Privacy Policy

1. Who We Are and How to Contact Us

About a Book LLC is the entity responsible for the personal information processed under this Privacy Policy. We can be reached at:

2. Who the Service Is For

The Service is intended for users aged 18 years or older. We do not direct the Service to children, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under the age of 18. If we learn that we have collected personal information from a person under the age of 18, we will deactivate the account and delete the information from our active systems. If you believe a user under 18 has provided personal information to us, please contact us at hello@aboutabook.app.

The Service is initially offered to users in the United States.

3. Information We Collect

We collect information that you provide directly, information that we collect automatically as you use the Service, and a limited amount of information that we receive from third parties when you choose to connect them.

3.1 Information You Provide When You Create an Account

When you create an About a Book account, we collect:

• Your email address (or an Apple-private email-relay address if you sign in with Apple).
• Your first name (optional).
• A password, if you create one. Passwords are handled by Firebase Authentication and are never visible to us in plain text.
• Your selected genre preference, if you provide one during onboarding.

3.2 Information from Authentication Providers

You may also sign in using Sign in with Apple or Sign in with Google. When you do, we receive limited profile information from those providers, which may include your name and an email address (which, in the case of Apple, may be a private relay address that forwards mail to your real email). We do not receive your password from these providers.

3.3 Reading Activity and User Content

As you use the Service, we collect information you choose to associate with your account, such as:

• The authors you mark as favorites.
• The books you mark as “Read” or “Want to Read.”
• Books you search for or open from your library.
• Your reading lists and any notes or status flags you set on books.
• Anything you tap to send to us through customer support.

3.4 Subscription, Purchase, and Membership Data

When you subscribe to our Bookworm tier through the Apple App Store, Apple processes the payment. We do not receive your full payment-card details. We do receive—through Apple and through our subscription-management partner RevenueCat—information sufficient to determine your subscription status, such as a RevenueCat customer ID, your subscription product ID, your renewal status, and the start and end dates of your subscription period.

When you purchase a Founder or Founding Author membership through our website, Stripe processes the payment. We do not store full payment-card details on our servers. We do receive a Stripe customer or charge identifier and information sufficient to confirm the purchase and grant your lifetime entitlement.

3.5 Photos (Only When You Use the Scan Feature)

If you choose to use our optional photo-scan feature to add a book or several books to your library, the photo you upload is transmitted to Google for processing by Google’s Gemini Vision model and is used only to extract the title and author of the book(s) in the photo. We instruct Google not to retain your photo after processing, and we do not retain it ourselves. We do not perform facial recognition, environmental analysis, or any other processing on the photo beyond extracting book information.

3.6 Imported Library Files

If you choose to import your existing library from a third-party service (such as Goodreads, Kindle, Apple Books, or Barnes & Noble) by uploading a CSV file or similar export, the file is processed to identify the books and authors it contains. Only the resulting book and author records are added to your About a Book library; the original file is discarded after processing.

3.7 Diagnostic, Usage, and Device Information

We collect a limited amount of information automatically as you use the Service, primarily through Google’s Firebase platform:

• Product-interaction events through Firebase Analytics, such as when you favorite or unfavorite an author, mark a book as read or want-to-read, run a search, complete an onboarding step, or tap a link to purchase a book from a retailer (we record the retailer you chose, not the contents of your cart).
• Crash and stability data through Firebase Crashlytics if the application encounters an error.
• A device push token through Firebase Cloud Messaging, so that we can send you push notifications about new releases from authors you follow (you control this in your device settings).
• Standard log information automatically generated when you access our website or Author Portal—your IP address, browser and device type, operating system, referring URL, and the date and time of the request. Our website is served through Cloudflare, which sees the same information.

We do not collect your precise device location, and we do not use GPS, Bluetooth, or motion sensors.

3.8 Information Specific to Verified Authors

If you are a verified author using our Author Portal, we additionally collect:

• Author verification proof you submit, such as your author website URL, your ISBNs, or domain/email/social verification tokens.
• Your author bio, profile photo, and the social or website links you choose to display on your About a Book author page.
• Bibliography data that you submit or that we extract from your author website with your explicit consent.
• Logs of the verification actions you take in the portal.

3.9 Information from Public and Licensed Catalog Sources

To populate our book catalog, we query third-party catalog services—Google Books, Open Library, ISBNdb, Wikidata, and selected publisher reference sites—using the search terms you enter. These services receive your search term but do not receive your account identity. The book and author metadata we receive from those services is added to our public catalog, not to your personal profile.

4. How We Use Your Information

We use the information described in Section 3 for the following purposes:

• To create and maintain your account, sign you in, and recover access if you forget your credentials.
• To deliver the core features of the Service—search, recommendations, reading lists, favorite-author tracking, and new-release notifications.
• To process and verify your purchases and to manage your subscription or lifetime membership.
• To send you customer-support messages and respond to your inquiries.
• To send you transactional emails (for example, account confirmation, security alerts, or subscription receipts) and, separately, to send you marketing emails through our email service provider Kit if you have signed up for our newsletter or waitlist (you can unsubscribe at any time).
• To send push notifications about new releases from authors you favorite (you can disable these in your device settings).
• To understand how the Service is used so we can improve it, fix bugs, and prioritize new features.
• To detect, investigate, and prevent fraud, abuse, security incidents, and violations of our Terms of Service.
• To comply with applicable law, respond to lawful requests, and protect our rights and the rights of others.

5. AI-Assisted Features

Some features of the Service are powered by AI services provided by third parties:

• User-facing AI features—including the optional photo-scan feature, the optional bookshelf-scan feature, the “reading vibe” one-line synthesis generated from your imported library during onboarding, and the author-website scrape that verified authors can opt into—use Google Gemini (Flash and Flash Vision). When you use one of these features, the input you supply (a photo, a list of imported books, or a public author webpage) is transmitted to Google for processing.
• Catalog-pipeline AI uses Anthropic Claude to help validate and normalize information in our public book catalog. This service is not user-facing and does not process individual reader data.

We instruct our AI service providers not to retain your input for the purpose of training their models. AI outputs may be imperfect; you can choose whether to accept any suggestion before it is added to your library.

You can avoid sharing any data with our AI service providers simply by not using the optional AI features.

6. How We Share Information

We share information only as needed to operate the Service, comply with the law, or protect ourselves and others. We do not sell your personal information, and we do not share it with any third party for that third party’s independent marketing or advertising purposes.

6.1 Service Providers

We share limited information with service providers that perform functions on our behalf, under written agreements that require them to safeguard the information and use it only as we instruct. Our current service providers include:

6.2 Apple and the App Store

When you download the application from the App Store or subscribe through Apple’s In-App Purchase system, Apple receives information about that transaction directly from you. Apple’s use of that information is governed by Apple’s own privacy policy.

6.3 Affiliate Retailers

The Service includes links to participating retailers—Amazon (through Amazon Associates), Bookshop.org, Apple Books, Libro.fm (through Awin), and Barnes & Noble (through CJ Affiliate)—so that you can purchase or sample books. We record which retailer you chose to send analytics on the popularity of each retailer, but we do not send your name, email, or other identifying information to the retailer through the affiliate link. If you tap through and make a purchase, the retailer will receive information from you directly in accordance with its own privacy policy, and we may earn a commission at no additional cost to you.

6.4 Author Portal

If you are a verified author, the bio, photo, social links, and bibliography information you choose to display on your About a Book author page are visible to readers using the Service and indexable by search engines. Aggregate, de-identified statistics about reader interest in your works may be visible to you in the Author Portal; we do not share information that identifies individual readers with authors, and aggregate breakdowns are subject to minimum-cohort thresholds (typically at least 50 readers) to limit the risk of re-identification. Readers can opt out of being included in author analytics in their account settings.

6.5 Compliance, Safety, and Legal Process

We may disclose information if we have a good-faith belief that disclosure is necessary to: comply with a subpoena, court order, or other valid legal process; enforce our Terms of Service; detect, prevent, or address fraud, security, or technical issues; or protect the rights, property, or safety of About a Book, our users, or the public.

6.6 Business Transfers

If About a Book is involved in a merger, acquisition, financing, reorganization, bankruptcy, sale of all or a portion of our assets, or transition of service to another provider, your information may be transferred as part of that transaction. We will notify you of any such change in ownership or control.

6.7 With Your Direction or Consent

We may share information for other purposes at your direction or with your consent—for example, when you tell us to.

7. Push Notifications, Email, and Communications

We will send you administrative messages (such as account confirmations, security alerts, and important changes to the Service or our policies) that are part of the Service itself.

We may also send you marketing emails if you have signed up for our newsletter or waitlist. You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the unsubscribe link in any marketing email, by changing your communication preferences in your account, or by emailing us at hello@aboutabook.app. Unsubscribing from marketing emails does not affect administrative messages.

You can turn off push notifications at any time in your device settings or in the application’s notification preferences.

8. Tracking, Analytics, and Advertising

We do not display third-party advertisements in the Service. We do not engage in cross-app or cross-site tracking, and we do not allow third parties to track you across other applications or websites through the Service. Because of this, the application does not display the Apple App Tracking Transparency (“ATT”) prompt; if our practices ever change so that ATT applies, we will add the prompt and update this Privacy Policy.

On our website (https://aboutabook.app), we use a limited set of first-party analytics to understand how visitors find and use the site. We do not use third-party advertising cookies. Most browsers allow you to control or block cookies through their settings; you can also send a “Do Not Track” or Global Privacy Control signal, and where required by law we will honor those signals.

9. Children’s Privacy

The Service is not directed to children. We do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under the age of 18. If you are a parent or guardian and you believe your child has provided personal information to us without your consent, please contact us at hello@aboutabook.app and we will take reasonable steps to delete the information.

10. How Long We Keep Information

We retain personal information for as long as your account is active and for a limited period after you delete your account. Specifically:

• Your account profile, reading lists, favorites, and other User Content are retained while your account is active. When you delete your account, your account is flagged for deletion immediately, and we hard-delete it (purging the associated records and subcollections) within thirty (30) days.
• Raw Firebase Analytics events are retained for ninety (90) days. Aggregated, de-identified rollups (such as total monthly favorites of a given author) may be retained indefinitely because they cannot be linked back to you.
• Subscription and purchase records are retained as required by Apple, Stripe, and applicable tax and accounting laws.

We may retain information longer when required by law, when needed to resolve disputes, or when needed to protect against fraud or abuse.

11. How We Protect Information

We use commercially reasonable technical and organizational measures to protect personal information against loss, theft, and unauthorized access. Among other measures, we rely on Google’s Firebase platform for encrypted storage and transit of account data, restrict access to personal information to authorized personnel on a need-to-know basis, and store no full payment-card details on our servers.

No method of transmitting or storing information over the internet is perfectly secure. While we take reasonable steps to protect your information, we cannot guarantee its absolute security.

12. Your Choices and Rights

12.1 Access and Update Your Information

You can review and update your basic account information at any time in the application. If you need help, you can contact us at hello@aboutabook.app.

12.2 Delete Your Account

You can delete your account at any time directly from within the application (Account → Delete Account). When you do, your account is flagged for deletion, you lose access to the Service, and we will hard-delete your personal information from our active systems within thirty (30) days, except for the limited categories of information described in Section 10 that we are permitted or required to retain.

12.3 Export Your Data

You can request a copy of the personal information we hold about you by emailing hello@aboutabook.app from the email address associated with your account. We may take reasonable steps to verify your identity before responding.

12.4 Marketing Preferences

You can opt out of marketing emails through the unsubscribe link in any marketing email or by emailing hello@aboutabook.app. You can disable push notifications in your device settings or in the application.

12.5 U.S. State Privacy Rights

If you are a resident of California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Maryland, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Oregon, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, or Virginia, you may have additional rights with respect to your personal information, including:

• The right to confirm whether we process personal information about you, and to access that information.
• The right to correct inaccurate personal information.
• The right to request deletion of your personal information.
• The right to receive a portable copy of your personal information.
• The right to opt out of the “sale” of personal information, of “sharing” for cross-context behavioral advertising, and of profiling that produces legal or similarly significant effects.
• The right to be free from discrimination for exercising your privacy rights.

We do not sell or share personal information for cross-context behavioral advertising as those terms are defined under California law, we do not use personal information for profiling with legal effects, and we do not knowingly collect “sensitive” personal information as defined under any U.S. state privacy law.

To exercise any of these rights, please email us at hello@aboutabook.app and describe the right you wish to exercise. We will respond within the timeframe required by applicable law. We may verify your identity by asking you to confirm certain information about your account before responding. If we decline your request, you have the right to appeal our decision by replying to our response email.

12.6 Categories of Personal Information Collected in the Past 12 Months (California Notice at Collection)

In the past twelve (12) months, we have collected, used, and disclosed the following categories of personal information, in each case for the purposes described in Section 4 and shared only with the categories of service providers described in Section 6:

13. International Users

The Service is operated from the United States. If you access the Service from outside the United States, you understand that your information will be transferred to, stored in, and processed in the United States. By using the Service, you consent to that transfer.

14. Apple-Specific Information

When you download the application from the Apple App Store, subscribe to a tier through Apple’s In-App Purchase system, or sign in with Apple, Apple processes certain information about you and about that transaction directly. Apple’s use of that information is governed by Apple’s privacy policy, available at https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/. Apple may, for example, use a private email-relay address rather than your real email address when you sign in with Apple; we treat the relay address as your account email.

15. Changes to This Privacy Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. When we make material changes, we will update the “Effective” and “Last updated” dates at the top of this Privacy Policy and, when required by applicable law, provide additional notice (for example, by email to the address associated with your account or by an in-app notification). Your continued use of the Service after the effective date of the updated Privacy Policy constitutes your acceptance of the changes.

16. How to Contact Us

If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy or our privacy practices, please contact us: