Privacy policy

The short version

• Your shelf, ratings, and notes are private to your account.
• We do not sell your personal information, and we do not run advertising trackers on BookWard.
• To write summaries and recommendations, we send book titles and the notes you choose to add to an AI service. We explain that in detail below.
• You can export your data any time, and ask us to delete it.

What we collect

• Account details: your email address and name. Your password is handled by our authentication provider and stored only in hashed form.
• Your library: the books you add, your ratings, tags, notes, reading preferences, settings, and the AI-written content created for your books (such as Book Companions and picks).
• Usage information: basic technical data such as how many AI requests you make each day (to enforce a fair limit), and standard server logs from our hosting provider.
• Messages you send us: for example through the contact form.
• Questions you ask on our website: if you use the Ask BookWard box, we save your question and the answer. We remove email addresses, phone numbers, and links from questions before saving, and we do not store your IP address. If a question and answer are helpful, we may publish them on our FAQ page without your name. Please do not include personal information in your questions.

How we use it

To provide BookWard: keep your library, match your books to real book records, generate recommendations and Book Companions, protect the service from abuse, and respond to you. We do not use your notes to advertise to you.

AI features

When you use AI features, BookWard sends the relevant information (for example book titles, your ratings, the reasons you selected, and notes you wrote) from our server to an AI provider, Anthropic, to generate the result. Please do not put highly sensitive information in your notes. AI output can be inaccurate, so check anything important.

Who helps us run BookWard

• Supabase: database and sign-in.
• Netlify: website hosting and server functions.
• Anthropic: AI text generation.
• Open Library / Internet Archive and Google Books: book records, covers, and previews. When your browser loads a cover or sample, those services can see that your device requested it.
• Porkbun: domain registration.

These providers process data only to provide their services to us, under their own terms and privacy policies.

Cookies and local storage

BookWard uses your browser’s storage to keep you signed in and remember settings. This marketing website does not use advertising cookies. We use Google Analytics to see which pages are visited so we can improve them. Analytics cookies are set only after you accept them in the cookie banner. Until you choose, Google Analytics runs in a restricted mode that does not set cookies or identify you, and if you decline it stays that way. You can change your choice at any time using “Cookie settings” in the page footer.

Your choices and rights

You can export your library as a spreadsheet or backup file from Settings. You can ask us to access, correct, or delete your information through the contact page. Depending on where you live (for example California or the European Economic Area), you may have additional rights, and we will honor them.

How long we keep data

We keep your library while your account is active. When you ask us to delete your account, we delete your library and account details, except where we must keep limited records for legal or security reasons.

Security

We use industry-standard protections, including encrypted connections and access rules that keep each account’s data separate. No system is perfectly secure, so please use a strong, unique password.

Children

BookWard is not directed to children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect their personal information.

Changes

If we make meaningful changes, we will update the date above and, where appropriate, notify you.

Contact

Questions about privacy? Use the contact page.