Privacy Policy

Who We Are

Author Cooper is an author platform and store for browsing books, buying digital content, following subscription-style releases, managing a personal library, leaving reviews, contacting support, and buying physical merchandise tied to the Author Cooper catalog.

In this policy, "Author Cooper," "we," "us," and "our" refer to the Author Cooper project and the people operating it. "You" means visitors, readers, customers, account holders, gift recipients, reviewers, and store shoppers.

Information We Collect

• Account and sign-in information, such as your email address, first name, last name, magic-link sign-in status, session cookies, and browser-bound nonce cookies used to keep sign-in links secure.
• Contact information you submit through forms, including name, email address, subject, and message.
• Purchase and library information, including selected books, subscription releases, order history, gift recipient details, gift messages, prices, discounts, payment status, order status, and the digital items available in your library.
• Store and shipping information, including merch cart lines, product and variant selections, recipient name, shipping address, optional phone number, chosen shipping rate, tracking-related data, and fulfillment status.
• Review content, including ratings, comments, reviewable item identifiers, timestamps, and moderation or publishing status.
• Admin and catalog information submitted by authorized operators, such as book, product, subscription, image, inventory, announcement, and setting data.
• Technical information, such as request metadata, device/browser data, cookies, API logs, error logs, and security/audit records generated when you use the site.

How We Use Information

• To provide the site, authenticate accounts, keep you signed in, and protect magic-link sign-in from unauthorized use.
• To process purchases, create checkout sessions, confirm payment, grant digital library access, reserve and update physical inventory, and show your order history.
• To request shipping quotes, validate and normalize shipping addresses, prepare fulfillment, export shippable orders, receive shipment updates, and support delivery questions.
• To send transactional messages such as sign-in links, purchase confirmations, gift notices, support replies, and administrative order notices.
• To publish, summarize, moderate, or remove reviews and testimonials according to our site rules.
• To respond to contact requests, troubleshoot bugs, prevent fraud or abuse, enforce our terms, maintain security, and operate internal admin tools.
• To improve catalog content, product availability, site performance, customer support, and future reader experiences.

Payments, Shipping, and Service Providers

Author Cooper uses service providers to run parts of the platform. Payment checkout is handled through Stripe-hosted Checkout; we receive payment status and payment reference information, but we do not need your full card number to operate the site.

Shipping rates, address verification, shipment export, and shipment notifications may be handled through ShipStation or similar fulfillment providers. Email delivery, hosting, database, storage, analytics, logging, and ebook-delivery services may also process data for Author Cooper when configured.

These providers may process information only as needed to provide their services to us, subject to their own terms, privacy commitments, and security practices.

Cookies and Local Storage

We use necessary cookies for sessions, magic-link security, and post-login redirects. Some carts and shelves are client-side, which means the browser may store selected item identifiers locally so the site can resync prices, stock, and availability with the server.

If analytics, advertising, or preference cookies are added later, this policy and any cookie controls should be updated before those tools go live.

Legal Bases Where Required

• Contract: to create accounts, provide digital access, process orders, provide shipping, and support purchases you request.
• Legitimate interests: to secure the service, prevent fraud, operate admin tools, respond to support requests, improve the product, and keep business records.
• Consent: where you choose to submit optional information, publish a review, receive optional marketing, or accept optional cookies if those are introduced.
• Legal obligation: where records must be kept for tax, accounting, payment, dispute, consumer protection, or law-enforcement reasons.

How We Share Information

We do not sell personal information. We share information with payment, shipping, hosting, database, storage, email, analytics, logging, customer support, and fulfillment providers as needed to run Author Cooper.

We may also share information if required by law, to protect rights and safety, to investigate abuse, to enforce our terms, or as part of a merger, acquisition, financing, or sale of business assets.

Public Content

Reviews, ratings, author-facing testimonials, and similar user-submitted content may be displayed publicly or used in promotional areas of the site after moderation. Do not include private information in content you submit for publication.

Retention

We keep information for as long as needed to provide the service, maintain your account and library, complete transactions, resolve disputes, comply with legal obligations, secure the platform, and keep reasonable business records.

Some short-lived data, such as magic-link nonces, redirect cookies, and shipping quote cache records, is designed to expire quickly. Order, payment, fulfillment, tax, audit, and library-access records may need to be retained longer.

Your Choices and Rights

Depending on where you live, you may have rights to access, correct, delete, export, restrict, or object to certain processing of your personal information. You may also be able to withdraw consent where processing is based on consent.

You can request help through the Contact page. We may need to verify your identity before fulfilling a request, and some information may be retained where required for security, legal, accounting, order history, dispute, or anti-fraud reasons.

Children and Teens

Author Cooper is intended for general audiences and is not directed to children under 13. If you are under the age of majority where you live, use the service with permission from a parent or guardian. If we learn that we collected personal information from a child under 13 without appropriate consent, we will take reasonable steps to delete it.

Security

We use reasonable technical and organizational safeguards, including session controls, server-side checkout validation, signed payment webhooks, access controls for admin areas, and audit records for sensitive operations. No internet service can be guaranteed to be perfectly secure.

International Use

Author Cooper may be operated from the United States and may use providers in other countries. By using the service, you understand that information may be processed where we and our providers operate.

Changes to This Policy

We may update this policy when Author Cooper changes, when providers change, or when legal requirements evolve. The updated version will be posted with a new "Last updated" date.

Contact

For privacy questions or requests, use the Contact page and include enough detail for us to understand and respond to your request.