Privacy Policy

We only collect what you choose to give us. That means:

• Your name and email address, when you finish the book quiz, send a message through the contact form, or submit your work.
• What you told the quiz — the three answers you picked, so we can send a recommendation that actually fits.
• What you write in a submission, including your book title, synopsis, word count, and any manuscript file you attach.

We don’t ask for payment details, and we never collect them on this site. Book purchases happen on Amazon or another retailer, under their privacy policies, not ours.

Your information is used to do the thing you asked us to do:

• Send you the book recommendation you requested from the quiz.
• Reply to your question or message.
• Read and respond to your manuscript, concept, or story.
• Occasionally let you know about new books, if you gave us your email.

That’s the whole list. We don’t use it for anything else.

We send email through Kit (formerly ConvertKit), which stores your email address on our behalf so we can send you book news and recommendations.

Every email we send has an unsubscribe link at the bottom. Click it once and you’re off the list — no reply needed, no questions asked. You can also email us and we’ll remove you ourselves.

We do not sell, rent, or trade your personal information to anyone. We don’t share it with third parties for their own marketing.

The only outside parties who touch your data are the services that help us run the site — our email provider (Kit) and our web host — and they may only use it to provide that service to us. We may also disclose information if the law requires it.

We keep basic, privacy-respecting analytics so we know which pages people read and whether the site is working. That means aggregate numbers — page views, rough traffic sources, whether a page errored.

We don’t run advertising trackers, we don’t build profiles of you across other websites, and we don’t sell analytics data. Your browser also stores small preferences locally to keep the site working properly.

We keep your information for as long as it’s useful for the reason you gave it to us — an email address stays on the list until you unsubscribe, and a submission stays on file while we’re considering it and for a reasonable period afterward.

You can ask us at any time to tell you what we hold about you, correct it, or delete it entirely. Email hello@shepherdspenpublishing.com and we’ll take care of it. There’s no form to fill out.

We publish books for children, but this website is written for the adults who buy them. This site is not directed at children under 13, and the book quiz is intended for parents, grandparents, teachers, and other grown-ups shopping for a young reader.

We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13, in keeping with the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). If you believe a child has given us their information, email us and we will delete it promptly.

If we change how we handle your information, we’ll update this page and change the date at the top. Significant changes will be made obvious rather than slipped in quietly.

Questions about privacy, or want your data removed? Email hello@shepherdspenpublishing.com.

Shepherd’s Pen Publishing — a sole proprietorship operated by Michael Mason — Baltimore, Maryland.