Privacy

Author’s Couch is operated by Maldicore Group Pvt Ltd. Questions about this page go to support@authorscouch.com.

We store what you put into the service:

• Account details: your email address, display name and, if you give one, an author name. Passwords are never stored in readable form.
• Manuscripts: chapters, sections and the text inside them.
• Notes, research and concepts you capture while thinking about a book.
• Images and other files you upload, including cover artwork.
• Review material: invitations, comments, suggestions and replies.
• Publishing information: titles, descriptions, keywords, categories, pricing and rights choices you enter while preparing a book.
• Newsletter details if you subscribe.
• Anything you send us by email when you ask for help.

Using the service creates some records of its own: operational and security logs from our infrastructure, records of the files the service builds for you (print PDFs, EPUB files, exports), and a record of each AI operation.

The AI record is a cost and reliability ledger. It holds the feature used, the model and provider, token counts, timing, outcome, and the account, workspace and book the operation belonged to. It does not hold your prompt text or your manuscript text.

Your books, chapters, notes, research, concepts, versions, review content, covers and generated files are private to your account and to the people you explicitly invite. We do not publish them, sell them, or use them to train models. Your manuscript is not a demo asset: we do not use your book, your creative material or reviewer feedback as an example, a screenshot or marketing content without your explicit permission.

We count visits to our public pages only: the homepage, the public book directory, published book pages, the Publishing Guide, open review listings and similar information pages. We do not measure anything you do inside the workspace.

This counting is our own, with no advertising or third-party tracking services. We do not store your IP address, we do not build a profile of you, and we do not connect browsing to your account. To count people rather than page loads, we hold a short-lived marker for the browsing session and a one-way code that changes every day and cannot be traced back to you. We also keep the broad source of a visit, for example a search engine or a social site, and campaign labels if a link carries them. We never keep the full address you came from. The result is a set of totals.

Our internal operations screens are built around accounts, not around books. They show registered accounts, newsletter activity, Publishing Guide articles and system settings. They do not show your books, your writing, your publishing progress or any review content.

We should be straightforward about the limit of that: people who operate the service hold privileged access to the underlying infrastructure, as any operator does. That access is used only where genuinely needed to run, secure, support, maintain or lawfully comply, for example to investigate a fault you report or a security incident. It is not used to browse your work.

Some features send parts of your book text, and the book details you have entered, to an AI provider so it can answer a question, propose a rewrite, suggest a direction or draft cover copy. This only happens when you start the action, and the request is made by our server rather than from your device.

AI models are reached through the Lovable AI Gateway, which routes requests to models operated by Google and OpenAI. Suggestions stay suggestions: nothing enters your manuscript unless you choose to apply it.

We do not control how those providers handle a request internally beyond the terms they publish, so we make no promise here about their retention, training practices or processing location.

In a private review you share a frozen version of your manuscript with the people you invite. They can read that version and leave comments and suggestions. They cannot change your live manuscript, and their feedback is visible to you.

An open review is a listing you choose to publish so readers can find your book. The listing shows only what you enter for it. The manuscript is not public because a listing exists: a reader must deliberately join the round, and their access follows the round’s settings, including what happens when it closes.

Author’s Couch prepares files and information for external publishing platforms such as Amazon KDP. It does not connect to those platforms, submit anything to them, or publish your book for you. You take the files and details we prepare and use them yourself.

We use a small number of providers to run the service: cloud hosting and application infrastructure, a managed database and private file storage, a managed email sender for account, review and newsletter messages, and the AI gateway described above. They process data on our instructions in order to provide the service.

We do not use advertising or analytics cookies, and we do not run third-party tracking. The app stores a sign-in session on your device so you stay signed in, your light or dark appearance choice, and, for reliability, a local copy of edits that have not reached the server yet so nothing is lost offline or on a poor connection.

Data is held in a managed database and private file storage. Access is enforced per account at the database level, so one account cannot read another account’s books, and files are served through short-lived private links. Our infrastructure keeps ordinary operational logs, which can include request and error information. No service can promise perfect security, and we do not claim it.

We keep your content while your account exists. You can delete books and content inside the app at any time, and you can delete your entire account from Settings › Privacy & data. Deleting the account removes your profile, workspace, books, versions and uploaded files from the live service. Feedback you gave as a reviewer on someone else’s book stays with that book, with your name and email removed from it.

Backups and operational logs age out on their ordinary cycle, so a short period may pass before deleted material disappears from those too. We keep records we are required to keep, such as security and audit records of administrator actions.

Service email, such as sign-in, review and account messages, is part of using the service and cannot be switched off while your account is open.

The Author’s Couch newsletter is separate. If you subscribe we store your email address, the date and where you subscribed from. Subscribing does not create an account, and having an account does not subscribe you. Every newsletter email has an unsubscribe link, and unsubscribing does not affect service email.

Our providers operate internationally, so your data may be processed outside your own country. We only use providers that offer terms suitable for that processing. We do not state a specific processing region here, because it depends on provider infrastructure we do not control.

Author’s Couch is intended for adults. You must be at least 16 years old to hold an account, or older where your country requires it. We do not knowingly collect information from children.

You can view and correct your account details in the app, export your book files, and ask for a copy of your data or for deletion. Write to support@authorscouch.com. Depending on where you live you may also have rights to object to or restrict certain processing, and to complain to your local data protection authority.

If this page changes in a way that affects you, we update the date above and, for significant changes, tell you in the app.