Privacy Policy

Union of Books · unionofbooks.com · Effective 1 October 2026

1. Who we are

1.1 Who is responsible. Union of Books is run by Fen Press Inc, 8 The Green #25351, Dover, DE 19901, United States ("we", "us"). We are responsible for the personal data described here. You can reach us at contact@fenpress.com or on +1 302 303 2845.

1.2 What this policy covers:

• unionofbooks.com and its store;
• the emails we send you;
• our relationship with Creators, the people who supply content for our Books.

1.3 Payments are covered by Link's policy, not ours. When you buy an ebook, you pay through Link, Stripe's checkout service, which is the seller of record. Link collects and uses your payment details under its own privacy policy. We never see your card number.

2. The short version

• We collect only what we need to sell you an ebook, deliver it, and work with Creators.
• Every ebook you buy carries your name and email address. We do this instead of locking the file. Anyone you give the file to can see them.
• Our pages set no cookies of their own and carry no analytics or advertising trackers.
• We do not sell your personal information. We do not share it for advertising.
• You can ask us what we hold about you, correct it or delete it, by writing to contact@fenpress.com.

3. What we collect, and why

3.1 When you visit the Site

• No account, no tracking. You do not need an account. Our own pages set no cookies and use no analytics or advertising tools.
• Our hosting provider. Cloudflare, which hosts the Site, processes technical data in order to deliver the pages and protect the Site from attack. This includes your IP address, browser type and the page you asked for.
• Logs. Our server logs are short-lived and kept for a few days.
• Security cookie. Cloudflare may set a strictly necessary security cookie to tell people from bots.
• Bot check. On some forms, Cloudflare Turnstile checks that a person, not a program, is using them: always when you ask for a free ebook or for new download links, and when needed, buying or tipping too. To do so it looks at technical signals from your browser and at your IP address. Cloudflare uses them only to tell people from bots, not for advertising, and the check does not tell us who you are. We use its answer only to accept or refuse the form.

3.2 When you buy an ebook

What Link collects:

• your payment details, name, email address and billing address;
• this is under Link's privacy policy.

What Link tells us:

• your name and email address;
• the Book you bought, the amount and currency;
• Link's references for the payment.

What we create for your order:

• an order number;
• your download links (we store only a scrambled form of each link, not the link itself);
• a count of the downloads of each file;
• a hidden code unique to your order.

Why:

• to deliver the Book;
• to let you download it again later;
• to answer questions about your order;
• to keep the business records the law requires.

3.2a When you buy a paperback

Fen Press is the seller. Stripe processes the payment and gives us:

• your name, email address and phone number;
• your billing and delivery addresses;
• what you bought and paid.

Your card details stay with Stripe.

What we use them for:

• to have the book printed and delivered;
• to email you about the order and its tracking;
• to handle a cancellation, refund or reprint;
• to keep the tax records the law requires.

Repeated cancellations (Terms 4.12).

• We record each paperback cancellation, with the buyer's email address, a fingerprint of the payment card from Stripe (never the card number), name, delivery address and phone number.
• After two cancellations, we use these to decline further paperback orders and refund any that are placed anyway.
• Our legal reason is our legitimate interest in preventing abuse of refunds made without return.
• Review: a person reviews any request to lift the block.
• How long: we keep these records for 3 years.

Who else receives them:

• Our printing partner receives your name, delivery address and phone number, which the carrier needs.
• For deliveries to the EU, our EU VAT intermediary receives the order details needed for EU import VAT returns.

3.3 Your name and email address in your ebook

What we add to each copy:

• a licence page with your name, your email address, the date and your order number;
• a line with your name and order number at the foot of the PDF's pages;
• the hidden code from 3.2.

Why:

• It is our piracy protection, and it does not lock the file to a device or an app, so the book is yours to read on any device.
• It discourages sharing.
• It lets us trace a shared copy back to the order it came from.

What follows from it:

• Anyone you give the file to can see your name and email address.
• Once a file has been downloaded, we cannot remove your details from that copy.

3.4 Download emails and "Your ebooks"

When you ask for fresh download links on the "Your ebooks" page, we use your email address:

• to find your orders;
• to email you the links through our email delivery provider.

To stop the page being used to flood someone's inbox, we keep a note of each request. The note holds the email address and the time, and is kept for about a day.

3.5 Tips

When you leave a tip, Stripe processes the payment, and Fen Press is the merchant. Stripe gives us your name, email address and the amount. We use them only to record the tip and to answer any question about it.

3.6 When you write to us

We keep what you send us so we can reply and deal with what you asked. This includes rights and takedown notices. We may pass a takedown notice to the Creator concerned, as the law allows, so that they can respond.

3.7 Creators

If you are a Creator, we hold:

• your identity and contact details: your legal name, your pen name, your email and postal addresses;
• your payment and tax details: bank or payout details, and tax forms such as IRS Form W-9 or W-8BEN;
• your content: the Creator Content you supply, and what you tell us about whether and how you used AI to make it;
• your communications with us.

We use these:

• to perform the Creator Agreement;
• to pay you and meet our tax obligations;
• to publish and promote your Books under the name you choose;
• to make the declarations distributors require.

3.8 Voices

If you provide a voice, we process recordings of it, and may build a synthetic voice from them, only with the written consent of the person whose voice it is.

How we use it:

• A voice and any synthetic voice made from it are used only to narrate the Books named in that consent.
• They are never used to identify anyone.
• They are never sold.
• They are kept securely, with access limited to the people who need them.

When we delete it: we delete the recordings and any synthetic voice made from them at whichever of these comes first:

• within 30 days after the Creator Agreement ends;
• within 30 days after consent is withdrawn;
• in any case, within 3 years of our last dealings with that person.

Copies of narrations that Readers and listeners already have stay with them.

4. Our legal reasons (for the EU and UK)

Where the GDPR or the UK GDPR applies, we rely on:

• Contract. To sell and deliver your Book, send your links, and perform the Creator Agreement.

• Legitimate interests. To:

  • mark each copy to discourage sharing;
  • keep the Site secure;
  • prevent abuse;
  • keep records;
  • establish or defend legal claims.

  We weigh these interests against yours. You may object (section 8).

• Legal obligation. For tax and accounting records, and for responding to lawful requests from authorities.

• Consent. For voices, as described in 3.8, and anywhere else we ask for it. You may withdraw consent at any time; this does not affect what was done before.

5. Who we share it with

We share personal data only with:

• Link and Stripe, for payments, tax, refunds and disputes;
• our printing partner (BookVault, Copytech (UK) Ltd), which prints paperbacks and posts them to buyers through its carriers;
• our EU VAT intermediary, for EU import VAT (IOSS) returns on paperbacks delivered to the EU;
• Cloudflare, which hosts the Site, stores the orders and runs the bot check on its forms;
• our email delivery provider, to send download links;
• AI service providers that help us draft, edit, translate and narrate Books. They receive Creator Content only, never Readers' data;
• printers, distributors and retailers, but only a Creator's name or pen name and the Book's details, to publish and sell their Books;
• our professional advisers, such as lawyers and accountants;
• authorities, where the law requires it;
• a buyer of our business, if Union of Books is sold, under this policy.

Our providers process data on our instructions, except where they act as independent controllers. Link and Stripe are independent controllers for payments.

We do not sell personal information, and we do not share it for cross-context behavioural advertising.

6. International transfers

Where your data is processed:

• Fen Press is in the United States, and our providers work around the world.
• Personal data from the EU, the UK and elsewhere may therefore be processed in the United States and other countries.
• Where the law requires safeguards for these transfers, we use them. Examples are the European Commission's Standard Contractual Clauses, the UK addendum to them, and providers' certification under the EU-US Data Privacy Framework.

Creators: Creator Content sent to AI service providers may be processed in countries outside the EU and the UK. The Creator Agreement says which kinds of provider we use.

7. How long we keep it

Readers:

• Orders. We keep your order so that you can download your Book again at any time, and to keep the business records the law requires. If you ask us to delete your order, you will no longer be able to download that Book again from us.
• Download links. Each link expires after 30 days. A fresh one can be requested.
• Library requests. Kept for about a day (3.4).
• Hosting logs. Kept for a few days (3.1).

Creators:

• Creator records. Kept for the term of the Creator Agreement. Payment and tax records are then kept for 7 years after it ends.
• Voices. As set out in 3.8.

Everyone:

• Correspondence. Kept for as long as needed to deal with it, then for up to 2 years. Rights and takedown notices may be kept longer, if needed for a legal claim.

8. Your rights

8.1 What you can ask. Depending on where you live, you may have the right to:

• know what personal data we hold about you, and get a copy;
• have it corrected;
• have it deleted;
• restrict or object to how we use it;
• receive it in a portable format;
• withdraw consent.

8.2 How to ask. Write to contact@fenpress.com. We may ask you to confirm that you control the email address the data is linked to. We reply within one month, or sooner where the law requires.

8.3 If you are unhappy. If you are in the EU or the UK, you may complain to your data-protection authority, such as the Information Commissioner's Office in the UK. We would rather you came to us first.

8.4 US residents. If you live in a US state with a consumer privacy law, you have the rights that law gives you. We do not sell or share personal information, and we do not use it for targeted advertising. We will not treat you differently for exercising your rights.

8.5 What deletion cannot undo. We cannot remove your name and email address from ebook copies already downloaded (see 3.3).

9. Security

• Payments are handled entirely by Link and Stripe; card details never reach our systems.
• Download links are long and random, and they expire. We store only a scrambled form of each one.
• The Site is served only over HTTPS.
• No system is perfectly secure. If a breach puts you at risk, we will tell you and the authorities as the law requires.

10. Children

The Site is not directed at children under 16, and we do not knowingly collect their personal data. If you believe a child has given us personal data, write to us and we will delete it.

11. Automated decisions

We do not make decisions about you by automated means that have legal or similarly significant effects. Link and Stripe screen payments for fraud under their own policies.

12. Changes to this policy

When we change this policy, we post the new version here with its date. If a change materially affects Creators, we also tell them by email.

13. Contact

Fen Press Inc, 8 The Green #25351, Dover, DE 19901, United States · +1 302 303 2845 · contact@fenpress.com