The fine print
Privacy
How we handle your information, in plain language.
Effective 23 August 2026 · Supersedes 28 July 2026
A press built on clarity should not hide behind boilerplate, so this is written the way we would want it written for us. It covers what we receive, what we do with it, who else can see it, and how the books and essays on this site are actually made.
What we collect
Almost everything we hold, you handed us. Fill in a form and we receive what you typed: usually your name, your email address, and your message. Join Margin Notes and we keep your first name and email address on the list. Beyond that, the server keeps ordinary technical records, including IP addresses, so the site can be defended against abuse.
We run no advertising, no analytics platform, and no cross-site tracking. Nothing here is measuring you as you read.
Manuscripts and submissions
If you send us work through the submissions form, we receive your name, your email address, a working title, your area of inquiry, a synopsis, and a link to a sample. That is unpublished writing, and it deserves saying out loud how it is treated.
Your manuscript remains yours. Sending it to us transfers nothing. We read it to decide whether to publish it, and for no other purpose.
We do not circulate it outside the press. We do not use submitted work as training material for any artificial intelligence system, ours or anyone else’s. We do not mine it for ideas to hand to someone else. If we decline, the submission is deleted within twelve months, and you can ask us to delete it sooner.
How our books and essays are made
The colophon explains the typefaces and the machinery. This is the part it did not cover, and a press that publishes a colophon has no business omitting it.
The editorial content on this site is produced with substantial assistance from artificial intelligence, under human editorial direction. That applies to the essays, to the catalogue copy, and to parts of this page. A person decides what is published, edits it, and is answerable for it.
We would rather say so plainly than let you assume a room full of staff writers. Our titles carry no invented author names, and no essay on this site carries a byline belonging to a person who does not exist. Where a book has a human author, that author will be named, and named accurately.
Your information never goes near it. Submissions, form messages, Margin Notes subscribers and the contents of your email are not fed into any external AI service. The site itself makes no AI calls, so nothing you type into a page here is passed to a model. No decision about a person, including whether we publish your manuscript, is made by a machine.
Who else can see anything
Rather than write “service providers” and leave it there, here is the list. It is short, because the site runs its own forms and its own mail rather than renting them.
- Namecheap
- Hosts the site and carries our mail. Can see everything stored here.
- Fluent Forms
- Runs the contact, newsletter and submissions forms. What you type is stored on our own server, not in a vendor cloud.
- FluentCRM
- Holds the Margin Notes list. Sees your name, email address, and which letters you opened.
- FluentSMTP
- Sends our mail through our own domain. No outside email platform handles it.
- Loginizer
- Blocks repeated failed sign-in attempts. Sees the IP addresses that make them.
- LiteSpeed Cache
- Caches pages so the site is quick. Handles no personal information.
- WPVivid
- Takes backups. They stay on our own hosting account and are blocked from public download.
- Ameen Systems
- Built the site and maintains it, over a cryptographically signed connection, reaching what an administrator reaches.
There is no analytics provider on that list, no advertising network, no data broker, and no third-party newsletter platform. If we add anything that can see personal information, it appears here before it goes live.
Beyond those, we share information only where the law requires it, or where it is genuinely necessary to protect someone’s safety. We do not sell your information, and we never have.
Cookies
A small number, for caching and security, and nothing else. No advertising cookie, no cross-site tracking cookie, no analytics cookie, because none of those tools exist here. That is why the site does not interrupt you with a consent banner: there is nothing to consent to beyond what is strictly necessary. Your browser can clear or block cookies at any time without losing you anything.
The site remembers whether you chose the light or dark reading mode. That preference stays in your browser.
How long we keep it
- Form messages
- 24 months after the matter is closed, then deleted.
- Declined submissions
- Deleted within 12 months, or sooner on request.
- Accepted submissions
- Kept for as long as the publishing relationship requires.
- Margin Notes list
- Until you unsubscribe, then removed.
- Security logs
- A short rolling window, then discarded.
- Backups
- Rotated, so a deletion can take one backup cycle to become final.
Every letter we send includes an unsubscribe link, and it works on the first click. Unsubscribing removes you from the list and does not require an explanation.
Your rights
Write to privacy@grayareapublishing.com and ask what we hold about you, ask us to correct it, ask us to delete it, or simply ask how something works. You do not need to phrase it formally. We reply within thirty days and usually much sooner, and there is no charge.
Where a legal duty requires us to keep something you have asked us to delete, we will tell you which duty rather than leaving you guessing.
Children
This is a press for adult readers. We do not direct the site to children and do not knowingly collect information from them. If you believe a child has sent us something, tell us and we will remove it.
Changes
If this policy changes, the effective date at the top changes with it, and anything material is noted in Margin Notes. We will not rely on you noticing a quietly edited page.
Who we are
Gray Area Publishing, Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. Reach us at info@grayareapublishing.com for anything, or privacy@grayareapublishing.com for the matters on this page.