Your family’s story. Your choice to share.

Read freely. Make a book with an account.

The free stories are fictional and free to read without signing in. Making a book needs a signed-in, email-verified account. Joining on the website needs an invitation; joining in our phone app doesn’t.

On Tell, your story, who’s in it and the story we wrote for you to read are saved privately to your account as you go, so you can carry on after a reload or on another device. Only you can open them. Clear it deletes a story you haven’t made into a book, making the book replaces it, and we keep your 20 most recent unfinished stories.

What our helpers read.

Our helpers are how a book gets made. When you continue from Pictures and length, we record on your account, with the version of the wording, that our writing helper and our picture helper may work on your books, first sketches included. That permission wording names the services that receive your words and pictures. In the app it is shown beside the button. On the website a note beside Next says it turns on our helpers, and How this works opens the full wording.

The writing helper is Anthropic’s Claude Opus 5.5. It reads your story, the book’s title, size and languages, the names of the people in it with what you wrote about each of them (part, kind, looks, personality, loves and sayings), the places and things the book keeps, and each page’s words and picture notes. First it writes the story in four parts for you to read. When you approve it, it writes the pages, and they land in your book with Undo. It also reads the book on its own to find people the pages mention and to fill out a short look before a portrait is drawn. When you check a hardcover proof, it looks at the book's kept pictures once each, to find lettering drawn into them and faces or hands too near the fold or the edge; it answers with where they are, never with names or words. Anything else you ask for, like a new version of a page, waits until you keep it.

The picture helper is OpenAI’s GPT Image 2.5. It draws each person’s portrait from their name, kind and written look. Pages, first sketches and the cover are drawn from a written description: the page’s picture note and words, the look of each person on it, the places and things it shows, and the book’s art style. The portraits of the people on the page go with it as reference drawings. First sketches are drawn four pages at a time at low quality. The cover is drawn from its title, the names on it and how the story begins.

Our studio can also have a book read aloud. The read-aloud helper is Google’s Gemini speech model: it receives one page’s English words at a time, with how to read them, and returns the page read aloud. Each clip then goes to Fish Audio’s transcriber, which checks every word was read as written and says when each word is said, so the reader can follow along. To add sounds, Claude reads the page’s words and picks from our own library of sound effects. Our studio does this for a family’s book only under the wording above from 1 October 2026, and checks every clip before it reaches the book. No picture of yours is ever sent to make it move.

These helpers are reached through Vercel AI Gateway. They never receive file names, account or file identifiers, or email addresses. The only photo ever sent is described next.

A photo, only for that person’s portrait.

You can add a photo of someone in People & pets. We save it again as a private WebP copy, which removes where it was taken and other hidden details. You give permission before an image is saved. A separate choice lets our picture helper draw that person’s portrait from it. Without that choice, the image is not sent to a model. We record that on the photo, and we record which photo each portrait was drawn from. The photo is sent as an image, never as a link, and only to draw that person’s portrait. Pages are drawn from the portrait, never from the photo.

A photo of a place or thing is never sent to a model. Replace or remove a photo at any time. A portrait already drawn stays until you draw it again or remove the person. Removing a person deletes their portraits and, unless someone else is based on it, their photo.

What we keep, and what we count.

Your books, the story you approved, People & pets, Places & things, your photos, and the portraits and pictures made for you are stored privately. Neon Postgres holds the records and Vercel Blob holds the files. Pictures and portraits you didn’t keep stay stored privately until you delete the book or the person.

Saved drafts, approved plans, generated pictures and writing requests can include words sent to or returned by a model, including work you didn’t keep. For each request we also record which help, which model, the tokens, the time, the cost, and whether you kept it. We use it to hold the limits and to record our costs. Vercel AI Gateway keeps no prompts or answers. Writing goes only to Anthropic, under the gateway’s zero data retention. Pictures go only to OpenAI, with training on them refused; OpenAI keeps picture requests for a time under its own terms. A read-aloud voice is asked for under zero data retention through Google Cloud, and Fish Audio checks each clip under its own terms. We don’t add family material to any training set of our own.

Turn our helpers off from a book’s settings. It applies to your whole account, and nothing more is sent until you turn them on again or start another book. You can also pause first sketches for one book. A picture already underway can finish. A book made with the earlier separate first-sketch box keeps drawing first sketches until you pause them in that book.

Your account.

Accounts use Neon’s sign-in service and its session cookies; that service may record the internet address and browser a session started from. When you open an invitation link, we also set one cookie so signing up knows which invitation you used. It lasts a day and is removed when you join.

So that each person has one account, we refuse temporary inboxes. We keep a one-way code made from your email address and, when you join or start a book, one made from your internet connection. We can’t turn a code back into the address, and our own tables don’t keep your IP address. We use these codes only to limit how many books can be started in an hour and to notice many accounts from one person.

Accounts are for adults. Please leave out full names, exact birthdays, schools, and anything a story doesn’t need. If you email us, we keep your address, the subject and your message so our studio can answer.

The phone app.

Report a problem sends your chosen reason, optional note and a reference to the item to our support desk. It does not automatically copy story words, photos or pictures. Reports about your private work are linked to your account; reports about free stories need no sign-in. Staff can record a review and its outcome. Reporting does not automatically remove a book or close an account. Reports need a connection; a sent request cannot be recalled by closing the form.

Our app for iPhone and Android is being tested before it reaches the app stores. It shows the free stories without an account, and your own books once you sign in. Each sign-in attempt sends your email and password to our site, which checks them with Neon’s sign-in service. They stay in the form’s memory while it is open, including after a failed attempt; the app does not save them to its files. Your phone’s password manager is separate. The app saves a sign-in key using the phone’s secure storage with device-only storage settings and sends it with private requests. Neon’s sign-in service notes the kind of phone and app a session started from, as it does a browser.

You can join in the app without an invitation. If you open one there, it only records who invited you. Your email, password, code and any invitation go to our site and Neon’s sign-in service, as they do on the website, and a request for an invitation is kept the same way. While you fetch your code, the phone’s secure storage keeps your email and invitation for up to a day, never your password. Joining counts its steps against a keyed hash of your network for an hour, to slow abuse.

Fully downloaded family books and pictures can open without a signal. If the phone clears that cache, a connection is needed to download them again. Signing out tries to remove kept books, pictures, reading positions, unfinished story copies and sign-in keys. Storage errors can prevent cleanup, and signing out offline may not end the server session. The app checks your session when it opens or returns to the foreground. When the server says your account is closed or your session has ended, private screens close and the app attempts the same cleanup. An offline phone cannot learn of a remote closure until it connects. A signed-out screen is not proof that every saved file was erased. Books kept for one sign-in are not opened for a later one, even when removing them failed.

When you start a story in the app, your words, people and pets, choices and edits are saved privately on your account so you can return to them. A recent copy stays in the phone’s cache; clearing it does not remove the story saved on your account. Saving someone to People & pets makes their name and description available for future books.

Preparing a plan, writing pages or drawing portraits and illustrations uses the same writing and drawing permission as the website. Your story and descriptions go through our server and Vercel AI Gateway to Anthropic for writing and OpenAI for portraits and pictures. We record the request and its usage to check progress, recover a lost answer and apply your family’s allowance. Writing is available only when writing help is enabled for the app. Make the book requests its words and illustrations under your family’s allowances.

Add lets you choose one photo with the phone’s picker, or explicitly paste a copied sticker or Memoji on iPhone. We do not browse your photo library or read your clipboard in the background. Chosen images are resized. The app can remove a photo’s background on your phone to make a sticker; an existing transparent sticker is kept as it is. On your phone, image labels and face detection suggest whether it is a person, pet or ordinary sticker, and you can change that choice. These checks do not identify anyone or infer age, and their labels and face rectangles are not saved or sent. People and pets stay in People & pets; ordinary stickers stay with your private stickers. You preview the result before saving it. Original reference photos stay separate from cutouts. Older saved photos can be converted without changing their portrait permission. If a cutout is unavailable, keeping the full photo is your choice. They reach a picture helper only if you separately allow that image to guide their portrait. Making a book can draw initial portraits before its pages. New people introduced by the story wait for you to review their looks. Drawn portraits stay private on your account. When you ask to replace a saved portrait, Keep uses the chosen face in future books; Leave keeps the earlier face.

The list of free stories is saved separately, with no account information, so you can still see it without a signal. Signing out leaves that public list on the phone. Opening a free story needs a connection.

The app has no analytics, crash reports, advertising or tracking. PostHog and the Meta pixel described below aren’t in it, and its account and creation requests go to our site. The site uses the model services described above. Delete account in Account opens our website to review a deletion request. Account settings also opens website Settings, where you can choose Close your account. The browser may ask you to sign in again. Opening the link does not submit the request; you can choose Keep it to cancel.

Who can see your books.

You, and our studio staff for the books you ask us to make and for support. Staff can see your photos too. Other families and search engines can’t.

New books start with Only me. You can change the default for future books in Account settings, or share a book with Anyone with the link. Each book keeps its own choice. Anyone with a readable link can see that book’s title, the name on its cover, its words and its page pictures, and nothing else. Turning sharing off stops reading through the link; turning it back on makes the same link work again. Links aren’t listed anywhere, and we ask search engines not to index them.

We don’t sell family information, and the only advertising pixel we use is on some pages reached from our ads, described below. PostHog receives the site-use information described below, including from Tell, your library and the book editor.

Seeing how the site is used.

We count each day how often the free bookshelf, the comparisons and Tell are opened. The counts hold no names, stories, account IDs, visitor IDs, IP addresses or links.

On your account we also note, once for each book, that you read it to the end. When someone else opens a book you shared, we note that the book was opened, at most once a day, and nothing about who opened it. We use these to see whether the books get read.

After you’ve read one of your books to the end, we ask what you thought of it. If you answer, we keep your answer and any sentence you add with that book, and our studio sees them on our desk. You can change them, and they go when the book does.

If you ask to hear when a family plan opens, we keep that you asked, where, your answer to its one question and any sentence you add with your account, and our studio sees them on our desk. You can change them, they are in your data download, and they go when your account is removed.

PostHog runs across the site so we can see how people use the free stories, Tell, the library and the book editor. It records page views, taps, field changes, repeated or unresponsive taps, heatmaps and a replay of movement, scrolling and what was shown or typed. That means a replay of the editor can include your story, names, book words and pictures. Password values and card forms aren’t recorded. We also turn off console messages and the contents of network requests.

PostHog can receive your internet address and estimate a rough location from it. It records the page, the site you came from, campaign tags in the link (utm_…), and the kind of browser and device with its language, time zone and screen size. It sets no cookie and saves nothing in your browser. A random number links one visit’s pages and is forgotten when you close or reload the page. We don’t attach it to your account or make a person profile. Do Not Track and Global Privacy Control turn PostHog off.

Some pages people reach from our ads use an advertising pixel from Meta, which runs Facebook and Instagram. It is on those pages and nowhere else on the site. It tells Meta that the page was visited and that a request was sent, and Meta also collects its own device and browser information, such as your internet address, as it does on any site that uses its pixel. We never send Meta an email address or anything you type. Meta uses what it receives under its own terms, including to show and measure ads.

Under some US state privacy laws, this can count as sharing information for advertising. You can opt out: if your browser sends a Global Privacy Control or Do Not Track signal, we honour it automatically and the pixel doesn’t load. A content blocker does the same.

Payments and printing.

Ordering a printed book isn’t open to families yet, and checkout runs in Stripe’s test mode. When it opens, Stripe hosts checkout, handles cards and asks for the delivery name and address. We keep that address, the payment reference and the order’s progress, never card numbers.

Nothing is sent to a printer automatically. When printing opens, our studio sends the printer the approved print files, the recipient’s name and address, and delivery instructions. Addresses stay in orders, never in picture prompts or anything public.

Asking for an invitation.

When you ask for an invitation, we keep the email address you give and your note, if you write one, only to reply to you about an invitation. We also keep the date, the campaign tags of the link you followed (such as utm_source), the part of our site you asked from, and a one-way code made from your internet connection, used only to limit how many requests can come from one network in an hour. Nothing is emailed to you automatically. When a place opens, our studio sends you one invitation.

If you ask from the line under a family’s shared book, your request also keeps a code that stands for that family, so they can see how many people asked after reading their books. They never see who, and the code tells you nothing about them. A family chooses whether their book shows that line, and it starts off.

Once you’ve asked, you can send the page to someone. That link carries a code made from your email that doesn’t show it. If they ask from it, their request keeps the code, so we can see a friend sent it. They never learn who you are from it, and we don’t tell either of you about the other.

Only our studio can see these requests. They never appear on public pages, in our sitemap or in files for AI agents. Ask us and we delete your request. If you make an account with the same email, your data export includes it.

Invitations.

When our studio or a family invites you by email, we keep your email address, the note they wrote, if any, and their first name, only if they chose to show it. Invitation emails are sent through Resend. We send that one invitation, and at most one more if it wasn’t used after a day. Every invitation email has a “Don’t email me again” link. After you use it, we keep a simplified form of your address only so no one can send it another invitation.

A family can also share an invitation link. Anyone who opens it sees the first name they chose to show. A family who invites you sees only whether you joined. If you join, we record which invitation you used, never the link itself. Your data export includes the invitations you sent and the one you joined with. Staff removal of your closed account deletes the invitations you sent that nobody used.

Export, removal, and retention.

Download my library data, in your library, gives you your books, unfinished stories, People & pets, Places & things, orders and invitations as one file. Photos aren’t in it, so save any you want to keep, and keep complete digital copies offline.

Deleting a book without an order deletes its pictures, portraits, records and any link to it. A book with an order needs our studio first, so paid work isn’t lost. Close your account, in Settings, signs you out and requests deletion of your books, stories, people and photos. Closing blocks access and shared book links; it does not complete deletion. Staff complete removal separately, aiming to finish within 30 days. After requesting deletion, save the private receipt link to check completion after sign-out. An account with a hardcover on its way or a checkout still open cannot close yet. Retained order records include amounts, payment identifiers, delivery addresses and edition hashes. To correct something, ask about your data or raise a concern, write to support@againpleasebooks.com.

Some request, usage and activity records remain after account content is removed. Sign-in records, provider backups and logs, payment records, and files already downloaded or sent to a printer have their own lifecycles. We don’t promise instant erasure from every provider.

Other records go on a schedule, checked every day. An invitation nobody used goes 90 days after it ends, and an invitation request a year after we last changed it. The one-way code made from your internet connection is cleared after 90 days. A record that an email reached you goes after a year, and a support conversation two years after its last message, once it’s answered or closed. The words in an old writing request are cleared 90 days after it ends, except your latest one and what Undo needs; what it cost stays on record. Of your unfinished stories, we keep the 20 newest. Your books, stories, people and photos stay until you delete them or close your account. Payment and order records stay until we set their period, which we’ll write here first. Our database backup holds a deleted record for six hours.

Children’s information needs care.

Adults make the books. Children should not create accounts or submit information. Adults must have the necessary rights and guardian permission for what they share. An age checkbox is not a substitute for reviewing our legal obligations.

Joining on the website still needs an invitation, and real purchases remain closed. Our business identity, provider retention schedules and the children’s privacy rules that apply need review before launch.