Privacy policy

This policy explains how we handle personal information under the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) and the Australian Privacy Principles. It applies to this website and to everything we do for authors who engage us.

What we collect

We collect only what we need to quote for your book, do the work and get paid for it.

• Contact details you give us: your name, email address, phone number and, where a book is being printed or posted, a delivery address.
• Your manuscript and any material you send with it, including sample chapters, images, photographs and documents.
• Project information: word count, manuscript stage, which services you are considering, and the notes we make while assessing the work.
• Billing information: invoices, payment records and the details our payment provider needs. We do not store your card number.
• Website analytics: pages visited, approximate location by country, device type and how you reached the site. This is aggregated and does not identify you.

Your manuscript

Your manuscript is confidential. It is read only by the people assessing or working on it, it is never used as a sample or shown to anyone outside that group, and it is never used to train a machine-learning model. Copyright in your work stays with you at every point; nothing about sending it to us changes that.

We will sign a confidentiality agreement before you send anything if you would prefer, and we do that as standard before interviews on a ghostwriting project. If you ask us to delete your manuscript, we delete it from our working systems and confirm when that is done.

Why we use it

• To read your manuscript and prepare a written scope and quote.
• To carry out the work you have engaged us for, and to communicate with you about it.
• To issue invoices and keep the financial records Australian tax law requires.
• To register an ISBN, lodge legal deposit copies and set up retailer and distribution accounts, where you have asked us to.
• To reply to an enquiry, and to send one follow-up if we have not heard back.

We do not sell personal information, and we do not add you to a marketing list because you asked for a quote. If you subscribe to a mailing list, every email carries a one-click unsubscribe and we act on it immediately.

Who else sees it

Only the people and services needed to do the work:

• Editors, designers, illustrators and narrators working on your project. Each is bound by confidentiality, and we tell you who they are before work starts.
• Printers and print-on-demand providers, which need your book files and, for a posted proof, a delivery address.
• The Australian ISBN agency, the National Library of Australia and your state deposit library, where registration and legal deposit are part of your project.
• Retailers and distributors, where accounts are set up in your name with your details.
• Our payment provider and our accountant.
• A law enforcement agency or court, where we are legally required to disclose something.

Some of these providers store data overseas, including in the United States and the European Union. Where that is the case we take reasonable steps to ensure the recipient handles your information consistently with the Australian Privacy Principles.

Storage, security and retention

Files are held in access-controlled cloud storage with encryption in transit and at rest. Access is limited to the people working on your project. We keep project files for seven years after a project ends, which is the period Australian tax and record-keeping obligations require for the financial records attached to them, and we delete manuscripts earlier on request.

If a data breach occurs that is likely to result in serious harm, we will notify you and the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner as the Notifiable Data Breaches scheme requires.

Cookies and analytics

This site uses a small number of cookies: one to remember whether you have dismissed a pop-up, and analytics cookies that tell us which pages are read and which are not. We do not use advertising cookies that follow you to other sites, and nothing on this site builds an advertising profile of you. You can block or delete cookies in your browser; the site works without them.

Access, correction and complaints

You can ask us for a copy of the personal information we hold about you, ask us to correct it, or ask us to delete it. Use the contact details in the footer of this page. We will respond within 30 days, and there is no charge for a reasonable request.

If you are not satisfied with how we have handled your information or your complaint, you can take it to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner, which oversees the Privacy Act and can investigate independently.

Changes to this policy

If we change this policy we update the date at the top of the page. Where a change materially affects how we handle information we already hold about you, we will tell you directly rather than relying on you noticing.