Privacy Policy

Version 2026-07-31.2. This is the version in force. Your order is governed by the version that was showing on the day you bought.

The Grand Stories makes personalised digital storybooks. You describe a child in words, we write and illustrate a book about them, and we send it to an email address you choose. This page says what information that takes, exactly what we do with it, exactly who else receives it, and what we never do. It is written to be read, not skimmed, and it matches how the product actually works.

What we never collect

We never ask for or store a photo of your child. There is nowhere in the product to upload one, by design. The book is made from your written description alone.

• No account, no username, no password.
• No card numbers on our servers. Payment happens on Stripe, and Stripe tells us only that you paid.
• Our page-view counter stores no IP address, no device fingerprint and no email. It counts that a page was seen, and nothing else.
• No date of birth, no surname, no address, no school, and nothing about where the child is.

What we collect, and when

While you are filling in the book form

As you answer the questions, we save your progress on our servers so you can come back to it. That draft holds what you have typed so far: your email address, the child's first name, their age range, who the book is for, appearance details chosen from our fixed lists (hair colour, hair style, whether they wear glasses), the interests you picked, a short note about something they carry everywhere, the art style, and your dedication.

This begins before you buy. If you give us your email and the child's name and then close the tab, we have that information even though you never purchased. If you never come back, the child's name and everything you typed in your own words are erased automatically on day 6. What is left is an anonymous record of the choices you clicked, which cannot identify the child, and the whole thing deletes itself 30 days after you last touched it. We also keep a small marketing record (your email, the funnel steps you reached, and the ad tags that brought you here) so we can tell which of our ads work; that record is not automatically deleted.

When you buy a book

Your order stores:

• your email address;
• the description of the child you gave us: first name, age range, appearance choices, interests, the carried object, and your dedication and author credit;
• the finished book itself: the story text, the illustrations, and the narration audio;
• payment references from Stripe (an order and payment identifier, the amount, and your country), never a card number;
• the consents you ticked, with the time you ticked them, exactly as asked on the form: that you are the child's parent or guardian or have their parent's permission, and that the details you gave can be used to write and illustrate the book.

Exactly who receives your grandchild's name

We cannot make or deliver a book alone. This is the complete list of companies that receive anything, what each one does, and what each one gets. Nobody on it is allowed to use what they receive for anything except the job named beside them, and we do not sell your information to anyone.

• OpenAI writes the story and draws the illustrations. It receives the child's first name, everything you told us about them — the age band, the appearance choices, the interests, the object they carry — and the story text as it is written. This company receives the child's first name.
• ElevenLabs reads the book out loud. It receives the story text, which contains the child's first name. This company receives the child's first name.
• Stripe takes the payment. It receives your card details, directly — they never touch our servers — and your email address and country. The child's name never reaches this company.
• Resend sends our email. It receives the addresses we send to and the contents of those emails, which name the child and carry the reading link. This company receives the child's first name.
• DigitalOcean runs our servers and our database. It receives everything described on this page, because this is where all of it is stored — the drafts, the orders, the finished books, the pictures and the audio. This company receives the child's first name.
• Cloudflare answers the internet's questions about where thegrandstories.com is. It receives the domain lookups that find our servers. It is not sent your book, your order or the child’s name. The child's name never reaches this company.
• Google Analytics counts visits on our public pages. It receives that a page was opened, roughly where from, and what was clicked, using cookies. The child's name never reaches this company.
• PostHog records a replay of the visit so we can see where our own form goes wrong. It receives a recording of the pages you visit on this site, with every word on the screen and everything you type blanked out before it leaves your browser, plus which page you were on and when. It never runs on the pages where the book is made or read. The child's name never reaches this company.
• Meta (the Facebook pixel, and our servers) tells us which of our adverts brought someone here. It receives that a page was opened and how far through the form someone got — partly from your browser using cookies, and partly sent from our own servers, with your email address hashed if you accepted advertising cookies. The child's name never reaches this company.

We do send your information to these companies, so we will never tell you “your data never leaves us.” What we can tell you is that the list above is all of them, and that none of the three measuring tools — Google Analytics, the Meta pixel and PostHog — run on the page where the book is made, or on the page where it is read. Your grandchild's book is never on a page that talks to an advertiser or to a recorder.

Where those three do run is our landing page and the book form, and only there.

The one thing we cannot delete for you

This is the part of the page that is against our interest, and it is here because you would want to know it.

OpenAI writes and illustrates the book, so your child's first name and your description of them are sent to OpenAI. We instruct OpenAI not to retain our requests as application state. OpenAI still keeps prompts and generated content in its own abuse-monitoring logs for up to thirty days, and we do not currently hold the zero-data-retention agreement that would remove them. OpenAI publishes that it deletes those logs after that period, unless the law requires it to keep them for longer, and that it does not use what we send to train its models.

The consequence, stated plainly: if you ask us to delete everything about your child, we will delete everything we hold, and the copy in OpenAI's abuse-monitoring logs will still run out its thirty days. OpenAI does not offer us a way to delete that copy early. We can stop sending, and we can erase our own. We cannot pull that one back. If that ever changes — if we obtain a zero-retention agreement — this section will say so and the version at the top of this page will change.

ElevenLabs, which reads the book aloud and therefore receives the story text, answers this differently: it publishes that a recording can be deleted on request and is removed straight away, though its own moderation logs and its backups may hold something for a while afterwards. So for the narration, ask us and we can act. For the writing and the pictures, we cannot.

About children

Every book is about a child, usually under 13. The child is not our user: the buyer is an adult, the form is filled in by that adult, and the finished book is sent to an adult's email address. Before we make a book, the buyer must confirm, unticked by default, that they are the child's parent or guardian or have the parent's permission, and that the details they gave may be used to make the book.

We keep the child's information to the minimum a storybook needs: a first name, an age range rather than an exact age, and appearance details chosen from fixed lists rather than free text. No photo, no surname, no address, no school, nothing about where the child is.

The oldest band on the form is "8 or older", so for an older child we do not know, and do not ask, whether they are eight or fifteen. We keep the band you picked and never a date of birth.

A parent or guardian can ask us at any time to show them what we hold about their child, correct it, or delete it, by writing to hello@thegrandstories.com. A person reads and answers these requests.

How long we keep things

• Unfinished drafts: the child's name and your free-text answers are erased on day 6. The anonymous remainder, the choices you clicked, is deleted 30 days after you last touched the draft. When an order is paid the draft is emptied at once.
• Orders and finished books: kept until you ask us to delete them. The reading link is meant to keep working, so the book behind it is not deleted on a schedule. There is no automatic deletion; if you want a book gone, ask us and a person will remove it.
• The marketing record: kept until you ask us to delete it. There is no automatic deletion.
• At OpenAI: up to thirty days, outside our control, as described above.
• Media links: the links that fetch each image and audio file expire after 15 minutes and are re-issued while you read. That protects the files in transit; it is not how long the book lives.

The reading link

Your book lives at a private link that we email you. Anyone who has the link can read the book, which is what makes it shareable with family. The link is long and unguessable, but it is not a password: if you forward it, the person you forward it to can read the book and share it onward. If a link needs to be disabled, write to us. What we promise about how long that link keeps working is in the Terms of Service.

We record what our own pages look like while you use them

This one deserves saying plainly rather than leaving inside a list. PostHog makes a replay of your visit — the pages you opened, how far you scrolled, where you moved and what you clicked — so we can watch back where our own form confuses people and fix it. It is the same idea as sitting behind someone while they try the site, except we are not there and it is not live.

Every word on the screen is blanked out before the recording leaves your browser, and so is everything you type. The child's name, their interests, your dedication, your email address: in the replay they are rows of asterisks, in the shape of the page. The only text we deliberately leave readable is the “Step 1 of 3” counter on the form, so we can tell which question somebody gave up on. We chose it one line at a time rather than by leaving a category of text switched on.

It records on our landing page and the book form and nowhere else. It is not running while a book is being made, and it is not running on the page where the book is read.

Cookies and the three tools that measure

Google Analytics, the Meta pixel and PostHog load on our landing page and the book form, and they set cookies. None of them loads on the page where the book is read, and none of them ever receives the child's name or any part of your book.

None of them loads until you say so. The first time you arrive we ask, in a banner with an “Accept all” and a “Reject all” that are the same size and the same shape, and you can open the preferences and answer analytics and advertising separately. Analytics is the one that covers the replay described above. Until you answer, all of them stay off. If your browser sends a Global Privacy Control signal we treat that as your answer and do not ask again. You can change your mind at any time from the “Privacy choices” button in the corner of the page, and turning analytics back off stops the recording there and then.

What you can ask us to do

Write to hello@thegrandstories.com and a person will handle it. Today, honestly, that is how every request works: there is no self-serve dashboard, and we would rather tell you that than pretend otherwise. You can ask us to:

• show you the information we hold about you or your order;
• correct something;
• delete your draft, your marketing record, your order, or a finished book;
• stop emailing you;
• disable a reading link.

Changes to this page

If we change this policy, we change the version at the top and say what changed. If a change matters, we will say so plainly rather than hide it in a rewrite. Your order stays governed by the version that was showing on the day you bought it.

Who we are, and how to reach us

The Grand Stories · Terms of Service · Legal · hello@thegrandstories.com