← Four ways in

What happens to your book.

The main reason an author says no to a service like this is not the price. It is handing an unpublished book to strangers. So here is everything, including the parts that are not ours to promise — for those we quote the companies involved, in their own words, with a link, so you can check them rather than take ours.

One person reads it. No machine reads a word of it — not to draft anything, not to check anything, not at all.
Nobody trains anything on it. Nothing you send is used to train any model, here or anywhere, because nothing you send is sent anywhere.
Your synopsis is sealed until the cold read is written, by the software rather than by anyone’s good intentions, and the moment it opens is recorded and shown to you.
It is deleted 14 days after your report is delivered, and we email you when it is gone.
We will never review it. If we worked on your book, it will not appear on the Archive.

What we take

Your pages. Your synopsis. Your email address. Your answers to a short set of questions — what you are afraid of, what you did on purpose, what happens to the book next. That is all.

There is no account and no password. The link you are given when you order is the key to your order, and the only one. Anyone holding that link can see your order and your report, so treat it the way you would treat a house key.

We never see your card. Payment happens on Square's own page, and what comes back to us is the fact that you paid, the amount, and a receipt link — not the card.

Who reads it

A person. That is the whole list. E. Lawrence Anderson reads your pages in a private reader inside this system — the pages on screen, a place to write notes beside them, and no button anywhere that downloads, exports, prints or emails your book. There are no assistants, no subcontractors, and no second reader unless you chose one.

And no model. An AI reading engine was built for this service and used to run two passes over every manuscript. It was taken out of the path on 24 September 2026. Your pages are not sent to any AI company, under any agreement, for any purpose. If that ever changes, it changes on this page first and before anybody's book is touched.

The honest limit on that. The reader is a human being with a screen in front of him. Nothing in this system hands him a file, and he does not make one — but a promise about what a person does with what they are reading is a promise about a person, not a mechanism, and dressing it up as a technical guarantee would be a lie. It is made by name, by the person who signs your report, and it is the kind of promise you should weigh by whether you believe him. The reviews are published under that name, which is most of the reason it is worth anything.

Every company that touches it — in their words

Three companies are involved in running this. Each is listed with exactly what it receives, and its own published rule.

Cloudflare — where it is stored while we work

Receives: your file, the sections it is cut into for reading, your synopsis, your answers, and the order record. This is the whole system; it runs on Cloudflare.

All objects stored in R2, including their metadata, are encrypted at rest. … Objects are encrypted using AES-256 Cloudflare R2 docs — Data security · checked 24 September 2026

All objects stored in D1, including metadata, live databases, and inactive databases are encrypted at rest. Cloudflare D1 docs — Data security · checked 24 September 2026

Your pages live in the first (R2, file storage). When they are deleted from there, they are gone — there is no recycle bin. The second (D1, the database) holds your synopsis, your answers, and the order record. It has one property that matters, quoted under One honest limit below.

Square — payment

Receives: your card details and whatever you type on its checkout page. Square is the only one who sees your card.

Square complies with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) on your behalf Square Support — Secure data encryption · checked 24 September 2026

Square does not surface or display the full credit card number to the seller so there is no way to inadvertently display this data to any Square account holder. Square Support — Secure data encryption · checked 24 September 2026

Square never receives your book. It keeps its own record of the payment under its own privacy policy, as every payment company must.

Resend — email

Receives: your email address and the text of the messages we send you. Those messages contain links, never your book.

Data retention: 30 days Resend — Pricing (plan comparison) · checked 24 September 2026

We send you exactly three emails: one when we have your book, one when your report is ready, and one when your pages have been deleted. We do not add you to a list.

How long each thing stays

Your pages and your synopsis	Deleted 14 days after your report is delivered — not from upload, so they are still there if you come back with questions. Done by the system on a schedule, not by anyone remembering. You are emailed when it happens.
An upload you never paid for	Deleted when the quote expires, 24 hours after upload.
A cancelled or refunded order	The pages and the synopsis are deleted when the order is closed.
The sections your pages were cut into for reading	Deleted with them.
Your report	Kept for two years so you can come back to it, then deleted. It quotes your pages where it has to, and those quotes stay with it, because a report you cannot check against your own text is worth nothing.
A book sent to the ARC lane	Deleted 14 days after the decision either way — after the review posts, or after we tell you we are not reviewing it.
The order record	Your email, what you ordered, the price, the dates and Square's payment reference. Kept as long as US tax law requires a business to keep its records. It contains none of your book.

One honest limit. The database keeps a rolling recovery history, in case of an outage, and it cannot be switched off:

You can restore a database back to a point in time up to 30 days in the past … You do not need to enable Time Travel. It is always on. Cloudflare D1 docs — Time Travel and backups · checked 24 September 2026

That history covers the database — your synopsis, your answers and the order record — not your pages, which are stored separately and have no such history. So for up to 30 days after deletion, a copy of those records exists that nothing in this system reads, and that could only be brought back by restoring the whole database to an earlier day.

What we will never do

Send your book to an AI company, or let anything train on it.
Sell, share, lend or show it to anyone.
Quote it anywhere but in your own report.
Download it, print it, or keep a copy of our own.
Review it. If we worked on your book, it will never appear on the Archive, under any heading.
Send you anything but the three emails above.

Questions

Reply to any of those emails, any time. A person answers. If something on this page stops being true, the page changes the same day — or the thing it describes does.

Every outside source on this page was checked on 24 September 2026.