Privacy Policy

Last updated: 21 August 2026

The Shooting Star Press (“we”, “us”) publishes comic books, graphic novels, novels and audiobooks, and provides editorial, illustration and adaptation services. This policy explains what personal information we collect, why, how long we keep it, and what you can require us to do with it.

It is written to meet the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) and Quebec’s Act respecting the protection of personal information in the private sector, as amended by Law 25.

Who is responsible

Under Law 25, one person must be accountable for the protection of personal information and must be identified publicly. For The Shooting Star Press that is:

Privacy Officer: Rodolfo Martinez, Publisher
Email: info@theshootingstarpress.com
Post: The Shooting Star Press, London, Ontario, Canada

Write to that address for any request or complaint described below. We answer within 30 days, which is the deadline both statutes set.

What we collect

When you visit this site. Our web server records the request: the page asked for, the time, the browser and operating system, the referring page, and a truncated IP address.

When you agree to analytics. If you accept analytics in the cookie banner, our provider records which pages you visit and roughly where you are. Until you agree, no analytics script runs — it is present on the page but inert.

When you contact us or submit work. Your name, your email address, and whatever you send us: a query letter, a synopsis, a manuscript, sample pages, artwork, a portfolio link. We treat unpublished work as confidential.

When you become an author or contributor. The information a contract requires: legal name, address, banking details for royalties, and tax identifiers. Payment details are handled by our bank and our accountant, not stored on this website.

We do not buy personal information, and we do not run a mailing list from this site.

Submissions, specifically

A manuscript is personal information and also your creative work. Both matter, so:

We read submissions for the sole purpose of deciding whether to publish them.
We do not share them outside the people assessing them, and everyone assessing them is bound to confidentiality.
Declining a submission does not give us any right to its contents.
We destroy declined submissions and their covering correspondence 12 months after the decision, unless you ask us to do it sooner — which you may, at any time, with no reason given.
We keep no permanent database of who submitted what.

Why we collect it

To read, assess and respond to submissions.
To publish, produce and pay for work we accept.
To answer your enquiry and to provide services you engage us for.
To keep this website working and prevent abuse of it.
To understand which pages are read, if — and only if — you consent.
To meet legal, contractual, royalty and tax obligations.

Cookies and similar technologies

By default, this site sets no analytics or advertising cookies. Anything that would identify you, locate you or profile you is deactivated until you turn it on, which is what Law 25 requires. The banner offers Accept all and Decline all with equal prominence. Your choice is stored in your browser, not on our servers, and you can change it at any time.

Automated decision-making

Nobody’s manuscript is assessed by a machine. We do not use automated means to make decisions about you, and we do not use submitted work to train machine learning models, nor do we permit our service providers to.

Who else sees it

We share personal information only with service providers who need it, under contract: our hosting provider, our email provider, our accountant, and — for published work — printers, distributors and retail platforms. Where a provider operates outside Quebec or outside Canada, we assess the protection the destination affords before transferring anything, as Law 25 requires.

We do not sell personal information.

How long we keep it

Server logs: 90 days.
Analytics: 26 months, or the shortest the provider allows.
Declined submissions: 12 months from the decision, then destroyed.
General correspondence: two years after the last exchange.
Contracts, royalties and tax records: seven years, as the law requires, and longer where a contract remains in force.

How we protect it

Access is limited to the people who need it. Data is encrypted at rest and in transit. Unpublished manuscripts are held in access-controlled storage. We keep an internal register of confidentiality incidents, as Law 25 requires, and if an incident presents a risk of serious injury we notify both the affected people and the Commission d’accès à l’information without delay.

Your rights

You may ask us to tell you what we hold about you, correct it, delete it, or stop using it; to withdraw consent at any time; to give you a copy in a structured, commonly used technology format or send it to another organisation; and to stop disseminating or de-index information where its distribution contravenes the law.

There is no charge, and we will not ask why. If we refuse we will say so in writing, with the reason and the provision relied on, and tell you how to challenge it.

If you are not satisfied

Write to our Privacy Officer first. If our answer does not satisfy you:

The Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada — priv.gc.ca (opens in a new tab)
The Commission d’accès à l’information du Québec, if you are in Quebec — cai.gouv.qc.ca (opens in a new tab)

Young people

Our books are read by young people, but this website is not directed at children, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 14. If you believe we have, write to us and we will delete it.

Changes to this policy

We will post any change here and update the date at the top. Where a change materially affects information already collected, we will seek your consent again rather than rely on the old one.