Privacy policy

How to read this document. Every section below is written twice. Under each heading, the set-apart line is what the section means, in plain words. The paragraph beneath it is the statement itself. Capitalized words have the meanings given in our Terms of Service.

Notable Authors LLC ("Notable Authors", "we", "us", "our") operates a New York marketplace through which a person seeking a book finds a ghostwriter to write it. This policy describes what we collect, why, who sees it, how long we keep it, and what you can require us to do about it. It is short because we collect little.

Two things before the rest. We never train a model on anything you upload, and there is no setting to find because there is nothing to switch off. And your identity documents and tax forms go to Stripe, not to us. Sections 2 and 3 set out both.

1.WHAT WE COLLECT

The categories, by who you are.

1.1FROM EVERYONE WHO SIGNS IN

Your name, your email, which side you are on, what you do here, and ordinary technical records.

We collect: your name and email address; the designation of your Account as a Client Account or a Writer Account; records of your activity on the Services, including inquiries sent or received, Contracts agreed, Stages funded, delivered or approved, and messages in the thread; and technical records generated when you use the Site, including IP address, browser type, pages requested and the timestamps of those requests.

A call's appointment, not the call.

When you propose or accept a call through the Services we hold the proposed and chosen times, the duration, the stated purpose, and the meeting link one of you supplied. We do not hold the call, any recording of it, or any transcript, unless a participant places a transcript in the engagement's source-material area, where it is held as other source material is.

1.2FROM WRITERS

Your public profile, and your record on this platform.

We collect the contents of your public profile, including your name, biography, samples, self-reported credits and rates; and your record on the Services, including the Contracts you completed, whether each was paid in full, and the reviews Clients submitted.

1.3FROM CLIENTS

What you tell a writer about the book, and the review you write at the end.

We collect the material you provide in the course of an engagement, including your brief, your story, your recordings, your documents and the drafts; and the review you submit on completion.

1.4FROM EVERYONE WHO VISITS

A count of visits, with no cookie.

When you visit the Site, signed in or not, Vercel counts the visit for us: the page, the site that sent you, your country, and your browser and device type. It sets no cookie and gives us no way to tell who you are. If your browser sends Global Privacy Control, the visit is not counted.

1.5WHAT WE DO NOT COLLECT

Not your card number, not your bank details, not your passport, not your tax identification number. Those go to Stripe.

We do not collect or hold your payment card number, your bank account details, your government identity documents, or your tax identification number. Those are collected by Stripe, as described in Section 2. We do not purchase information about you from any source, and we do not operate advertising.

2.STRIPE HOLDS THE SENSITIVE PARTS

Why your passport is not with us.

2.1STRIPE IS THE PROCESSOR

Payments, payouts and identity checks run on Stripe.

Payments, payouts and identity verification are processed by Stripe. Your card details are transmitted to Stripe and are not seen by us. A Writer's bank details, identity documents and tax forms are collected by Stripe and are not seen by us.

2.2STRIPE IS AN INDEPENDENT CONTROLLER

Stripe decides how it handles what it collects, and answers for it, under its own privacy policy.

Stripe is an independent controller of the personal information it collects for the purposes described in Section 2.1. Its handling of that information is governed by Stripe's privacy policy and Stripe is responsible for it.

2.3WHAT COMES BACK TO US

Whether an account can receive money, whether a charge succeeded, the amounts, and the last four digits of a card.

We receive from Stripe only what we require to operate a Contract: whether an Account is able to receive funds, whether a charge succeeded, the amounts involved, and the last four digits of a payment card so that you can distinguish one from another.

3.WHY WE HOLD IT

The purposes, and the promise about training.

3.1THE PURPOSES

To run your account, run a contract, publish a writer's record, check a review, answer a problem report, email you about your own book, keep the service secure, count visits to the Site, and meet our tax obligations.

We process personal information in order to: operate your Account and authenticate you; operate a Contract, including the inquiry, the Engagement Agreement, the Stages, the deliveries, the approvals and the payments; publish a Writer's record; review a review before publication and check the Contract behind it; determine a Problem Report, which requires reading the Engagement Agreement, the Deliverables and the thread; send you messages concerning your own Contracts, which are not marketing and cannot be disabled while a Contract is live; maintain the security of the Services; count visits to the Site, as described in Section 1.4; comply with our tax and legal obligations; and, where you have asked for them, send you messages about the Services themselves, which you may stop at any time.

3.2WE NEVER TRAIN A MODEL ON YOUR BOOK

Not your manuscript, your drafts, your interviews, your source material or your messages. No vendor of ours does either.

We do not, and we do not permit any vendor or processor acting on our behalf to, use any manuscript, draft, interview recording, transcript, source document or message transmitted through the Services to train, fine-tune or evaluate any machine learning model. We do not sell personal information and we do not share it for any person's advertising.

4.ON A TWO-SIDED PLATFORM, YOUR INFORMATION IS ALSO SOMEONE ELSE'S

The part most privacy policies leave you to work out.

4.1EVERYONE HERE IS BOTH SUBJECT AND AUTHOR

A review is about a writer. A brief becomes work history. What a client pays becomes a writer's earnings. The manuscript goes to the writer.

On a two-sided marketplace, information about one person is frequently also information about, and the record of, another. Specifically:

1. (a)a review a Client submits is about a Writer and becomes part of that Writer's public record. It publishes without the Client's name, and the Writer cannot have it deleted by reason of it being unflattering;
2. (b)a brief a Client sends leads to a Contract which, on completion, is a completed engagement on that Writer's profile;
3. (c)what a Client pays becomes a Writer's earnings, in that Writer's records and in ours; and
4. (d)a Writer's private review of a Client is used by us and is not published.

4.2THE WRITER IS A SEPARATE CONTROLLER OF THE MANUSCRIPT

Once the manuscript is in the writer's hands, the writer decides how it is stored, within the confidentiality duty their agreement puts on them.

The manuscript and the Client Materials are transmitted to the Writer. In respect of the Writer's own copy, the Writer is a separate and independent controller, subject to the confidentiality obligations the Engagement Agreement imposes on them, and we are not responsible for the Writer's handling of that copy.

4.3A DELETION REQUEST CAN MEET SOMEONE ELSE'S RIGHT TO KEEP IT

Section 7 says how we handle that.

A request under Section 7 to delete information may conflict with another person's interest in retaining it. Section 6 and Section 7 describe how such a request is determined.

5.WHO ELSE SEES IT

The complete list, and nobody else.

5.1THE LIST

The other party to your contract, anyone visiting a public profile, our administrators, the companies that run the service, a court where we must, and a buyer of the business.

We disclose personal information only to:

1. (a)the other party to your Contract, which is the purpose of the Services;
2. (b)visitors to the Site, in respect of a Writer's public profile and the reviews published on it;
3. (c)our administrators, who read each review before publication and who read the Engagement Agreement, the Deliverables and the thread on a Problem Report. Reviewer identity is readable only by the reviewer and an administrator;
4. (d)the service providers that operate the Services on our behalf, and only for that purpose: Stripe for payments and identity, Supabase for the database, file storage and authentication, Vercel for hosting and for counting visits, and Resend for email. Each is bound to use the information only to provide that service;
5. (e)law enforcement or a court, where legally required, and we will tell you unless we are prohibited from doing so; and
6. (f)a purchaser of the business, on the terms of this policy.

5.2REVIEWER ANONYMITY IS STRUCTURAL

A published review carries no identifying detail, and that is enforced in the database rather than promised in this policy.

A published review does not carry the Client's name, image, employer, the title of the manuscript, or any other identifying detail. Reviewer identity is excluded from the public read path at the database level rather than filtered in a template, and there is a test whose purpose is to fail if it ever appears in a public response.

6.HOW LONG WE KEEP IT

Real numbers, and what is never deleted.

6.1THE PERIODS

Seven years for records, twenty-four months for drafts and the thread, until you unsubscribe for marketing, twelve months for logs.

6.2EITHER PARTY MAY MOVE THE CLOCK

Ask us to keep the drafts longer, or delete them sooner. We refuse early deletion while a problem report or card dispute is open.

Either party to a Contract may request that the drafts and thread be retained beyond the period in Section 6.1 or deleted before it expires. We will decline a request for early deletion while a Problem Report or a card dispute in respect of that Contract is open, those being the records on which it would be determined.

6.3WHAT IS NEVER DELETED

The fact of the engagement, the amounts, and the review. That is the ledger and the track record, and it is what the platform is.

The fact that an engagement occurred, the amounts, and the published review are retained indefinitely. Closing your Account does not remove them, and a published review remains published.

7.YOUR RIGHTS

What you can require us to do, and how long we take.

7.1WE GIVE THESE RIGHTS TO EVERYONE IN THE UNITED STATES

Wherever you live. Maintaining two standards is worse than maintaining one.

The rights in this Section derive from state privacy laws, including those of California, Colorado, Connecticut and Virginia. We extend them to every user in the United States regardless of residence.

7.2THE RIGHTS

Know, get a copy, correct, delete, opt out of sale and targeted advertising, and not be treated worse for asking.

You may require us to:

1. (a)tell you what personal information we hold about you, its source, our purpose, and to whom we have disclosed it;
2. (b)provide a copy in a portable form;
3. (c)correct information that is inaccurate;
4. (d)delete information we hold, subject to Sections 4 and 6;
5. (e)cease selling or sharing your personal information and cease processing it for targeted advertising. We do none of these, so there is nothing to opt out of. The right is stated because you should not have to take our word for it; and
6. (f)refrain from discriminating against you for exercising any of these rights. We will not close your Account, charge you more, or provide a lesser service because you exercised one.

7.3SOMEONE CAN ASK ON YOUR BEHALF

An authorized agent can make a request with your written permission.

An authorized agent may submit a request on your behalf with your written permission, and we may require you to confirm that permission.

7.4IF WE SAY NO, YOU CAN APPEAL

Write to us with "appeal" in the subject. A different person reviews it within forty-five days.

Where we decline a request, you may appeal by writing to hello@notableauthors.com with "appeal" in the subject line. A person who was not involved in the original decision will review it within forty-five days. Where we maintain the decision, we will tell you how to complain to your state attorney general.

7.5TIMING

Forty-five days, and we tell you if we need another forty-five.

We respond to a request within forty-five days, and will notify you where an extension of a further forty-five days is required.

7.6GLOBAL PRIVACY CONTROL

We honor it.

Where your browser transmits the Global Privacy Control signal we treat it as an opt-out of sale and sharing, which is already our position for every user.

7.7DO NOT TRACK

We do not track you across other websites at all, so there is nothing for the signal to switch off.

We operate no cross-site tracking, no advertising and no advertising analytics. There is accordingly no processing for the Do Not Track signal to disable.

7.8HOW TO ASK

Email us. We may ask you to confirm who you are.

Requests may be sent to hello@notableauthors.com. We may require you to verify your identity using the Account to which the request relates.

8.COOKIES

Both of them.

8.1THE TABLE

Two cookies, both necessary, and neither is set unless you sign in. No advertising, analytics or tracking cookies, which is why there is no banner asking you to accept anything.

We do not use local storage to track you. Where this list grows, this table grows with it, on this page.

9.SECURITY

What we do, and what we will not claim.

9.1WHAT WE DO

Encryption in transit and at rest, access controls, and database rules that stop one account reading another's records.

We employ encryption in transit and at rest, administrative access controls limiting each administrator to what their role requires, and row-level security rules in the database preventing one Account from reading another's records.

9.2WHAT WE WILL NOT CLAIM

No system is unbreachable, and we will not claim a posture we would have to defend afterwards.

We do not represent that the Services are immune from compromise. Where a breach affects your personal information we will notify you, and the regulators requiring notification, as promptly as the law requires.

10.WHERE THE INFORMATION SITS

The United States, and what happens if that changes.

Stored and processed in the United States.

Your personal information is stored and processed in the United States. Our service providers may process limited technical information elsewhere in the course of operating their own networks. Where we transfer personal information out of a jurisdiction that restricts such transfers, we will rely on the standard contractual clauses or another lawful mechanism, and will say so in this policy first.

11.CHILDREN

Eighteen and over.

You must be eighteen. If we learn an account belongs to someone younger we close it and delete what we hold.

The Services are available only to persons aged eighteen or over. We do not knowingly collect personal information from any person under eighteen, and where we learn that an Account belongs to such a person we close the Account and delete the information we hold.

12.YOUR WORK IS YOURS

The one license we take, and the one thing we will not do without asking.

12.1THE LICENSE

Narrow: the right to store, copy and display what you upload, only so far as running the service requires.

You grant us a license to store, copy and display the material you upload, solely to the extent required to provide the Services to you. The license terminates when the material is deleted under Section 6.

12.2NO MARKETING WITHOUT ASKING

We will not use your book, your name, your review or your story in our marketing without asking you first, for that use, at that time.

We will not use your manuscript, your name, your review or your story in our own marketing without your prior permission, given in respect of that use. There is no standing permission and none is sought at signup.

13.CHANGES TO THIS POLICY

Notice, and the version history.

We tell you before a substantial change takes effect, and the version and date at the top move.

We will notify you by email and through the Services before a substantial change to this policy takes effect. The version and date at the head of this document will be updated and prior versions retained.

14.HOW TO REACH US

A person reads every one.

Notable Authors LLC, 418 Broadway, Ste N, Albany, NY 12207

hello@notableauthors.com