Privacy policy

This policy is issued by Samman Publishing House, Kathmandu, Nepal (SPH, we, us). It is effective from 27 September 2026. Review sits with SPH operations. Questions about your information go through the Contact page on this site.

It describes the platform as it actually works: the public website, Author Studio, the buyer checkout, and the internal operations console. A signed publishing, rights or supply agreement, where one exists, prevails over this page for that project.

1. What this policy covers

It covers personal information we process when you visit this website, create an account, send a publishing application, place a book order, upload payment proof, send an enquiry, or work with us as staff. It also covers information we hold about authors, contributors and buyers in the course of publishing and selling books.

It is written for Nepal. We follow the Individual Privacy Act, 2075 (2018) and the Electronic Transactions Act, 2063 (2008) as they apply to us. If you visit from elsewhere, we still handle your information as this page says. We do not claim a certification we have not obtained.

2. Information we collect

You give us

• Account details: name, email, password (stored by our authentication provider, not in recoverable form), and the roles needed to run your account.
• Publishing applications: what you type on Start a Book, including a Google Drive or Docs link, the consents you give, and the date you give them.
• Enquiries: institutional, media, rights, event, distribution, partnership and general messages sent through forms on this site.
• Buyer orders: name, contact details, delivery or pickup details, what you ordered, and payment records.
• Payment proof: an image of a transfer, QR payment or wallet receipt, processed and stored for finance review.
• Author and contributor records needed to publish a book: credits, biographies you approve for the public site, and operational notes.
• Ebook purchases: your name as given at checkout and your order number are printed inside each ebook you buy, so a shared copy can be traced to its order.
• Payee records, for people SPH pays a share of book sales to: legal name, PAN, tax residency, and what was earned, withheld as tax and paid.

We create in the course of work

• Quotes, approvals, production stages, access grants and staff notes on a publishing project.
• Order, fulfilment and payment-verification history.
• Audit records of material actions: role changes, payment verification, quote decisions, publication of legal pages.
• Official bills: the number and date of each bill SPH writes for your payments, with a photo of the bill so you can see it here.

Your device

We set a small number of first-party cookies so the site can remember your language, your sign-in session and whether you agreed to measurement. The Cookies page lists them. We do not collect IP addresses, user agents, cookie identifiers, search terms or form contents in our own analytics table.

3. What we do not collect

• Manuscript binaries. SPH does not store manuscript files on this platform. You share a Google Drive or Docs link that you control.
• Card numbers. We do not take card payments on this site today. Nepal-realistic payment is QR, bank transfer or wallet, with proof uploaded for staff review.
• Advertising profiles. We do not run ads on this site and we do not build audiences for anyone else.
• Download tracking beyond the essentials. When you download an ebook we record the time and count the download. We do not record your IP address, device or location.

4. Why we use it

• To operate the website, accounts, catalogue, Author Studio and operations console.
• To read a publishing application and reply, and to run a publishing project you have agreed.
• To take, verify and fulfil a book order.
• To deliver the ebooks you buy, and to trace a shared copy to the order it came from.
• To answer an enquiry and keep a record of the relationship.
• To pay authors and other payees their share of sales, and to deduct, deposit and certify tax as Nepal law requires.
• To keep the books: accounting, tax, legal claims, and the audit trail the platform is built around.
• To understand, in aggregate, which public pages are read — only after you agree, and never for quotes, payments or applications.

We do not sell personal information. We do not use it to train a public AI model. Clipboard prompts used inside the operations console are assembled in the browser from records already on the page; they are not a network call from this site.

5. Who processes it

SPH staff see only what their role allows. Database access is enforced by row-level security, not by hiding a button.

• Supabase, for authentication and the database.
• Cloudflare R2, for stored files: payment proof images, photos of the bills SPH issues, catalogue images, and the ebook files sold on this site.
• Vercel, for hosting this website.
• Google Analytics, only if you have agreed to measurement, with advertising features and Google signals off, and IP anonymisation on.
• Google Drive, when you choose to share a manuscript or production file by link. That file remains in your Drive unless a signed agreement says otherwise.

Those processors may store data outside Nepal. We use them because the platform runs on them, not as a transfer for sale. Payment proof is held in restricted storage and is not publicly readable.

6. How long we keep it

• Account and order records: for as long as the account exists and then as long as accounting, tax or legal obligations require.
• Publishing applications and project records: for the life of the project and a period after, so we can show what was agreed.
• Payment proof: for as long as finance and audit need the evidence of a payment.
• Bills and their photos: at least five years, as Nepal's tax law requires.
• Ebook purchases and download records: for as long as you can download the ebook, then as long as accounting, tax or legal obligations require. The name printed in a copy you downloaded stays in that copy.
• Payee and tax records: at least five years, as Nepal's Income Tax Act requires.
• Enquiries: for as long as the conversation and any resulting relationship require.
• First-party analytics events: without an identifier, so they cannot be turned into a profile of you.
• Cookies: as described on the Cookies page.

7. Your rights

You may ask to see, correct or delete personal information we hold about you, or to restrict how we use it, through the Contact page. We will not delete records we are required to keep for accounting, tax, legal claims, or a publishing or supply agreement that is still in force. We will say so if that is the case.

If you have an account, some corrections can be made there. If you sent an application or enquiry without an account, write to us with enough detail that we can find it.

8. Children

This platform is for people aged 18 or over. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children. If you believe we have, write to us and we will delete it where the law allows.

9. Security

We use authenticated sessions, role-based access, row-level security, private storage for payment proof, and server-side checks on privileged writes. No method of transmission or storage is perfectly secure. If we become aware of a breach that affects you, we will act as Nepal law requires.

10. Changes

The date at the top of this page is the date this version took effect. Continued use of the site after a change is acceptance of the revised policy. Material changes will keep a last-updated date you can see.