Privacy Policy
This Privacy Policy explains what information BookDesignerAI (operated by Expert Book Design LLC, "we," "us") collects, how we use it, who we share it with, and how you can exercise your rights. By using the Service you consent to the practices described here.
1. Who we are
BookDesignerAI is a service of Expert Book Design LLC, a West Virginia limited liability company. Contact: cantos@bookdesigner.ai. For data-protection requests, please use the same address.
2. What we collect
Information you give us
- Account information: name, email address, password (stored hashed via bcrypt; we never see the plaintext), optional imprint/company name, optional phone number.
- Book content: the manuscript you upload (.docx), book metadata (title, subtitle, author, ISBNs, dedication, etc.), uploaded author photo (if any), cover artwork direction you describe in the Cover Studio brief.
- Communications: messages you send through the Cantos chat surface, the Stanza support chat, or our support email.
- Payment information: we do not store credit-card numbers. PayPal handles payment processing and we receive only a transaction ID, amount, and capture record. PayPal's own privacy policy governs your payment relationship with them.
Information we generate from your inputs
- Generated book files: formatted PDF, DOCX, and ePub outputs.
- Generated marketing materials: the 30-piece marketing & metadata kit.
- Generated cover artwork: AI-rendered cover concepts based on your brief.
- Internal audit + diagnostic logs: the AI provider's audit notes about layout quality, mutation history (which fixes were applied), and similar pipeline diagnostics. These are kept for debugging and quality improvement.
Information we collect automatically
- Authentication state: session tokens (so you stay logged in), recent login attempts (for security monitoring).
- Operational logs: timestamps and counts of API calls, basic error logs.
- No third-party analytics by default: the landing site supports optional analytics injection by environment variable, but we do not currently run third-party trackers, advertising cookies, or behavioral profiling. If this changes we will update this Policy.
3. How we use your information
- To provide the Service: read your manuscript, generate formatted book files, produce cover artwork, return your downloads.
- To improve the Service: internal audit logs, error reports, and diagnostic data help us debug bugs and refine the AI pipeline. We do not share these externally.
- To bill you: process purchases through PayPal, calculate refunds, maintain a billing audit trail.
- To communicate with you: transactional email (password reset, order and account notices); customer support messages. We do not send marketing email from this platform.
- To comply with law: billing records retention under EU Consumer Rights Directive 2011/83/EU and California Civil Code §1789.3; tax records; lawful information requests from authorities.
4. How AI processes your content
BookDesignerAI uses third-party AI providers to read your manuscript, audit layouts, generate cover artwork, and produce marketing materials. Your content is sent to these providers over a secure (TLS) connection only for the duration of the API call needed to produce the output you requested. Specifically:
- Your data is not used to train AI models. Our AI providers operate under enterprise contracts that prohibit using customer API inputs or outputs as training data.
- Limited retention at the AI provider. Our AI providers typically retain API inputs and outputs for up to thirty (30) days for abuse-prevention and trust & safety review only, after which the data is deleted from their systems. We do not control or extend this retention.
- No third-party sharing beyond the AI call itself. We do not sell, license, syndicate, or share your manuscript or cover artwork with anyone outside the AI provider needed for the work you asked us to do.
- Sub-processor disclosure. See our Sub-processors · Accessibility Output Files page for a current list of the AI providers and other vendors that may process your data on our behalf.
5. Who we share with (Sub-processors)
We rely on a small number of third-party service providers to operate the Service. These include AI providers (for content processing), cloud hosting and database operators, payment processing, backup storage, and transactional email. We have data-processing agreements in place with these providers where required and disclose them by name on our Sub-processors page. We do not sell your personal data and we do not authorize sub-processors to use your data for any purpose other than providing the service we engaged them to provide.
6. How long we keep your data
- Project files (manuscripts, outputs, metadata): kept on our servers and backup mirror while your account is active, so you can download them whenever you need. You can delete them yourself at any time from your Account page.
- Account record: retained until you delete your account.
- Billing records: retained for the period required by tax and consumer-protection law, even if you delete your account. Anonymized via your internal user ID; your name, email, password, and phone are scrubbed.
7. Your rights
Depending on where you live, you may have one or more of the following rights:
- Right to access a copy of the personal data we hold about you.
- Right to correct inaccurate or incomplete data.
- Right to delete your data ("right to erasure" / "right to be forgotten"), subject to billing-record retention.
- Right to portability — your data in a structured, machine-readable format.
- Right to object to certain processing, including for marketing (we do not use your data for marketing).
- Right to lodge a complaint with your local data-protection authority.
To exercise any of these rights, sign into your account and use the Account page (Data privacy section), or email cantos@bookdesigner.ai. We will respond within thirty (30) days.
8. How to delete your data
Your Account page contains two deletion options under "Data privacy":
- Delete all my files and projects. Wipes every manuscript, draft, output file, design brief, audit log, and cover artwork from our primary storage and backup mirror. Your account stays active so you can start new projects. Purchase history is retained for billing-compliance audit only.
- Delete my entire account. Wipes everything above plus your name, email, password, phone, and imprint from our systems. Purchase records survive in anonymized form (linked only to a scrambled internal ID, not to you) — required for refund / chargeback / billing-compliance audit trails per EU CRD and California Civil Code §1789.3. You will be logged out immediately and will not be able to log back in.
Both actions are permanent and irreversible. We cannot restore deleted content.
9. Refunds
Our full refund policy is set out in our Terms of Service §4. In short: formatting purchases are fully refundable within 14 days if no formatting passes have been used (50% if you've used at least one pass and 50% or fewer of your total passes); Cover Only / Cover Upgrade and add-on passes are full-refund-eligible within 14 days; and our quality guarantee covers materially failed results. Refunds are self-service from your Account page → Purchase History.
10. Security
We use industry-standard measures to protect your data:
- TLS for all data in transit between your browser and our servers.
- Encryption at rest for our hosted database and backup storage (managed by our hosting providers).
- Bcrypt for password hashing (we never store plaintext passwords).
- Session tokens for authentication; sessions are revoked on password change and account deletion.
- Limited employee access to customer data, on a need-to-know basis for support purposes.
No system is perfectly secure. If you become aware of a security issue, please report it to cantos@bookdesigner.ai or via the contact in our security.txt file.
11. Children's privacy
The Service is not directed to anyone under 16. We do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 16. If you are under 16, do not use the Service. If you believe someone under 16 has provided us personal information, contact us at cantos@bookdesigner.ai and we will delete the information promptly.
12. International users
We are based in the United States. If you access the Service from outside the United States, you understand and consent to the transfer and processing of your information in the United States and other countries where our service providers operate. Where required by law (e.g., EU/EEA, United Kingdom, Switzerland), we rely on Standard Contractual Clauses or equivalent legal mechanisms for international data transfers.
13. California residents
California residents have additional rights under the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) and California Privacy Rights Act (CPRA), including the right to know what personal information we collect, the right to delete it, the right to correct inaccuracies, the right to opt out of the sale or sharing of personal information (we do not sell or share personal information for cross-context behavioral advertising), and the right not to be discriminated against for exercising any of these rights. To exercise these rights, follow the process in Section 7. We will not require you to create an account to make a verifiable consumer request.
14. Changes to this Policy
We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. Material changes will be posted on this page with an updated "Last updated" date. For significant changes that affect how we process your personal data, we will notify you by email (where active) or via a notice in the Service.
15. Contact
For privacy questions or to exercise your rights, contact us at cantos@bookdesigner.ai. Mailing address available upon request.