Privacy

The short version

To make a book we need the words you type about the people in it, and to post one we need an address. We do not accept photographs. We do not sell anything to anyone. A book you start and never order is deleted automatically after 60 days.

What we collect

What you type

The names, ages, appearances and relationships you describe, what you would like the story to be about, and any dedication. This is the book — it is written into the story and drawn into the illustrations.

Much of it is about a child, and often not your own. Please describe only what you would be comfortable seeing printed in a book that will sit on a shelf. There is no need to give a surname, a birthday, a school, an address, or anything that identifies where a child can be found — and our checks reject contact details and web addresses in printed fields.

What we do not collect

No photographs. There is no way to upload one; the feature is switched off in the software, not merely absent from the screen. Nothing you provide is used to train an image model on a real person's face.

You do not need an account to make or buy a book. If you choose to sign in, we keep your email address and an account identifier so we can recover your old books and orders. Sign-in uses a one-time code sent by email; we do not collect or store a password. No IP addresses are kept in our own records — the limits that stop the site being abused are counted against the book, not against you.

If you order

Your email address and delivery address, collected by Stripe on their own payment page and passed to us so we can post the book and send you confirmations. We never see your card number.

On your device

One cookie (cb_session) that lets you return to a book you started; it is HttpOnly, Secure and expires after 60 days. A short list of your books in your browser's local storage. If you sign in, the browser also keeps the account session tokens issued by Amazon Cognito. Signing out removes those account tokens but does not discard the book you currently have open. None of this is used for advertising, and no third party sets a cookie on this site.

Analytics

We do not use Google Analytics or any other third-party analytics service, and there are no advertising or tracking scripts on this site. What we do have is our CDN's own request log, which records the date, the page, whether it loaded, and the country the request came from — no IP address, no cookie, nothing that identifies a browser between visits. We read it in totals, to see whether people are finding the site and roughly where from.

Who else processes it

Making a book means sending what you wrote to services that turn it into words and pictures. Each one receives only what it needs.

• Anthropic — the conversation and the story text.
• OpenAI — the illustrations, generated from written descriptions.
• Stripe — payment, and the email and delivery address you give them.
• Amazon Web Services — hosting, storage, and optional email-code sign-in through Cognito.
• Gelato — printing and delivery, once an order is placed. They receive the finished print files and the delivery address.

Where it is stored

In the United States (Amazon Web Services, Oregon), and the services above are also United States companies. We are a Canadian company, so information about Canadian, British and American customers alike is processed in the United States and is subject to the laws there, including lawful access by United States authorities. If that is not acceptable to you, please do not use the site.

How long we keep it

• A book you never order: 60 days, then deleted automatically. This is enforced by the database, not by someone remembering.
• An order: about seven years — records of a sale have to be kept for tax, and Canadian rules require six.
• An optional account: until you ask us to delete it. Deleting an account does not erase sales records we are legally required to retain.
• The finished book files are kept while an order is in progress and for a reasonable period afterwards so a replacement can be printed.

Your rights

You may ask what we hold about you, ask us to correct it, and ask us to delete it. Under Canadian law (PIPEDA) and, if you are in the United Kingdom, under UK GDPR, we will respond within 30 days. Ask at privacy@penwynn.com.

A book that has been printed and posted cannot be un-printed, and we must keep the sale record for tax — but everything else about it can be removed.

Children

This site is sold to adults. A book is usually about a child, but the customer is the adult who describes them and decides what appears. We do not knowingly let anyone under 18 buy a book, and we do not ask a child for anything.

Changes and contact

If this policy changes materially we will change the effective date above and, where we hold your email because you ordered, tell you. Questions: privacy@penwynn.com.