Privacy: what this site stores and what it does not

A magazine about making children's books collects very little, and a desk that explains craft should explain its own habits just as plainly. Here is what this site keeps about you when you read it, what it never asks for, and why the ordinary protections of law, the kind that guard your manuscript, do nothing to guard your browsing.

What this page stores, and what it does not

The Review publishes guides on craft and revision, portfolios, queries and critique groups, and it reads like a stack of articles because that is all it is. This privacy page follows the same rule the magazine sets for itself elsewhere, in the editorial policy: say what is true, name the limits, and do not dress a small thing up as a big one. The site keeps no reader accounts, runs no contest, collects no dues and signs nobody up for anything. There is nothing to log into, so there is no profile to leak.

Why we point you at copyright.gov instead of summarizing the law

Writers who land on a piece like writing a query letter often ask the desk a different question first: who owns the manuscript while it travels. That answer belongs to the U.S. Copyright Office, not to a magazine, and the Office states it in plain terms. Copyright, under American law, protects original works of authorship the moment they are fixed in a tangible form, which covers published and unpublished work alike. Your draft is protected as you write it. The details, including what copyright does not cover, live in the Office's own FAQ, and you can read the source directly at Copyright in General rather than trusting a secondhand summary.

What the Office says that matters to you

A few points from that FAQ deserve a plain retelling here, because they answer questions the Review hears from first-time authors. Registration with the Office is voluntary in general, since copyright exists from the moment of creation, but you must register if you want to bring an infringement lawsuit over a U.S. work. Registration also carries practical advantages: it puts the facts of your claim on the public record, it can make statutory damages and attorney's fees available in successful litigation, and registration within five years of publication serves as prima facie evidence in court. The FAQ also dismisses the old "poor man's copyright" of mailing a copy to yourself, noting the law has no provision for it and that it is no substitute for registration. Ideas themselves, facts, systems and methods of operation are not protected, only the way they are expressed. The page does not give figures on damages or filing costs, and this magazine will not invent them.

What does any of this have to do with privacy?

More than it first appears. Both subjects come down to the same habit: knowing what a record is, where it lives, and who can be made to answer for it. A certificate of registration is a public record of your authorship. A privacy page is a public record of a site's habits. The Review's record is short because its habits are short: articles, and the ordinary technical traces any website's hosting produces, and nothing the desk solicits from you by name, email or payment.

If you want your ownership questions settled by the authority that settles them, open the Copyright Office FAQ linked above, scroll to the registration section, and read it before you send a single manuscript out. Then come back to the query guides; the one thing the Office does not do is write the letter for you.