Privacy Policy

1. Information We Collect

We collect several types of information from and about users of our platform, depending on how you interact with us:

• Personal Data: This includes personally identifiable information you provide to us voluntarily, such as your full legal name, email address, physical billing and shipping addresses, phone number, and account username/password.
• Author Portfolio & Manuscript Assets: To fulfill our publishing core services, we collect information you explicitly upload, including manuscripts, text, graphics, book covers, outlines, author biographies, and related metadata.
• Tax and Financial Credentials: For processing professional royalty payouts, we collect necessary tax identifiers (such as Social Security Numbers, Employer Identification Numbers, Form W-9, or Form W-8BEN) and financial distribution information (such as bank routing numbers or digital payment platform data).
• Transaction and Payment Details: When you purchase our self-publishing packages (such as editing, formatting, cover design, or marketing tools), our secure third-party payment gateways collect standard credit card information, billing details, and transactional history.
• Technical and Usage Data: Our servers automatically record standard tracking logs when you navigate our site. This includes your IP address, browser type, operating system, referring URLs, specific platform pages viewed, and exact dates/times of access.

2. How We Use Your Information

We utilize the data we harvest to run our daily operations, fulfill our legal obligations, and maximize your platform experience. Specifically, we process your data to:

• Establish, maintain, monitor, and secure your personal self-publishing account.
• Process, compile, typeset, and distribute your submitted literary Work to global retail networks.
• Compute, report, and remit accurate financial royalty payments and issue annual tax reporting documents.
• Execute your service orders, verify financial card charges, and ship requested print proofs or retail inventory.
• Deliver customer service responses, platform system updates, marketing advisories, and administrative notices.
• Diagnose technical bugs, optimize website speed, and ensure strict compliance with our overarching Terms and Conditions.

3. Sharing and Disclosure of Your Information

We do not sell, rent, or trade your personal information to third parties for independent marketing purposes. However, we may share information with trusted third parties in the following circumstances:

• Global Distribution Partners: To distribute your book across global retail marketplaces (such as Amazon, Ingram, Barnes & Noble, etc.), we share necessary publishing metadata, author names, and book files.
• Third-Party Service Providers: We partner with vendors who handle specialized tasks on our behalf, including secure credit card processing, digital banking transfers, print-on-demand book manufacturing, and cloud database hosting.
• Legal Compliance & Safety: We may disclose your information if required to do so by local, state, or federal law, court orders, or government requests, or if we believe disclosure is necessary to protect the rights, property, or safety of EC Publishing LLC, our authors, or the public.
• Business Transfers: If we undergo a corporate merger, acquisition, reorganization, or sale of company assets, user databases may be transferred to the acquiring business entity.

4. Cookies and Tracking Technologies

We use standard browser cookies, web beacons, and persistent tracking pixels to analyze user trends, manage sessions, and gather demographic information.

5. Data Security and Retention Standards

• Security Measures: We implement industry-standard technical, physical, and administrative security parameters designed to safeguard your personal details against unauthorized access, modification, destruction, or data breaches.
• Vulnerability Disclaimer: While we utilize commercial enterprise-grade protocols (including SSL encryption for financial entries), no system over the internet or method of digital storage can be completely guaranteed. As such, you acknowledge that any upload of sensitive data is executed at your own risk.
• Data Retention: We retain your personal information, manuscript catalogs, and financial tracking metrics for as long as your platform account remains active, or as required by financial, tax, corporate accountability, and legal statutes.

6. Your Privacy Rights and Choices

Depending on your geographical location (e.g., California Consumer Privacy Act/CCPA or European General Data Protection Regulation/GDPR), you may possess specific statutory rights regarding your personal information. These generally include:

• The Right to Access: You can request detailed copies of the exact personal information datasets we hold on file for your identity.
• The Right to Rectification: You can demand immediate corrections to any inaccurate, outdated, or incomplete data elements.
• The Right to Erasure: You may request the permanent deletion of your personal account data, subject to specific legal exceptions where we must retain transaction archives or tax information.
• Marketing Opt-Outs: You can unsubscribe from our marketing newsletters at any time by clicking the 'Unsubscribe' link embedded in the emails or adjusting your profile settings.

7. Third-Party Websites and Links

Our website and distribution dashboards may contain hyperlinked connections to external platforms operated by independent third parties (such as retail book networks, external review blogs, or third-party promotional suites). We do not own or control the privacy guidelines of these external links. We strongly advise you to check the privacy policies of any third-party website before providing them with personal information.

8. Children's Privacy Notice

Our self-publishing platform and design services are strictly intended for individuals 18 years of age or older. EC Publishing LLC does not knowingly target, solicit, or gather personal information from children under the age of 13. If we discover that an individual under the age of 13 has inadvertently bypassed our filters and submitted personal details, we will immediately delete that information from our servers.

9. International Data Transfers

EC Publishing LLC operates primarily within the United States. If you access our publishing portal from a foreign country (including the UK, European Union, or Canada), please be aware that the information we gather will be transferred to, stored in, and processed within our servers located in the United States. By using our platform, you consent to this cross-border data transfer, storage, and processing framework.

10. Revisions to This Privacy Policy

We reserve the right to revise, adjust, or completely rewrite this Privacy Policy at any time. We will communicate material changes by updating the "Last Updated" timestamp at the top header of this document or via broadcast email notifications. Any modifications become legally binding immediately upon their digital publication. Continued utilization of our platform or publishing networks indicates full acknowledgement of the adjusted policy.

11. Privacy Contact Office

If you have any questions, regulatory inquiries, or complaints concerning this Privacy Policy or how your personal information is managed, please contact us at: