Your manuscript remains yours.

Copyright and permission to work on your book

To provide a service, you may need to give Quill & Reed limited permission to store, review, process, format and edit your work. You may also need to let us share it with specialists you have agreed to, prepare files, and submit them to publishing platforms. That permission exists only to do the work you have asked for.

Giving that permission is not the same as transferring copyright. You remain the owner.

Rights & Royalties

What happens in a Health Check

1. You submit up to 5,000 words
2. Your file is read in your browser; only the text is sent
3. AI-assisted diagnostic
4. Your report is produced
5. The text is not kept; the report is saved under a private link

The Manuscript Health Check uses AI-assisted analysis to review the submitted extract for patterns such as readability, pacing, repetition, dialogue, point of view and opening strength. This is a diagnostic tool and is not a substitute for professional editorial assessment.

Your report link is long and random, is not listed anywhere, and is excluded from search engines. Anyone you share it with can open it, so treat it like a private document.

What happens in a publishing project

1. Your manuscript
2. Quill & Reed project workspace
3. Agreed specialists where needed
4. Your approval
5. Production files
6. Publishing accounts you control

Your book is published through accounts in your name, with your approval at each important step.

Specialists

Where we coordinate an editor, designer or illustrator, relevant project material may need to be shared with them. We limit this to what is reasonably necessary for their work. Specialists handling unpublished work will be expected to keep it confidential. If you bring your own specialists, we share material with them only when you ask us to or it is needed for the work.

What about my book idea?

Quill & Reed does not claim ownership of a book idea shared through our planning tools or a conversation. We use what you share for the requested purpose.

It helps to know that ideas on their own may not have the same legal protection as the way you express them in writing. Books also share themes and concepts, so we cannot promise we will never see a similar idea. We are not able to give personal legal advice; if that matters for your book, a qualified adviser can help.

Intellectual property guidance (GOV.UK)

Is my manuscript used to train AI?

We are still confirming the data-use terms that apply to the AI service we use, including whether submitted text can be retained or used to improve models. Until that is confirmed, we will not tell you it is never used for training. This page will be updated with the confirmed position.

What we can say now: we do not use your manuscript to train any model of our own, and we do not add it to our guides, search or Ask Quill & Reed.

Uploading does not make your work public

• It is not published
• It is not publicly searchable
• It does not become an article or guide
• It is not added to site search
• It is not added to Ask Quill & Reed
• It is not included in our sitemap or shown to search engines

Files and storage

Health Check files are read in your browser and never uploaded. Files attached to an enquiry are checked for their type and size, renamed on arrival, and kept in private storage that only authorised staff can reach. We do not put manuscript text in page addresses, analytics or error reports.

Sensitive content and real people

Manuscripts, especially memoir, can include private details about you and other people. Please share only what the feedback or service needs. If a memoir includes allegations or private information about real people, specialist legal advice may be worth considering before publication.

Deleting your material

Contact us through the contact form (choose “A privacy or data request”). Tell us which tool or form you used. For a Health Check, we can delete your saved report and details. We will tell you if any part cannot be removed, for example because of a legal record, rather than claim it is gone.

Files that are part of an active customer project are handled under that project’s agreement, so they are not deleted just because a general request comes in. We will talk it through with you.

Customers

If you become a customer, your service agreement sets out the specific arrangements for your project. This page explains our general approach; the agreement covers the detail for your book.