Privacy Policy

1. Introduction

This Privacy Policy covers your use of the Novel Maestro platform and services. We are a team dedicated to building the world's best developmental editor, and a core part of that mission is ensuring you maintain complete trust in how we handle your work.

2. Information We Collect

We collect information to provide and improve our services. This includes:

• Account Information: Your name, email address, hashed password, and preferences (such as your dialect, theme, and colour palette).
• Manuscript Content & Analysis: The text of the novels or stories you upload, along with your notes, character profiles, story foundations, and everything derived from it by AI (including read results, developmental reports, recommendations, and your own corrections).
• Product Usage Analytics: We record a small set of product events on our own servers (such as account creation, manuscript uploads, read completions or failures, report generation, workshop sessions started, upgrade redemptions, and account deletions). These records contain only an account or project reference and non-identifying facts (such as a word-count band or plan tier). They never contain manuscript text, titles, or message content.
• Newsletter Records: If you subscribe, we store your subscription record, including the consent timestamp and the IP address from which the consent came, to maintain a compliant audit trail.
• Security & Abuse Prevention: IP addresses are used briefly to rate-limit registration and login attempts.
• Support Correspondence: Feedback submissions (which include your display name, email, user agent, and the page URL you were on) and inbound emails to our support address are stored so we can assist you.
• Error Logs: We record failures and errors, which may reference your user or project ID, to help us investigate and resolve platform issues.

3. Legal Bases for Processing

Under UK and EU data protection law, we rely on the following legal bases to process your data:

• Performance of a Contract: To provide the core service (analyzing manuscripts and delivering feedback) as outlined in our Terms of Service.
• Consent: For our newsletter, which you can withdraw at any time.
• Legitimate Interests: For platform security, abuse prevention, error logging, and providing customer support.

4. How We Use Your Information

Your data is used strictly to deliver and improve Novel Maestro. Specifically, we use it to:

• Deliver our core service: running deep diagnostics and generating developmental feedback.
• Analyze manuscripts using third-party AI models to power Maestro's tools.
• Understand how the product is used and where it helps or fails writers (our legitimate interests in improving the service).
• Communicate with you regarding your account, security updates, or billing.
• Investigate faults and answer your support requests.

5. Manuscript Data & Staff Access

Your manuscript is private by default. It is encrypted in transit and stored on managed, access-controlled infrastructure.No other user can see your work, and we do not share your manuscript with the public or unauthorized third parties. Most importantly, your manuscript is never used to train AI models.

A small number of authorised staff may access account and project metadata—and, where necessary to investigate a fault or answer a support request, the content itself.

6. Data Sharing & Sub-Processors

We do not sell your personal data or your manuscripts to advertisers or anyone else. We only share information with trusted sub-processors required to deliver the service:

• Floot: Provides our platform framework, database, file storage, and email delivery via Amazon SES. (Location: US)
• Anthropic: Analyzes manuscript text using the Claude models. (Location: US)
• Google: Analyzes manuscript text using the Gemini models. (Location: US)

Manuscript content is sent to Anthropic and Google purely to produce your analysis. Under the paid API terms we use, they do not use your data to train their models.

7. International Transfers

Some of our sub-processors are located outside the UK and European Economic Area (EEA). When transferring your data to these providers, we rely on appropriate safeguards, such as the UK International Data Transfer Addendum or EU Standard Contractual Clauses, to ensure your information remains protected.

8. Data Retention

We retain your data for specific periods depending on its purpose:

• Account & Project Content: Kept until you explicitly delete the project or your account.
• Deleted Content: Soft-deleted chapters, scenes, notes, and characters are permanently purged after 30 days.
• Authentication Data: Sessions, OAuth states, and login-attempt records are cleared after 30 days.
• Analytics Records: Product usage events are covered by the same retention and deletion rights as the rest of your account data.
• Support & Errors: Support correspondence and error logs are kept for a limited period and then purged.
• Newsletters: Unsubscribing removes your record, leaving only a minimal suppression list to ensure we don't email you again by mistake.

9. Cookies & Local Storage

Novel Maestro uses strictly necessary HTTP-only session cookies to authenticate you and keep you logged in. We also use your browser's local storage to remember your interface preferences (such as your theme, sidebar state, and view settings).

We still do not use third-party analytics, advertising, tracking cookies, or cross-site tracking. Because our storage is entirely functional and essential to the platform, we do not display a cookie consent banner.

10. Security

We protect your data using industry-standard practices, including encryption in transit, hashed passwords, least-privilege staff access policies, and hosting on access-controlled managed infrastructure.

11. Your Rights

Under data protection law, you have extensive rights over your personal information. You have the right to access, rectify, erase, restrict, object to the processing of, or port your data, as well as the right to withdraw your consent at any time.

You can exercise many of these rights directly using the in-app export and delete tools. For all other requests, email us at support@novelmaestro.com, and we will respond within one month.

12. Complaints

If you have a concern about how we handle your data, please contact us first so we can try to resolve it. If you remain dissatisfied, you have the right to lodge a complaint with the UK Information Commissioner's Office (ico.org.uk).

13. Children's Privacy

Novel Maestro is not intended for users under the age of 16. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children. If we become aware that we have inadvertently collected such data, we will take immediate steps to delete it.

14. Changes to This Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy as our service evolves. If we make material changes, we will notify you via email or through a prominent notice on the platform before the changes take effect.