advertising money deposited but not yet spent, we recover it and refund it to you.
Anything bought in your name with those fees, such as an ISBN registered to you or a distribution account in your name, stays yours.
06Audiobook and Launch Marketing
Audiobook production and launch marketing follow the same milestone logic as the rest of this policy. The proposal lists the stages, you pay by stage, and unearned stages are refunded if you stop.
- Audiobook. Recording sessions that have taken place, and editing or mastering that has been delivered, are earned. Finished audio files we have delivered are yours to keep. Studio or narrator bookings that cannot be cancelled are treated as third-party fees once paid out.
- Launch marketing. Planning, writing and outreach we have delivered are earned. Advertising money that a platform has already spent is a third-party fee and cannot be refunded. Money deposited with a platform but not yet spent is recovered wherever the platform allows it and refunded to you, and spend not yet paid out is refunded in full.
07How to Request a Refund or Cancel
Email hello@theauthoroffice.com. A request by email is what we act on, because it gives both of us a written record. If you would rather say it on a call with your producer, do, and we will confirm what you asked for by email so there is a written record. If you asked on a call, the day of the call counts as the day your request arrived, and our confirming email says that date.
To help us answer quickly, include:
- Your name
- As it appears on your proposal.
- Your book
- The working title, or a line that tells us which project it is.
- Payment
- The date and amount of the payment or payments you are asking about.
- What you want
- A full cancellation, a pause, or a refund of a particular milestone or stage.
- Why (optional)
- You do not have to tell us. If you do, it helps us fix whatever went wrong.
We confirm that we have received your request; we try to do that within two business days, as with any email. Our written decision follows as the next section explains. If a request is missing something we need in order to decide, we ask for it once, clearly, and the time we take to decide is counted from the day your answer reaches us.
08Our Decision and When the Money Arrives
Every decision comes to you in writing. It sets out which milestones are earned, which are not, how any part-finished milestone was counted, any third-party fees that have been paid out, and the amount we are refunding. If you think we have counted something wrongly, reply and say so; we will look again. If we still disagree after a second look, the dispute steps in the Terms of Service apply, and nothing on this page takes away rights you have under the law of the state where you live.
We send our written decision as soon as we have checked the milestones against your proposal, and we aim to do that within a few business days of the day your request arrived. Any approved refund then goes to your original payment method within 10 business days of the date of that decision. Business days are Monday to Friday, leaving out United States federal holidays.
Refunds go back to the way you paid. If that card or account has since been closed, tell us and we will agree another way in writing, after checking that it is yours.
Once we have sent the refund, your bank or card issuer controls how quickly it appears on your statement. That can take longer than our side, and it varies by bank. If it has not appeared after a reasonable time, email us and we will send you the confirmation from our side so you can take it to your bank.
09If We Cannot Finish the Work
Occasionally the studio is the one that has to stop: a service we can no longer provide, a project we have decided we are not the right studio for, or circumstances outside anyone's control. If that happens, we tell you in writing and explain why.
If we are the ones who stop and you have kept your side of the proposal, you get more than the ordinary rule. We refund the whole of any milestone we have not finished, not only the unearned part, and we deliver the work in progress as well as the finished work, in files you can use. That work in progress is yours to keep and use even though we have refunded its fee; our written notice confirms that it is assigned to you. The decision and the money follow the same timeline as any other refund, and we will help you hand the project to another editor, designer or printer if you ask.
The ordinary milestone rule applies instead if we stop because of something on your side, such as material that is unlawful or plagiarised, or a payment that never arrived; the Terms of Service describe those cases. Even then, you keep everything delivered and we refund whatever has not been earned.
Your ownership of the book does not change because we stepped away. It was yours before we started and it is yours after.
10Chargebacks
If you are unhappy with a payment, please contact us before asking your bank or card issuer to reverse it. We answer every request, and nearly every problem is faster to fix in an email than in a dispute.
A chargeback filed while a refund is already being handled usually slows the refund down, because the money is frozen while the bank investigates. When a dispute is opened, we respond to the card issuer with the written proposal, the record of what was delivered, and our correspondence with you. Answering a dispute means sharing with your card issuer and our payment processor the parts of your proposal, delivery record and correspondence that the dispute needs, and nothing more. Nothing in this section limits any right you have under your card agreement or the law.
11Changes to This Policy
We may update this policy. The effective date at the top of the page changes when we do, and the current version is always at theauthoroffice.com/refund-policy. The version in force on the day you signed your proposal is the one that applies to that project. If a later version is more generous to you, we will apply it if you ask.
This policy sits alongside the Terms of Service, which cover ownership of your book and the rest of our agreement, and the Privacy Policy, which covers how we handle your personal information.
12Contact
For refunds, cancellations, defective copies or any question about this page, email hello@theauthoroffice.com. To start a conversation about a new book, use the consultation form on the home page.