Privacy Policy

FirstRead is an AI editorial assistant for novelists. This policy explains what we collect, why, who else touches it, and what you can do about it. It covers both our marketing site at firstread.app and the app at studio.firstread.app. We’re a small team and we’ve written this in plain language rather than legal boilerplate — if anything here is unclear, email us and we’ll answer directly.

FirstRead is the controller of the information described below. That means we decide what gets collected and why, and we’re the people to contact about it.

What we collect

Account information. When you create an account we collect your name and email address, and the sign-in credentials you choose. Accounts are handled for us by Clerk, our authentication provider.

Your manuscripts. The chapters and text you upload or write in FirstRead, plus the editorial feedback we generate from them — assessments, line edits, and your chat with the editor.

Billing information. If you subscribe to a paid plan, Stripe collects and processes your payment details. We never see or store your full card number.

Alpha applications and waitlist signups. If you apply to the alpha or join the waitlist on our public signup page, we collect your name and email address. Alpha applicants also tell us their fiction genre, an approximate manuscript word count, where the manuscript stands, and — in a free-text box — what editorial help would be most valuable to them. You don’t need an account to do this, and anything you write in that free-text box is up to you.

How we use it

• To run the product: signing you in, storing your manuscripts, and generating the editorial feedback you asked for.
• To bill you, if you’re on a paid plan.
• To select and run the alpha cohort, and to send waitlist and product-update emails to people who signed up for them.
• To support you when you contact us, and to keep the service secure and working.

We don’t sell your information, and we don’t use your manuscripts to advertise to you or to anyone else.

Who we share it with

We use a small number of third-party services to run FirstRead. Each one only gets what it needs to do its job:

• Clerk — authentication. Handles your account identity and sign-in.
• Anthropic — the AI models behind the editorial feedback. When you request an assessment, line edits, or chat with the editor, we send the relevant manuscript text to Anthropic from our servers so it can generate a response. This is how the product works; there’s no way to get editorial feedback without it.
• Stripe — payments and subscription management for paid plans.
• Loops — email and contact management for alpha applications and the waitlist. Loops is a US company. When you submit the signup form, it goes from your browser straight to Loops, where the entry is stored so we can manage the alpha cohort and send you the emails you signed up for. Because the form posts directly from your browser, Loops also receives your IP address and browser details along with what you typed. Applying to the alpha also adds you to our waitlist list, so you still hear from us if you’re not selected. Loops is not involved in the app itself and never receives your manuscripts.

Your manuscripts are never used to train third-party models. They aren’t shared with other users, and we don’t hand them to anyone beyond what’s described above. We may disclose information if the law requires it.

Where your manuscripts live

Your manuscripts and chapters are stored on FirstRead’s own servers, scoped to your account and encrypted at rest, so you can pick up where you left off from any browser you sign into. They are private to you.

Your work stays yours. You can export any chapter — or the whole manuscript — as a .docx or .txt file whenever you like, and you can delete a manuscript at any time, which permanently removes it and its chapters from our servers.

How long we keep it

• Manuscripts are kept until you delete them. Deleting a manuscript removes it and its chapters from our servers.
• Account information is kept for as long as you have an account with us.
• Alpha and waitlist entries stay in Loops until you unsubscribe or ask us to delete them. There’s no automatic expiry — if you want out, the unsubscribe link in any of our emails works, or you can email us.

Cookies and tracking

We don’t run advertising trackers anywhere, and the FirstRead app itself has no analytics. Our public website (firstread.app) uses Google Analytics to understand how people find us; if you’re in the EEA, the UK, or Switzerland, its cookies stay off unless you allow them, and you can change your choice any time from the “Cookie settings” link in the site footer. Signing in and paying do rely on cookies and similar browser storage set by Clerk and Stripe to keep your session and your checkout working.

Your choices

• See and export your work. Your manuscripts are in the app, and you can export any chapter or a whole manuscript as .docx or .txt at any time.
• Delete your work. You can delete a manuscript yourself, permanently. To delete your whole account, email us and we’ll take care of it.
• Correct your details. You can update your account information in the app, or ask us to correct it.
• Stop the emails. Every waitlist and product-update email has an unsubscribe link. To have your alpha application or waitlist entry deleted outright, email us and we’ll remove it.

If you want a copy of what we hold about you, or want it deleted, just ask — we’d rather handle it directly than make you fill in a form.

Changes to this policy

If we change how we handle your information — a new service provider, a new kind of data — we’ll update this page and change the date at the top.

Contact us

Questions about privacy, or a request about your data, go to support@firstread.app. A person reads it.

Cardinal Automation Partners, LLC
4030 Wake Forest Rd, Ste 349
Raleigh, NC 27609