Privacy

Whim & Quill is a trading name of TrailTimes Technology Inc., a company incorporated in Canada. We are the organisation accountable for the personal information described in this policy.

Privacy questions, access requests and deletion requests go to privacy@whimquill.com. Our mailing address is PO Box 122, Cumberland, BC, Canada.

A book is about a specific child, so making one means telling us about them. This information is given to us by an adult — a parent, grandparent or friend — and is never collected from a child directly. This site is sold to and used by adults.

Their first name and age

The name is printed in the book. The age decides reading level, sentence length and how much jeopardy the story carries.

Details you choose to give

Interests, a pet, a favourite coat, who else is in the story. Only what you type — we never look anything up about them.

A photograph (optional)

Only if you upload one, and only so the illustrated character can resemble them. A book can be made without one, and most are.

We do not ask for a surname, a school, an address or a date of birth for the child. The book does not need them, so we do not collect them.

Only upload a photograph of a child you are responsible for, or one you have the parent’s permission to use.

Your book in progress

Your answers, the character designs, the story and the illustrations, so you can close the tab and come back to it.

Account details

If you sign in, the name and email address from the sign-in provider you chose. We never receive your password.

Order and delivery details

For a printed book: the delivery name and address, and an email address for despatch and tracking updates.

Payment

Handled entirely by our payment processor. Card numbers are never sent to, or stored on, our servers — we receive the result and the last four digits.

Server logs

Ordinary web-server records — IP address, time, page, error — kept briefly for security and debugging.

This site runs no analytics, advertising or tracking scripts of any kind. We do not track you across other websites, and we have never sold or shared personal information for advertising. There is no consent banner because there is nothing to consent to.

If you sign in, a cookie keeps you signed in. That is strictly necessary for the service to work and is the only cookie we set. If we ever add anything beyond that, we will ask first and update this page.

Because you asked us to make something for you. We use this information to write and illustrate the book, to show it to you, to print and deliver it, and to answer you if you get in touch. Uploading a photograph is your choice, and you may withdraw it at any time by deleting it or asking us to.

We do not use your book, your answers or your photographs to train artificial intelligence models, and we do not sell any of it to anyone.

We use other companies to run the service. They act on our instructions and may only use what they receive to do their job. We use providers for:

Hosting and infrastructure

Running the website and storing your book.

Illustration and writing

Generating the artwork and the story text from your brief.

Printing and delivery

Making the physical book and shipping it to you.

Payments

Taking payment securely.

Email

Sending order confirmations and delivery updates.

If you upload a photograph, it is sent to a third-party artificial intelligence service to draw the character from. That service is outside Canada, in the United States. This is the one place your child’s photograph leaves our systems, and we would rather say so plainly than let you find out from a list.

Some of our providers are outside Canada, mainly in the United States, so your information is processed there under contracts requiring them to protect it to a comparable standard and to use it only for the service they provide us. You can ask us for the current list of providers at any time.

We would also disclose information if the law genuinely required it, and we would tell you unless we were forbidden to.

An unfinished book is kept for twelve months from the last time you touched it, then deleted — long enough to come back to it, not so long that it sits on a server forever.

A completed order is kept for seven years, because tax and accounting records have to be. Uploaded photographs are the exception: they are deleted once the character has been designed and the book produced, and they are never part of that seven-year record.

You may ask us for a copy of what we hold, to correct it, or to delete it, and you may complain about how we have handled it. Write to privacy@whimquill.com and we will respond within 30 days. We will not charge you, and we will not make it difficult.

In Canada: if you are unhappy with our response you may complain to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada. If you live in Quebec, you also have the right to have your information transferred to another service.

In the United States: depending on your state you may have the right to know what we collect, to have it deleted, to correct it, and not to be treated differently for exercising those rights. We do not sell personal information or share it for targeted advertising, so there is nothing to opt out of — but you are entitled to ask, and we will confirm it in writing.

Information is encrypted in transit and at rest. Access to the database is limited to the people who need it to run the service.

No service can promise it will never be breached. If one ever affected your information, we would notify you and the relevant regulator promptly, and we would tell you what actually happened rather than the smallest version of it.

If we change this page we will update the date at the top. If a change actually affects you — a new purpose, a new category of recipient — we will tell you directly rather than quietly editing the page.

See also our terms of service.