Privacy Policy
Effective as of: July 9, 2025
Last updated: November 23, 2025
At Saphly, we respect your privacy and are committed to protecting your personal information. This Privacy Policy explains how we collect, use, and safeguard your data when you interact with our website, manuscript submission system, and other related services and community platforms (collectively, the "Services").
By accessing or using our Services, you agree to the practices described in this Policy and our Terms of Service. If you do not agree, you should discontinue use of the Services.
1.1. Usage Data and Analytics
We collect information about how you interact with our Services to improve your experience and our content. This includes:
- Pages visited, submission activity, and platform interactions.
- Website performance metrics.
- Anonymized usage data.
When you first visit our website, you will be prompted to accept or decline analytics cookies. If you accept, we enable Google Analytics to measure and analyze how you use our site. We only collect analytics data and do not use any advertising or personalization tracking.
If you decline, analytics cookies will not be set, and your usage data will not be tracked. You can change or withdraw your consent at any time by clearing your cookies or resetting cookie consent at the bottom of the page.
1.2. Information You Provide
We collect personal information that you directly provide to us through various Services. This includes, but is not limited to:
- Contact submissions: When you use our contact form, we collect your name, email address, and the contents of your message.
- Newsletter sign-ups: When you subscribe to our marketing communications, we collect your name, email address, and record your consent to be contacted.
- Other interactions: Any other information you choose to provide when you communicate with us.
1.3. Community Data
When you join and participate in our Discord community, we collect and process data to provide moderation, administrative functions, and interactive features. This includes:
- Basic identifiers: Your user ID, username, and avatar.
- Activity data: Message counts, participation metrics, and interaction history used for features like points systems and role assignments.
- Moderation data: Server logs, message deletions, support tickets, and other data used for security and community management.
- Engagement data: Writing sprint progress, games won, scores, and other data generated through interactive features.
- Server preferences: Your channel preferences, settings, and any configuration data you set.
This data is stored securely and used solely for the operation, security, and enhancement of our community services. It enables features like automated moderation, server backups, leaderboards, role rewards, and community games that make the community engaging and functional.
1.4. Manuscript Submission Data
Submitting a manuscript requires you to provide personal and project-related information. This includes:
- Personal details: Your name, email, and country of residence.
- Manuscript details: Book title, word count, genres, plot summary, synopsis, query letter, and the manuscript file itself.
We use your information to provide and improve our Services, process manuscript submissions, respond to your inquiries, and, with your consent, send marketing communications. You can opt out of these updates at any time. We also use your information to develop new services, perform research and analytics, and comply with our legal obligations.
The legal bases for processing your data under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) include:
- Performance of a contract: Ensuring the website, submission processes, and related Services function as intended.
- Legitimate interest: We process data for purposes such as improving and securing our Services, preventing fraud, and for our own internal administrative and analytical purposes, provided these interests are not overridden by your data protection rights.
- Consent: In specific cases, we will ask for your clear, explicit consent. This applies primarily to receiving marketing communications, like our newsletter.
- Legal obligation: We may process your data to comply with a legal or regulatory requirement, such as tax law or responding to a valid legal request.
We do not sell or share your personal information or manuscript data with third parties. Information you provide is shared only within Saphly and with authorized staff who require access to review, process, or deliver Services. However, we may disclose your information to investigate or prevent abuse, fraud, security threats, or in response to legal process or a request from law enforcement or regulatory authorities.
We retain your information, including manuscript submission data, for as long as necessary to provide our Services (such as evaluating your submission), fulfill our contractual obligations, or comply with legal requirements. For example, we typically retain manuscript data for the duration of the review process and for a reasonable period thereafter. We will delete this information upon your valid request or when it is no longer needed for the purposes for which it was collected.
We take reasonable measures to protect your information, including manuscript files, from unauthorized access, alteration, or destruction. These measures include:
- Secure storage of data and uploaded files.
- Limited access to data (only accessible to authorized personnel).
- Virus and malware scanning of uploaded manuscript files.
- Regular security audits and reviews of data handling practices.
- Encryption of data transmission (e.g., HTTPS).
However, no security measure is perfect, and we cannot guarantee the security of your information. By using our Services, including submitting manuscripts or joining community platforms, you acknowledge and accept this risk.
Our Services may link to or rely on third-party platforms (such as external retailers, community platforms like Discord, or essential service providers like our cloud hosting and database infrastructure). Your direct interactions with these third-party services are governed by their own privacy policies. We are not responsible for the privacy and security practices of these third parties, and we encourage you to review the privacy policies of any third-party services you interact with.
While we vet our service providers, we cannot be held liable for data breaches, outages, or other incidents that originate from these third-party platforms, even if they affect our Services.
We do not knowingly collect data from individuals under the age of 13 without verified parental consent. If you believe that data from a minor has been collected, please contact us immediately, and we will take appropriate steps to delete the data.
By submitting your manuscript, you confirm that your submission meets our guidelines and that you own the rights to the work or have been authorized to grant permission for its review. These confirmations are given via explicit checkboxes on the submission form. You may withdraw your consent at any time by contacting us, though doing so may affect our ability to consider your manuscript.
We may update this Policy periodically, indicating any changes through the "Last Updated" date. Continued use of our Services after changes constitutes your acceptance of the new Policy.
This Policy is governed by the laws of Portugal, without regard to its conflict of law principles. Any legal action or dispute arising from this Policy will be resolved in accordance with these laws and regulations.
If you have any questions or concerns about this Policy, including your manuscript submission data, or other matters, please contact us via the appropriate email address below:
- General Inquiries: contact@saphly.com
- Authors & Publishing: authors@saphly.com
- Technical Support: support@saphly.com
- Legal Matters: legal@saphly.com
For real-time assistance or to reach out via community support, you can also contact us on our Discord server.
