Privacy Policy

Mic Press, LLC (“Mic Press,” “we,” “us”) is an independent publishing house registered as a Delaware limited liability company and operating from New York, New York. This policy governs micpress.com and the services we provide through it: our newsletter, our shop, and our manuscript submissions process.

For the purposes of applicable data-protection law, including the EU and UK General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA/CPRA), Mic Press is the data controller for the information described below. If you are in the European Economic Area or the United Kingdom, our lawful bases for processing are set out throughout this document — principally your consent, the performance of a contract with you, and our legitimate interest in operating a small publishing business.

Newsletter and dispatch. When you subscribe to The Dispatch, we collect your email address and the date and source of your subscription. Our newsletter is delivered through Buttondown, an independent, privacy-respecting email provider. Buttondown processes your address on our behalf in order to send the messages you have asked for and to record opens and clicks in aggregate.

Orders and shipping. When you pre-order or purchase a book, we collect the details necessary to fulfil and account for that order: your name, email address, billing and shipping address, the items ordered, and the amount paid. Payment is processed by Stripe, Inc. We never see or store your full card number — Stripe handles card data directly under its own PCI-compliant systems, and returns to us only a token and the limited order metadata we need to ship your book and answer questions about it.

Manuscript submissions. When you send work through our submissions process, we collect your name, email address, the materials you choose to share (synopsis, sample pages, author biography, and links to your platform), and any correspondence that follows. We treat unpublished manuscripts as confidential and use them solely to evaluate the work for the list.

Site usage. We collect privacy-first, aggregate analytics about how the site is used — pages viewed, referring sources, broad device and country categories. We describe this further below. We do not build advertising profiles, and we do not track you across other websites.

We use the information above to do the things you have asked of us and to run the press: to send the newsletter you subscribed to; to take, fulfil, and account for your orders; to read and respond to manuscript submissions; to answer your questions; to keep the site secure and working; and to comply with our legal and tax obligations as a New York business.

We do not sell your personal information, and we do not share it with advertisers. We will only ever email you about something other than your direct request — a new title, say — if you have opted in to the newsletter, and every such message carries a one-click unsubscribe.

We use Plausible Analytics, a privacy-first, EU-hosted measurement tool. Plausible does not use cookies, does not collect personal data, and does not track visitors across sites or over time. It reports only aggregate figures — totals and trends — that help us understand which essays are read and whether the shop is working.

The only cookies we set are strictly necessary ones: a session needed to hold a pending order through checkout, and a record of your cookie preference. We do not set advertising or cross-site tracking cookies. You can read the full detail in our Cookie Policy.

We share personal information only with the service providers that make this site function, and only to the extent each needs to perform its task on our behalf: Buttondown (newsletter delivery), Stripe (payment processing and fraud prevention), our print-and-distribution partners (to manufacture and ship physical books), and our hosting and email providers. Each is bound to use the data solely to provide its service to us.

We may disclose information if required to do so by law, regulation, or valid legal process, or where necessary to protect the rights, property, or safety of Mic Press, our authors, or the public. If Mic Press is ever involved in a merger, acquisition, or sale of assets, personal information may transfer as part of that transaction; we would notify you and honor the commitments in this policy.

We keep personal information only for as long as it serves the purpose for which it was collected, or as long as the law requires. Newsletter data is retained until you unsubscribe, after which we remove your address from active lists. Order and transaction records are retained for the period required by tax and accounting law, generally seven years.

We retain manuscript submissions for the duration of our review and for a reasonable period afterward in case we wish to reconsider the work. You may ask us to delete your submission at any time, subject to any records we are required to keep.

You may unsubscribe from the newsletter at any time using the link in any message, or by writing to us. You may ask us to access, correct, export, or delete the personal information we hold about you, and you may object to or ask us to restrict certain processing. Where we rely on your consent, you may withdraw it at any time without affecting prior processing.

Residents of the European Economic Area and the United Kingdom have these rights under the GDPR; California residents have parallel rights under the CCPA/CPRA, including the right not to be discriminated against for exercising them. We do not sell or “share” personal information as those terms are defined under California law. To exercise any right, write to privacy@micpress.com and we will respond within the time the applicable law allows.

We protect personal information with appropriate technical and organizational measures: encryption in transit, access limited to those who need it, and reputable processors who maintain their own safeguards. Payment data is handled entirely by Stripe under PCI-DSS standards and never touches our own servers.

No system is perfectly secure, and we cannot guarantee absolute security. If a breach ever affects your personal information, we will notify you and the relevant authorities as required by law.

Mic Press publishes for an adult readership. Our site and services are not directed to children under 16, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from them. If you believe a child has provided us with personal information, please write to privacy@micpress.com and we will delete it.

We may update this policy as the press grows or the law changes. When we do, we will revise the date at the top of this page, and for material changes we will give notice through the site or by email where appropriate.

For any question about your privacy or this policy, write to privacy@micpress.com, or to Mic Press, LLC, New York, New York.