Privacy
What we keep, and for how long
We are two people running a small press. We collect what we need to send you a book, a result or an email you asked for, and nothing else.
What we collect
If you join the ARC team: your name, email, optional Instagram handle, and the answers you gave about what you read and where you review.
If you enter a contest: your name, email, the story itself, an optional byline, social handle and content warnings, and whether you ticked the newsletter box. We also note which link brought you to the site, for example one of our Instagram posts, so we know which posts are worth making.
If you buy a zine: your name, email and shipping address, what you ordered, what you paid, and the tracking number once it ships. Your card details go straight to Stripe, which handles the payment; we never see your card number. Stripe also asks for a billing address, which stays with them.
If you win a contest: the name to make the check out to and a mailing address to send it to.
Whenever a form is submitted: the IP address and browser it came from. That is there to stop one person entering a hundred times, and for nothing else.
When you visit: anonymous statistics about which pages are read and what brought people to them. There's more on exactly what below, under “How we count visits”.
We do not run advertising trackers and we do not build a profile of you.
Why we have it
To run the thing you signed up for: send you a book, post your zine, read your story, tell you the result, mail your check. For contest entrants we will email you about the results and the zine regardless, because that is what entering was for.
Anything beyond that — news about our books, future contests — only happens if you asked for it by ticking the optional box. You can leave at any time using the unsubscribe link in any of those emails, or by emailing us.
How we count visits
We keep our own simple statistics so we know which posts bring people to the site, which pages get read, and where our forms lose people. We built this ourselves. No outside analytics or advertising company sees it.
What we record: the page you looked at, the site or link that sent you here (for example instagram.com, or a tag on one of our posts), roughly how long you spent on the page and how far you scrolled, links you clicked to other sites, whether you're on a phone or a computer, roughly where you are (country, state and city, worked out from your connection, never anything more precise), and how fast the page loaded. On the contest form we record which steps you reached: that a field was filled in, never what you wrote in it.
What we never record: your name, your email, anything you type, or your IP address. We don't use cookies for this, and we can't follow you from one day to the next or from our site to anyone else's. Visits are grouped using a code that is scrambled with a new random key every day, and the old key is thrown away.
If your browser sends a Do Not Track or Global Privacy Control signal, we don't record your visit at all.
How long we keep it
- Mailing addresses: deleted once your check clears. We only ask for one so we can pay you, and we have no reason to hold it afterwards.
- Contest entries: kept while the contest runs and for as long as the zine stays in print, since we have to know what we published and who we owe. Ask and we'll delete yours sooner.
- Zine orders: the order itself (what was bought, when and for how much) is kept for our accounts and taxes. Your shipping address is only needed to get the zine to you; ask and we'll delete it once it has arrived.
- Mailing list: until you unsubscribe.
- ARC signups: until you ask us to remove you.
- Visit statistics: 13 months, then deleted.
Who else touches it
Only the companies that make the site work, and only so they can do their job:
- Neon — the database the site's forms write to, and where the visit statistics are kept.
- Vercel — hosts the website.
- Sanity — stores the words and pictures on the site. No personal information from forms goes here.
- Stripe — takes payment for zine orders. Your card details go to them, not us, and they keep a record of the payment as the law requires.
- Resend — sends the emails we send you.
- MailerLite — runs the mailing list, if you joined it. They only ever get your email address.
We do not sell your information, and we never will. We will not hand it over to anyone else unless a court makes us.
What you can ask for
A copy of what we hold on you, a correction, or deletion. Email stephanie@secondmilepress.com and we'll do it — in practice within a few days, and within a month at the outside. You do not have to give a reason, and asking costs you nothing.
If you are in the UK or the European Union you have these rights under the GDPR, and you can complain to your national data protection authority if we get it wrong. We'd rather you told us first. Our contests are open to US residents only, but the ARC team and the mailing list are open to anyone.
Cookies
We do not use cookies for statistics or advertising. Our visit counts work without them. The site sets a cookie only if we've given you a private link to a page that isn't public yet, so you don't have to paste the link again on every page. Nothing about you is in it.
Children
This site is not for under-18s, and our contests require you to be 18 or older. We don't knowingly collect anything from children; if we learn we have, we'll delete it.
Changes
If this page changes we'll update it here. If the change matters — something new collected, something kept longer — we will email the people it affects rather than quietly editing the page.
Asking us anything
Email stephanie@secondmilepress.com. A person reads it.