Terms of Service and Privacy Policy

Updated 1 August 2023

Terms of Service Summary

Apparently, this page is required because some people do not follow the basic rules:  Be nice; that is, be respectful, realistic, reasonable, and responsible.

Terms of Service Agreement

This Terms of Service Agreement (the “Terms” or “Agreement”), which includes the Privacy Policy below, is a binding contract between us (“us” or “we” or “our” or the owner of this website and the professional associates, family, and friends of the owner of this website) and the individual or entity identified as the User (“you” or “user” or “visitor”) with respect to use of all or any part of this website (the “Site”).  If the User is representing an entity, the individual representative warrants that he or she or it is authorized to bind the entity to the terms of this Agreement.

If you are not legally competent to enter into this Agreement for any reason, we are not responsible for your access to, use of, browsing or links to or from this site or the consequences thereof.

• You accept this agreement and agree to be bound by its terms by using the Site or any part of it.  If you do not accept the Terms or the Privacy Policy of this Site, you are not entitled to use the Site.
• CHANGES TO THE TERMS OR SITE OR PRIVACY POLICY. We reserve the right to change the Site, the Terms, or the Privacy Policy at any time in our sole discretion.  Any changes to the Terms or the Privacy Policy will be effective 30 days after we post notice of such change at the top of the Terms.  Any change to the Site will be effective on the date the change is made.
• THIRD PARTY WEBSITES AND LINKS. Your use of any links to any other site from this Site and your use of any other site owned or administered by a “third party” (anyone other than us or you) is done at your own risk and is subject to the terms and privacy policy of that site.  We have no control over such sites or their terms or policies or content or products or materials, and you acknowledge and agree that we are not responsible for the availability of such external site or of any content of such site.  Further, you acknowledge and agree that we do not endorse and are not responsible or liable for any terms, policies, content, advertising, products, or other materials on or available from such sites.  You are responsible for reviewing the terms and privacy statements and policies of other websites you choose to link to or from the Site.  Websites containing reference to our name contain content delivered by the third party and not us.  You agree that we shall not be responsible or liable for any loss or damage of any sort incurred as a result of your interaction with third parties or their links or their site or their advertisers if any.  We expressly disclaim any representations made by any third-party or regarding the content or accuracy of materials or availability of products on any third-party site.
• TERM AND TERMINATION. The term of this Agreement will begin upon your acceptance of it as demonstrated by your use of the Site and will continue until the Agreement is terminated by us or by you.
• PROPERTY RIGHTS. We own the Site and all intellectual property related to the Site, with the exception noted at the end of this clause.  All content, organization, graphics, design, compilation, products and product designs, and other matters related to or included on the Site are protected under applicable copyright, trademark, or other proprietary rights and owned by us or by the rights holders noted at the end of this clause, including, without limitation, our name and logos and slogans and the names and logos and design and content of our products.  Certain images, templates, widgets, software, and other materials used to create the Site are owned by those who created them.  The photos of book covers on the Featured Authors blog posts are the property of the respective publishers and cover designers and are added to posts to showcase some of the works of the authors in question in hope of promoting their books; we believe this to be fair use of the photos.  You may not copy or otherwise use any of the content of the Site without our prior written permission.

1. REPRESENTATIONS, WARRANTIES, AND INDEMNITIES.
   1. You represent and warrant that you are of the age of majority in your place of residence; that you have the full right, power, and authority to enter into and fully perform this Agreement; and that you will comply with the terms of this Agreement.
   2. You will not upload, post, submit, email, or otherwise transmit to the Site anything that
      1. is unlawful, obscene, defamatory, libellous, threatening, pornographic, harassing, hateful, or encourages conduct that would be considered a criminal offence, give rise to civil liability, violate any law, or otherwise be inappropriate;
      2. disseminates or transmits any worms, viruses or other harmful, disruptive or destructive files, codes or programs;
      3. impersonates another person without their consent;
      4. you do not have a right to make available under any law or under contractual or fiduciary relationships; or
      5. otherwise violates these Terms.

• INDEMNITY

To the fullest extent permitted by applicable law, you shall indemnify, defend and hold us, our officers, directors, employees, affiliates, subcontractors and assigns harmless from and against any loss, claim, liability, damage, settlement cost (including reasonable attorneys’ fees), action or cause of action that arises from or is related to any actual or alleged breach by you of any of your representations, warranties, covenants, or obligations set forth in these Terms. Nothing herein is intended to grant you any licence or other rights to any intellectual property or technology owned or operated by us, including, without limitation, any trademarks or trade names.  Nothing in these Terms restricts any rights we may have under applicable law or a separate permission.

• LIMITATION OF LIABILITY. The Site is provided “as is.”  Any downloadable content of the Site is provided “as is.”  We will in no event be liable for any loss of data, loss of profits, cost of cover or other special, incidental, consequential, indirect, exemplary or reliance damages arising from or in relation to this Agreement, or for any equitable remedy of disgorgement or otherwise, however caused and regardless of theory of liability.  In no event will our liability under this Agreement exceed the amount of fees actually paid by you to us if any.  We specifically disclaim, with respect to all services, software, content, or products provided by or on behalf of us in connection with this Agreement, all warranties, expressed or implied, including but not limited to the implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, and non-infringement or warranties that may arise out of course of dealing, course of performance, usage or trade practice.  We cannot guarantee that the Site will be error-free and you agree that we will have no liability arising from a failure of any security system or procedure or arising from system or process failures, interruptions, inaccuracies, errors, or latencies or arising from your compliance or failure to comply with any content usage rules.  Some jurisdictions do not allow limitations on liability or disclaimer of implied warranties, so all or a portion of the foregoing may not apply to you.  In this case, our liability and the effect and/or duration of any implied warranty is limited to the minimum permissible under applicable law.

Further, you acknowledge and agree that we cannot ensure that books described on the Site are currently available for purchase or lending or use in any form or in any location or through any third party.

• GENERAL PROVISIONS.
  1. If any provision of this Agreement is held invalid by a court with jurisdiction over the parties to this Agreement, that provision will be deemed to be restated to reflect as nearly as possible the original intentions of the parties in accordance with applicable law, and the remainder of this Agreement will remain in full force and effect.
  2. If we fail to enforce any provision of this Agreement, such failure will not constitute a waiver of our rights to subsequently enforce the provision.
  3. This agreement will be governed by the laws of the Province of Ontario, Canada, without reference to rules governing choice of laws. You hereby irrevocably consent to and waive any objection to the exclusive jurisdiction and venue of the federal and provincial courts of Ontario with respect to any claims, suits, or proceedings arising out of or in connection with this Agreement.
  4. You may not assign any of your rights or obligations under this Agreement, whether by operation of law or otherwise.
  5. This Agreement constitutes the entire agreement between the parties with respect to its subject matter, supersedes any and all prior or contemporaneous agreements between the parties with respect to its subject matter, and does not confer upon any other person other than the parties any rights or remedies.
  6. Any notice given by a party under this Agreement must be in writing and delivered via email sent to the email address provided through the contact form.  Notices will be effective and deemed received on the day after the date transmitted.

PRIVACY POLICY

General

The Privacy Policy of the “Site” is designed to assist you in understanding how the Site (“we,” “us,” “our”) collects, uses, and safeguards information provided by the User of the Site(“you”) and to assist you in making informed decisions when visiting the Site or accessing other sites and/or services through the Site.

Please note that website hosting servers collect information about visitors to websites and generate logs that provide some details of all who visit the website, which may be viewed by the owner or administrator of the website.  These logs generally contain only information that does not personally identify the visitor, such as date of visit to the site, whether the site was accessed via a link from social media or other another website, whether any link on the site was used, and the next site to which the visitor navigated after leaving.  Many website owners or website administrators use this information to determine the appeal of the site and the efficiency of marketing venues and campaigns.  Although we do not currently use this information, we reserve the right to access such generic logs in order to track user trends and patterns.

Websites also use technologies (such as cookies, web beacons, tags, device identifiers and others) designed to enable navigation from page to page on a site and to enable other functions on a site.  Although most internet browsers accept such technologies by default, you can control these types of technology through your browser settings and similar tools to accept or refuse cookies, though this may inhibit delivery of the full capability of a website and prevent the use of certain features and services on the site that require the information provided by these technologies.

By using a site without changing your browser or device settings to disable cookies, you agree to the use of technologies as described above, and you are deemed to consent to receive cookies provided through the site and to accept the privacy policy of the site.

Please keep in mind that if you disclose personally identifiable information in a public manner, whether through collaborative postings, message boards, social media, or other public online forums, this information may be collected and used by others.

This Site

Consent

By using this Site, you consent to the collection and use of information and the use of technologies as described in this Privacy Policy.  If you do not agree to all of the terms of this Privacy Policy, you should proceed no further, use no part of the Site, and leave the Site.

This Privacy Policy may change from time to time.  Your continued use of the Site after we make changes is deemed to be acceptance of those changes, so please check the Privacy Policy periodically for updates.

Unless we state otherwise, this Privacy Policy governs our use of information you provide to us when you communicate with us in any manner.  This Privacy Policy does not apply to information collected by us offline or information collected by any third party, including through any application or content (including advertising) that may link to or be accessible from or on the Site.

Personal Data

We collect and process personal data about you only where we have lawful bases.  Lawful bases include your consent and other legitimate interests, which comprise protection to you, to us, and to other Site users and third parties; to comply with applicable law; to enable and administer our transactions if applicable; to generally understand and improve our business and user relationships; and to enable us and other users of the Site to connect with you to exchange information, provided that the foregoing adequately protects your rights and freedoms.  You have the right to withdraw or decline your consent at any time.  With regard to legitimate interests as described above, you have the right to object to such use of your information.

Our Security service, like any other similar software or service used by websites throughout the internet, collects visitor IP address, visitor IP proxy address, URL accessed, complete http header, http request body, and filename if malware is detected, in order to protect the Site and its users and visitors from cyber threats to the extent possible. To opt out of such data collection, do not use the Site.

We do not use cookies or any similar technologies on this Site to facilitate interest-based ads from third parties.

We do not share any of your personally identifiable information without your explicit permission.  By using the Contact Form on the Contact Page, you give us your name, email address, and any other information you choose to share and you consent to our communicating with you in response.

• You may request future communication from us pertaining to our books and thereby consent to being added to our Contact List.
• Google reCaptcha has been added to the Contact page. Google accesses user data to authenticate users of the contact form in order to detect spam and malicious sites. Such data is subject to Google’s privacy policy and terms of use.

Notwithstanding any other clauses of this Privacy Policy and Terms of Service, if you choose to submit reviews of our books, you grant us world-wide, non-exclusive, perpetual, and royalty-free licence to use such reviews, along with your name or initials, in any manner and media we choose in our sole discretion.

Visitor comments may be checked through an automated spam detection service.   When visitors leave comments on the site we collect the data shown in the comments form, and also the visitor’s IP address and browser user agent string to help spam detection.

We will not intentionally sell, rent, share, or otherwise disclose any information provided by you or obtained through your use of the Site to any third party for the purpose of allowing them to market their products or services to you.

We reserve the right to disclose your personal information in the following circumstances:

• in response to requests from local, provincial or state, or federal law enforcement officials;
• in response to any judicial, administrative, or similar proceeding such as a subpoena;
• when required by law;
• in special circumstances such as in response to a physical threat or perceived physical threat to any individual; or
• to enforce the terms of use of this Site.

We do not monitor information you disclose inside online public forums, nor do we accept any liability associated with your voluntary disclosure of personally identifiable information.

Limitations

By using the Site you agree that we are not responsible or liable to you for

1. any disclosure of your personal information made by you to a third party through your use of the Site;
2. any disclosure of your personal information obtained illegally from us; or
3. any accidental disclosure of your personal information made by us.

Third Parties

You are responsible for reviewing the privacy statements, policies, and terms of service of any website you choose to link to or from our Site.  We are not responsible for the privacy statements, policies, terms of service, or content of other websites, including websites you link to or from our Site.  Websites that reference our name contain content delivered by the third party and not us.

Security

We have implemented security solutions to protect our website and its features against intrusion.  However, browsing the internet and transmission of any information via the internet, including by email, is not completely secure, as every security provider will specify; therefore, we cannot guarantee the security of your personal information transmitted to or via the Site, nor the security of your device when browsing to or from the Site.  Use of the Site and transmission of personal information is at your own risk.  We are not responsible for circumvention of any privacy settings or security measures contained on the Site, on sites to or from which you link to the Site, or on your device.

Indemnity

You agree to defend, indemnify, and hold us together with our affiliates, officers, directors, employees, agents, licensors, and suppliers harmless from and against any claims, actions or demands, damages, liabilities and settlements, including without limitation reasonable legal and accounting fees, resulting from or alleged to result from your violation of our Terms of Service for the Site or this Privacy Policy.

Governing Law

The Site and this Privacy Policy are governed by the laws of Canada and the Province of Ontario.  If you are using the Site from outside Canada, please be aware that your information may be transferred to, stored, and processed in Canada where the servers that host the Site are located and our database is operated.  By using the Site, you consent to your information being transferred to our facilities and, if applicable, to the facilities of third parties providing software functionality for the Site.

Minors and Children’s Online Privacy Protection

While we include among our books one designed and written for children, the Site as a whole and the majority of the books listed on the Site are designed to attract adults rather than children.  We do not collect or maintain information from anyone known to be under the age of majority.  If you are under the age of majority in your place of residence, you may only use the Site under the supervision of a parent or guardian.  If we discover or are otherwise notified that we have received information from a minor in violation of this policy, we will delete that information.