Privacy Policy

This Privacy Policy explains how Royal Wave Media, Inc. (“we,” “us,” or “our”) collects, uses, stores, and protects information when you use Sleuthy (“the Service”). We are committed to handling your data responsibly and transparently.

1. Information we collect

Account information. When you sign up, we collect your name, your email address, a username, and a password. Passwords are stored only as bcrypt hashes; we never store your password in plain text. If you are a paid subscriber, we also store your Stripe customer ID; we never store your card number or other payment credentials.

Subscription information. If you subscribe to the Sleuthy discovery service, we record your subscription status (trial, active, cancelled, lapsed), the start and end dates of your billing periods, and the events that change those (signups, upgrades, cancellations, payment failures). Billing itself is handled by Stripe.

Store purchase information. When you purchase a one-time product from the Sleuthy store (the Audiobook Success Matrix, the Audiobook Contracts Bundle, or the Project Tracker spreadsheet), we record the purchase event, the SKU, the price paid, and the timestamp. Stripe handles the payment; we receive a confirmation event and a Stripe customer ID.

Personal leads list. If you save audiobook listings to your personal private leads list, we store the IDs of those listings against your account. This list is visible only to you.

Newsletter subscription. If you subscribe to the Sleuthy newsletter, we store your email address and your subscription status in Mailgun and in our database.

Email engagement data. We use Mailgun to send transactional and newsletter email. Mailgun reports back to us whether emails were delivered, opened, clicked, bounced, or marked as spam. We store these events to debug delivery issues, suppress sending to addresses that have bounced, and respect unsubscribe requests.

Usage data. We log significant actions within the Service (signups, subscription events, searches, lead saves, purchases, feedback flags on listings) for audit and debugging purposes. We do not use third-party analytics or tracking services. We do not track you across other websites.

Calculator usage. The PFH-vs-Royalty-Share calculator at https://getsleuthy.com/calculator.php is a free public utility. It does not require an account. We do not associate calculator inputs with your identity, and we do not store your inputs after the session ends.

2. How we use your information

We use your information to:

• Provide, maintain, and improve the Service
• Send you transactional emails (email verification, password resets, billing receipts, purchase confirmations, subscription notifications)
• Send you the Sleuthy newsletter, if you have subscribed to it (you can unsubscribe at any time via the link in every newsletter or by contacting us)
• Process subscription and store-purchase payments via Stripe
• Respond to support requests
• Debug issues and maintain audit logs
• Generate aggregated, anonymous statistical reports about the audiobook narration market (see Section 7 below)

We do not sell, rent, or share your personal information or individually identifiable account data with third parties for marketing or advertising purposes. We will never send you marketing emails without your explicit consent.

3. Discovery listings and third-party public data

Sleuthy ranks audiobook casting opportunities collected from publicly available third-party sources. The Sleuthy Lead Score algorithm operates on this public listing data; the algorithm itself is proprietary to Sleuthy.

We do not collect or store data on third-party authors, publishers, or rights-holders beyond what they have published themselves on those public listings. If you are a third party and would like information about a specific listing reviewed, corrected, or removed from our index, contact us at support@getsleuthy.com and we will respond.

4. Third-party services

The Service uses a limited number of third-party services:

• Stripe: payment processing for subscriptions and one-time store purchases. We store a Stripe customer ID but never card numbers or other payment credentials. Stripe’s privacy policy applies to payment data: https://stripe.com/privacy.
• Mailgun: transactional email and newsletter delivery, plus engagement tracking (delivery, open, click, bounce, spam-complaint events).
• SiteGround: our hosting provider, where the application and database are hosted.

Sleuthy is part of the Royal Wave Media family alongside Royaltally and Auditiono. Sleuthy does not share user data with either sister product. If at some future point we offer cross-property account linking, it will be opt-in, and this policy will be updated to describe what is shared.

5. Cookies and sessions

Sleuthy uses session cookies only. A session cookie is set when you log in to keep you authenticated as you navigate the Service. This cookie expires when you log out or after a period of inactivity. We do not use advertising cookies, tracking cookies, or third-party cookie services.

6. Data storage and security

Your account data is stored in managed MySQL databases on infrastructure provided by our hosting provider. All data is transmitted over HTTPS (encrypted in transit). Passwords are hashed with bcrypt. Database access is restricted to authorised application processes and personnel.

We use application-level access controls designed to ensure that users can access only data associated with their own account. Every database query is scoped to the authenticated user’s ID. While no system can guarantee absolute security, we implement commercially reasonable administrative, technical, and physical safeguards to protect your data.

Breach notification. In the event of a data breach affecting your personal information, we will notify affected users as required by applicable law. Where appropriate, we will also provide information about what occurred and steps you can take to protect yourself.

7. Aggregated and de-identified data

We may use data from across the Service to compile de-identified, aggregated statistics about the audiobook narration market, for example distributions of rate bands, genre demand trends, or lead-volume seasonality. Before any such use, data is processed using measures reasonably designed to prevent re-identification, so that no individual subscriber, customer, or specific listing source can be identified.

We may publish these de-identified statistics in industry reports, blog posts, or other content. We will not publish or disclose aggregated data where a small sample size, niche category, or other contextual factor could reasonably permit reverse engineering of a specific user’s or third party’s information. We apply internal disclosure controls before any publication of aggregated statistics.

8. Data retention

We retain your account data for as long as your account is active. Specifically:

• Subscription and billing records are retained for as long as required by applicable tax, accounting, and audit obligations, and to allow you to access your billing history.
• Store purchase records are retained for as long as required for tax and accounting purposes and so that you can re-download purchased products if entitled to do so.
• Account deletion. If you request deletion of your account, we begin a 30-day grace period. During this period, your account is inaccessible but recoverable on request. After 30 days, your account data (including your personal leads list, search history, and any non-financial profile data) is permanently deleted. Subscription and purchase records may be retained in anonymised form for tax, accounting, and audit purposes.
• Encrypted backups may retain data for up to 90 days after deletion. These backups are not used operationally and cannot be queried to retrieve a deleted account.
• Email engagement events (delivery, open, click, bounce) are retained for the lifetime of the account and may be purged on a rolling basis to manage storage.
• Newsletter unsubscribes are retained indefinitely to prevent re-subscription in error.

9. Your rights

You have the right to:

• Access your data. You can view your account data through the Service at any time (subscription state, purchase history, personal leads list, account settings).
• Correct your data. You can edit your account fields directly within the Service. Contact us if a correction is not possible from the user interface.
• Delete your data. Contact us to request permanent deletion of your account. Deletion starts a 30-day grace period during which your account is inaccessible but recoverable on request; after that, your data is permanently removed, subject to the financial-records retention described in Section 8.
• Withdraw consent. You may close your account, unsubscribe from the newsletter, or cancel your subscription at any time. Where we rely on your consent for specific processing activities, you may withdraw that consent at any time. Withdrawal of consent does not affect the lawfulness of processing carried out before withdrawal.

10. Additional information for EEA and UK users

If you are located in the European Economic Area (EEA) or the United Kingdom (UK), the following additional information applies to you.

Legal bases for processing. We process your personal data on the following legal bases: (a) contract necessity, to provide and operate the Service as described in our Terms of Service; (b) legitimate interests, to maintain security, prevent fraud, improve the Service, and compile de-identified aggregated statistics, where those interests are not overridden by your rights; and (c) consent, where we rely on consent for specific processing activities (including newsletter subscription and any optional marketing communications), which you may withdraw at any time.

International transfers. Your data is stored and processed in the United States. By using the Service, you acknowledge that your data will be transferred to the United States. We rely on standard contractual clauses or other lawful transfer mechanisms as required by applicable data protection law to safeguard your data during international transfers.

Your rights. In addition to the rights listed in Section 9, you have the right to request restriction of processing, the right to data portability, and the right to object to processing based on legitimate interests. You also have the right to lodge a complaint with your local data protection supervisory authority.

Contact for privacy inquiries. For any privacy-related requests or questions, contact us at support@getsleuthy.com.

11. Children’s privacy

Sleuthy is not intended for use by individuals under 18 years of age. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children. If you believe a child has created an account, please contact us and we will delete it promptly.

12. Changes to this policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. If we make material changes, we will notify you by email or by posting a notice within the Service. The “Last updated” date at the top of this page indicates when the policy was last revised.

13. Contact

If you have questions about this Privacy Policy or how we handle your data, contact us at:

Royal Wave Media, Inc.
Email: support@getsleuthy.com