Privacy Policy

We use the information we collect to:

• Operate, maintain, and improve the Platform.
• Process transactions and deliver purchased content to you.
• Manage your account, including authentication and session management.
• Provide reading features such as progress sync, bookmarks, and highlights across your devices.
• Communicate with you about your account, purchases, or support requests.
• Detect and prevent fraud, abuse, and violations of our Terms of Service.
• Display relevant advertising on the Platform (see Section 5).
• Comply with legal obligations.

We do not sell, rent, lease, or trade your personal information to any third party. Period.

This is not a qualified statement. We do not sell your data for advertising purposes. We do not sell your data to data brokers. We do not sell your data under any other name or creative arrangement. Your information is yours.

Author Direct sustains itself through advertising revenue so that authors can keep 100% of their sales. Advertisements on the Platform may be targeted based on general, non-identifying factors such as the category of book you are browsing.

We do not share your personal information with advertisers. Advertisers receive aggregate, anonymized statistics about ad performance (e.g., number of impressions and clicks). They do not receive your name, email, purchase history, or any data that could identify you personally.

We share your information only in the following limited circumstances:

• Payment processing: Transaction data is shared with Stripe to process payments. Stripe’s use of your data is governed by the Stripe Privacy Policy.
• Sellers: When you purchase content, the Seller may receive your display name and the fact that you purchased their work. Sellers do not receive your email address, payment details, or other personal information.
• Legal requirements: We may disclose information if required by law, regulation, legal process, or governmental request.
• Safety: We may share information when we believe in good faith that disclosure is necessary to protect the rights, safety, or property of Author Direct, our users, or the public.

We take the security of your data seriously and implement industry-standard measures to protect it, including:

• Passwords are hashed using Argon2id, a modern and robust hashing algorithm. We never store passwords in plain text.
• All data transmitted between your device and our servers is encrypted using TLS (HTTPS).
• Digital content files are encrypted at rest using AES-256-GCM encryption.
• Database access is restricted and monitored. Sensitive data is stored in managed, encrypted infrastructure.
• Session tokens are securely generated and expire after a period of inactivity.

While we work hard to protect your information, no method of electronic storage or transmission is 100% secure. We cannot guarantee absolute security, but we commit to promptly investigating and addressing any security incidents and notifying affected users as required by law.

We retain your personal information for as long as your account is active or as needed to provide you with services. If you delete your account, we will delete or anonymize your personal information within 30 days, except where we are required to retain it for legal, tax, or regulatory purposes (such as transaction records, which may be retained for up to 7 years).

Reading progress, bookmarks, and highlights are deleted when you delete your account.

Depending on your jurisdiction, you may have the following rights regarding your personal information:

• Access: Request a copy of the personal data we hold about you.
• Correction: Request that we correct inaccurate or incomplete data.
• Deletion: Request that we delete your personal data, subject to legal retention requirements.
• Portability: Request a machine-readable export of your data.
• Opt-out: Since we do not sell your data, there is nothing to opt out of. However, you may contact us at any time to exercise any of these rights.

To exercise any of these rights, contact us at privacy@author-direct-books.com. We will respond within 30 days.