1. Acceptance of These Terms
These Terms and Conditions (the “Terms”) form a binding legal agreement between you (“Client,” “Author,” or “you”) and Pen & Laurel. By visiting our website, requesting a quote, signing a proposal or statement of work, submitting a deposit, or otherwise engaging Pen & Laurel for any writing, editing, design, publishing, marketing or related service, you confirm that you have read, understood and agree to be bound by these Terms, along with our Privacy Policy and Refund Policy, which are incorporated by reference.
If you do not agree to these Terms, you must not use our website or engage our services. If you are entering into these Terms on behalf of a company, estate, publishing entity or other organization, you represent that you have the authority to bind that entity, and “you” refers to that entity as well as you individually.
2. Description of Services
Pen & Laurel provides full-service book publishing support, which may include ghostwriting, co-writing, developmental and line editing, proofreading, cover design, interior formatting, ISBN and metadata assistance, self-publishing platform submission, audiobook production coordination, book marketing, author website design, and related creative and editorial services (collectively, the “Services”). The exact scope, deliverables, number of revision rounds, and timeline for any engagement are defined exclusively in the individual quote, proposal, invoice or statement of work (each, an “Order”) issued to you, not on this website.
Marketing materials, sample work, testimonials and pricing shown on our website are illustrative only and do not constitute an offer capable of acceptance. No Services are owed to you, and no Order is binding on Pen & Laurel, until we have issued a written Order and received any required deposit.
3. Eligibility & Client Accounts
You must be at least 18 years old, or the age of majority in your jurisdiction, and have the legal capacity to enter into a binding contract to use our Services. You are responsible for the accuracy and completeness of all information you give us, including contact details, billing information, and the substance of any manuscript, outline, brand information or reference material you provide (“Client Materials”).
You are responsible for maintaining the confidentiality of any login credentials, shared drives, or project-management access we provide, and for all activity that occurs under your account or through your access.
4. Quotes, Fees & Payment Terms
All fees are quoted in U.S. dollars unless otherwise stated in writing and are exclusive of any applicable taxes, currency-conversion fees, or third-party costs (for example, ISBN registration, stock photography, printing, or paid advertising spend), which remain your responsibility.
- A non-refundable deposit or retainer, as specified in your Order, is required before any work begins. Work will not commence, and no delivery date is guaranteed, until the deposit clears.
- For phased projects, each phase or milestone payment is due on the schedule stated in your Order and is a condition of moving to the next phase.
- Invoices not paid within the stated terms (or, absent stated terms, within 7 days of issue) may accrue a late fee of 1.5% per month, or the maximum rate permitted by law, and we may suspend work without liability until the account is brought current.
- We reserve the right to pause, delay, or terminate an engagement for non-payment, and any resulting delay to your publication or launch date is not attributable to Pen & Laurel.
- Chargebacks, payment reversals or “stop payments” initiated without first contacting us in writing constitute a material breach of these Terms; see Section 16 of our Refund Policy for details.
5. Project Workflow, Revisions & Timelines
Timelines provided verbally, in proposals, or in marketing materials are estimates, not guarantees, and depend heavily on your timely delivery of Client Materials, feedback, and approvals. Delay on your part will extend the delivery date by at least the length of the delay and may incur rescheduling fees if it requires us to reallocate resources.
The number of revision rounds, and what counts as a revision versus new-scope work, is defined in your Order. Requests that materially expand scope (additional word count, new chapters, a change in genre or direction, additional design concepts, etc.) will be quoted and invoiced separately as a change order before we proceed.
You agree to review deliverables and provide consolidated, actionable feedback within the window specified in your Order (or, if none is specified, within 10 business days). Silence beyond that window may be treated as approval for the purpose of moving the project to its next phase or milestone invoice.
6. Your Content, Representations & Warranties
You represent and warrant that any Client Materials you provide — including life stories, interviews, source manuscripts, brand assets, photographs, quotations, and factual claims — are either original to you, used with proper permission, or otherwise lawful for us to use in producing your Services, and do not infringe any third party’s copyright, trademark, right of publicity, right of privacy, or other intellectual property or personal right.
You are solely responsible for the truthfulness and accuracy of factual claims, biographical details, and statements about real people contained in your book, and for obtaining any releases, licenses or permissions required for content you supply. Pen & Laurel is not obligated to fact-check, verify, or independently investigate Client Materials, and undertaking limited editorial review of a claim does not shift that responsibility to us.
7. Intellectual Property & Ownership
Unless your Order states otherwise, and subject to full payment of all fees due, ownership of the final, delivered manuscript, cover design, and other bespoke creative deliverables created specifically for your project transfers to you upon final payment. Until final payment is received in full, all work product remains the exclusive property of Pen & Laurel, and no license of any kind is granted to you.
- Pen & Laurel retains ownership of, and you receive no rights to, our proprietary processes, internal templates, style guides, unused drafts and concepts not selected for your final deliverable, and any pre-existing tools, fonts, stock assets or code used to produce your Services (though we will ensure any licensed third-party assets included in your final files, such as stock photography or licensed fonts, are properly licensed for your intended use, as described in your Order).
- We may retain copies of your final deliverables for our own records, quality assurance, and legal-compliance purposes, and may use non-identifying excerpts, or identifying excerpts with your separate written consent, in our portfolio, case studies and marketing.
- Ghostwritten manuscripts are delivered as “work made for hire” to the fullest extent permitted by law once paid in full; to the extent any component is not eligible for work-for-hire treatment, Pen & Laurel assigns its rights in that component to you upon full payment.
8. Confidentiality & Ghostwriting Anonymity
We treat your manuscript, personal story, and business information as confidential, and we will not disclose your identity as a ghostwriting client, or the substance of unpublished work, to third parties without your consent, except to subcontractors bound by confidentiality obligations, or as required by law, court order, or to enforce these Terms.
Anonymity of our writers, editors and contractors is a standard feature of our ghostwriting service. Unless expressly agreed in writing, you may not require the disclosure of a contributing writer’s identity, and a writer’s decision not to be credited does not entitle you to a refund or discount.
9. No Guarantee of Results
Publishing is inherently unpredictable. Pen & Laurel does not, and cannot, guarantee sales figures, reader reviews, critical reception, bestseller-list placement, literary agent or traditional-publisher interest, social-media growth, advertising return on spend, or any other commercial or creative outcome. Statements about typical results, case studies, or past client outcomes are illustrative only and are not a promise of similar results for you.
We do not control, and are not responsible for, the editorial, algorithmic, or policy decisions of third-party platforms (including Amazon KDP, Apple Books, Barnes & Noble Press, Kobo, IngramSpark, Draft2Digital, social media platforms, or advertising networks), which may accept, reject, delay, remove, or reprice your book or advertising at their sole discretion and without notice to us.
10. Third-Party Platforms & Services
Where Services involve uploading, submitting, or registering your work on third-party platforms, you authorize Pen & Laurel to act as your limited agent for that specific purpose only. You remain the account holder (or will become one) and are responsible for accepting each platform’s own terms of service, tax forms, and royalty arrangements, which are agreements solely between you and that platform.
Any subscription, printing, advertising, stock-asset, ISBN, or software cost billed directly by a third party is your responsibility, whether or not Pen & Laurel facilitated the purchase on your behalf.
11. Prohibited Content & Acceptable Use
We may decline, pause or terminate an engagement, at our sole discretion and without refund of amounts due for work already performed, if a project involves content that is unlawful, defamatory, obscene, discriminatory, infringing, that promotes violence or self-harm, that facilitates fraud, or that we otherwise reasonably believe exposes Pen & Laurel, our contractors, or the public to legal or reputational risk.
You agree not to use our website to upload malicious code, attempt unauthorized access to our systems, scrape or resell our content, or misrepresent your identity or authority to engage our Services.
12. Cancellation & Termination
You may cancel an engagement at any time by written notice; cancellation is subject to our Refund Policy, and you remain responsible for payment of all work performed, materials produced, and non-cancelable third-party costs incurred up to the effective date of cancellation, plus any applicable cancellation fee stated in your Order.
Pen & Laurel may suspend or terminate an engagement immediately, without liability, for non-payment, abusive or threatening conduct toward our team, breach of these Terms, or a request to produce prohibited content described in Section 11. Sections that by their nature should survive termination — including payment obligations, confidentiality, intellectual property, disclaimers, indemnification, limitation of liability, and dispute resolution — survive any cancellation or termination.
13. Disclaimer of Warranties
EXCEPT AS EXPRESSLY STATED IN YOUR ORDER, THE SERVICES, THE WEBSITE, AND ALL DELIVERABLES ARE PROVIDED “AS IS” AND “AS AVAILABLE,” WITHOUT WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, WHETHER EXPRESS, IMPLIED, OR STATUTORY, INCLUDING — TO THE FULLEST EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW — ANY IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, NON-INFRINGEMENT, TITLE, OR THAT THE SERVICES WILL BE UNINTERRUPTED, ERROR-FREE, OR MEET ANY PARTICULAR COMMERCIAL, CRITICAL, OR SALES OUTCOME.
14. Limitation of Liability
TO THE FULLEST EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, PEN & LAUREL, ITS OWNERS, EMPLOYEES, CONTRACTORS AND AFFILIATES WILL NOT BE LIABLE FOR ANY INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, EXEMPLARY OR PUNITIVE DAMAGES, OR FOR ANY LOSS OF PROFITS, REVENUE, ROYALTIES, GOODWILL, ANTICIPATED SALES, OR DATA, ARISING OUT OF OR RELATING TO THE SERVICES OR THESE TERMS, EVEN IF WE HAVE BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.
OUR TOTAL, CUMULATIVE LIABILITY TO YOU FOR ANY AND ALL CLAIMS ARISING OUT OF OR RELATING TO THE SERVICES OR THESE TERMS, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, TORT, OR OTHERWISE, WILL NOT EXCEED THE TOTAL FEES YOU ACTUALLY PAID TO PEN & LAUREL FOR THE SPECIFIC ORDER GIVING RISE TO THE CLAIM IN THE 12 MONTHS PRECEDING THE EVENT GIVING RISE TO LIABILITY. Some jurisdictions do not allow certain limitations on liability, so some of the above limitations may not apply to you; in that case, our liability is limited to the greatest extent permitted by applicable law.
15. Indemnification
You agree to defend, indemnify and hold harmless Pen & Laurel, its owners, employees, contractors and affiliates from and against any claims, damages, losses, liabilities, costs and expenses (including reasonable attorneys’ fees) arising out of or related to: (a) Client Materials you provide, including any claim that they infringe or misappropriate a third party’s rights or are defamatory or unlawful; (b) your breach of these Terms or of any representation or warranty you make; (c) your use of the Services or published Work in violation of law; or (d) your interactions with third-party platforms, contractors or readers arising from your book.
16. Dispute Resolution & Arbitration
We encourage you to contact us first at connect@penandlaurel.com so we can try to resolve any concern directly; most issues are resolved faster this way than through formal proceedings.
If a dispute cannot be resolved informally within 30 days, both parties agree that it will be resolved by binding, individual arbitration administered under the commercial arbitration rules of a mutually agreed arbitration body (for example, the American Arbitration Association), rather than in court, except that either party may bring an individual claim in small-claims court if it qualifies, and either party may seek injunctive relief in court to protect intellectual property or confidential information.
Class action waiver: To the extent permitted by law, you and Pen & Laurel each agree that any proceeding will be conducted only on an individual basis and not as part of a class, consolidated, or representative action.
17. Governing Law & Venue
These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of Washington, United States, without regard to its conflict-of-laws principles, except where mandatory consumer-protection law of your own jurisdiction applies. Subject to Section 16, the state and federal courts located in that state have exclusive jurisdiction over any dispute not subject to arbitration, and you consent to personal jurisdiction there.
18. Force Majeure
Neither party is liable for delay or failure to perform caused by events beyond its reasonable control, including natural disaster, act of God, war, terrorism, civil unrest, labor dispute, internet or utility outage, third-party platform outage or policy change, pandemic, or governmental action. The affected party will notify the other and resume performance as soon as reasonably practicable.
19. Independent Contractor Relationship
Pen & Laurel and its writers, editors and designers act as independent contractors in providing the Services. Nothing in these Terms creates a partnership, joint venture, agency (except the limited platform-submission agency described in Section 10), or employment relationship between you and Pen & Laurel or any of its contractors.
20. General Provisions
- Entire Agreement. These Terms, together with your Order, Privacy Policy and Refund Policy, constitute the entire agreement between you and Pen & Laurel regarding the Services and supersede any prior proposals, discussions or agreements on the same subject.
- Severability. If any provision of these Terms is found unenforceable, that provision will be limited or eliminated to the minimum extent necessary, and the remaining provisions will remain in full force and effect.
- No Waiver. Our failure to enforce any provision is not a waiver of our right to do so later.
- Assignment. You may not assign these Terms without our written consent; we may assign these Terms in connection with a merger, acquisition, or sale of assets.
- Notices. Legal notices to Pen & Laurel must be sent in writing to the email address in Section 22.
21. Changes to These Terms
We may update these Terms from time to time to reflect changes in our Services, legal requirements, or business practices. The “Last updated” date at the top of this page reflects the most recent revision. Material changes will apply prospectively to new Orders; changes will not retroactively alter the terms of an Order already signed and in progress unless required by law or agreed by both parties in writing. Continued use of our website or Services after changes take effect constitutes acceptance of the revised Terms.
Questions about these Terms should be directed to:
- Pen & Laurel, a Desverso LLC company
- Email: connect@penandlaurel.com
- Address: 2135 112th Ave NE Ste 201, Bellevue, WA 98004
- Attn: Legal / Client Services
