The Legal Small Print
I am a writer. And a lawyer. So I have written this legal stuff as clearly as possible.
Take a look before you pay me.
These are the terms on which I do business, my terms for editing, and my privacy policy.
This is the CONTRACT which you enter into as soon as you pay me for my services. There is nothing to sign but you are bound by these terms when you accept them by paying me.
Take them seriously.
There is no getting round it. It’s tedious stuff (apart from one joke in the privacy policy). But it’s clear.
Think of it like setting boundaries: we both want to enter into a great professional relationship but with all the goodwill in the world, we can’t read each other’s minds.
I need you need to read how we will do business together, and if you want to instruct me to edit your work, these are the terms for editing we agree.
If we both know where we stand, then on the same principle that good fences make good neighbours, we will start off right and have a great working relationship!
Legally binding Terms for working with me
I am deeply honoured that you have chosen to work with me as your book coach.
The most successful business relationships develop when both parties are crystal clear about their boundaries and expectations so here is the information about how we will work together.
Please read this page before you pay for your coaching sessions with me because when you pay, you will be bound by these terms. If you are buying an editing service, please be sure to read these terms for editing.
They cover payment, our ‘rules of engagement’, and what happens when Life ‘gets in the way’.
To help orientate you, these are the headings:
How I serve you
The confidentiality of your work
What I don’t do
How we work together
Mechanics of payment
Scheduling calls
Deadlines
Deposits
Deferment
Cancellation
Liability
Reboot your Book
1. How I serve you
I serve writers who require a professional, objective view on the impact of their artistic and creative work.
I give no guarantees:
➡️not of monetary success
➡️not of finding an agent or a publisher
➡️not of reader enjoyment
➡️not of achieving ‘bestseller’ status.
I offer coaching and editorial services: I guide writers (usually of nonfiction) through writing a book from beginning to end. I help you shape your ideas, to write a book proposal to a publisher, and I hold you accountable as you write your book. At the editing stage, once your full draft is written, I provide both line and copy editing.
In coaching, I offer information on the current publishing world, both traditional and alternative methods of publishing, so that writers make the best publishing choices for their book.
I work primarily with nonfiction writers of business, science, historical, and philosophical works. My interests are broad and I am open to working with writers of most topics that are founded on reason and fact.
2. The confidentiality of your work
I hold the confidentiality of my client’s work to be of the utmost importance. I am a practicing lawyer and hold myself to the same standards in my book coaching work as in my legal practice.
I will not share your work or your ideas with anyone without your permission.
I will not approach publishers or literary agents on your behalf.
I will not refer to your book in public before either it has gone under contract to a publisher or you have published it by whatever method.
Once your book is under contract, or published by whatever method, I may promote your book and our professional association.
IMPORTANT
If you wish to refer to me by my name in your work, in the Acknowledgements, for example, please ask my permission first.
3. What I don’t do
I don’t give any guarantees.
I mentioned this before but just to be clear, here is a non-exclusive list of what I do not guarantee:
I do not guarantee you will find monetary success.
I do not guarantee you will find an agent or a publisher.
I do not guarantee your book will be published.
I do not guarantee that a reader will enjoy your book.
I do not guarantee your book ‘bestseller’ status.
I do not guarantee that if you follow my suggestions and guidance, you will make money. For 99% of authors, there is very little money to be made. The purpose of writing your book is to write the book you feel you HAVE to write, and not to swell your bank balance.
Our professional relationship is that of professional service provider and client. You pay me for my advice and guidance. I have no financial interest in your book’s life after we have finished working together.
I do not take a share of royalties from sales of your book.
Before, or after, our active coaching relationship in which you are paying me for defined services, please show respect for my business and do not ask to ‘pick my brains’ for no monetary reward. If you feel your hand reaching for a scalpel to pick my brains, lay your hand on your wallet instead and book a consultation with me.
Please don’t send me a full manuscript, for “the full picture” or “just to give me a flavour”, if I have not asked for it. I will not review it but it will make me feel guilty and you don’t want to be responsible for that, do you?
4. How we work together
When you engage me as your book coach, we work in coaching cycles.
Each cycle works like this:
1. I send you homework, an assignment, to action.
2. You turn in your homework to me by a deadline I give you. Usually, that deadline is 8 am on the Monday morning before we meet on a Zoom call.
3. On the call, we discuss the progress on your book or book proposal. The calls are an hour long. We agree your next steps and I give you your next piece of homework to move your book or proposal on.
How we start to work together, right at the beginning
First, you fill out a form to introduce yourself, and to tell me about your book plans (here).
I review your form and if I believe I can help you, we book a Fact-Finding Call. I make no charge for that call. Together, we work out whether or not I can help you.
If we agree to work together, I will confirm the price of my service. (My indicative rates are here.)
5. Mechanics of payment
You make payment by credit card through the secure payment platform Stripe, on a link I give you.
I require payment to be made in settlement of my bills within 7 days.
I am a business (Ruth Pedley trading as Ruth Bullivant Book Coaching) registered for Value Added Tax (VAT) in the UK. I am legally required to add VAT to the cost of my services wherever you are located. I pass the tax I collect to HM Revenue & Customs. Currently, VAT is set by UK law at a rate of 20%.
If you are in the UK and contracting with me as a business, you might be able to reclaim the VAT you pay: my VAT registration number is GB239376182.
I keep my prices under review and may change them on one month’s written notice.
Securing time in my calendar
To secure time in my Calendar for any of my services, I require an upfront payment:
In the case of my editing services, a nonrefundable deposit of 50% of the price is payable before I begin work;
In the case of my book coaching services apart from the Live Coaching Group, I require upfront payment of a minimum of two cycles of coaching before the first coaching call is held;
In the case of the Live Coaching Group, I require payment for all four sessions up front before you attend the first call.
Once we have agreed how I will help you, I will give you a clear Call and Payment Schedule so that you know what is required of you, when.
I do not make refunds.
Contact
I am contactable by email on the address I give you when you Get Started.
I do not offer a telephone number for business use.
6. Rescheduling calls
How we fix calls
We schedule calls by agreement, through talking to each other or by email.
When we have agreed a date, I send you confirmation by email with a link to the meeting and a password. Further reminders follow, three days before, the day before and one hour before.
Please make sure that these reminders drop into your Inbox. Add no-reply@acuityscheduling.com to your Contacts.
If you ask me to change the date of a call, please think carefully about the implications.
When we start one-to-one coaching together, I tailor a schedule for the entire series of coaching cycles we have agreed. The timing of the cycles is carefully calibrated to your book’s development needs. And, as I am coaching several writers during any given month, my calendar time is carefully balanced between the needs of all my clients.
For this reason:
The first time you reschedule, I will do my utmost to be flexible in rescheduling a time for the call, as my schedule allows.
If you don’t turn up to, ask to reschedule, or cancel a scheduled call a second time during our coaching relationship, I may terminate the coaching relationship. I will not grant a refund of money you have already paid me. Reinstatement of coaching will be at my entire discretion and the re-start date will depend on my availability.
I require 48 hours notice of change to a scheduled call.
If you don’t give me 48 hours notice and decide not to show up for a call, you will forfeit that call and I will not be liable to refund any payment.
Emergencies
If you are prevented from attending a scheduled call because an emergency such as serious illness incapacitates you or a relative, email me as soon as possible. Head the email ‘URGENT Scheduling Problem’ and we will find a solution.
If there is no emergency, please don’t ask me to reschedule on less than 48 hours notice.
It may help to remember that the whole point of coaching is to bring your raw, authentic self.
Otherwise, why would you be paying me to help you?
If you have trouble finding the time or headspace to work on your book, please talk to me about it as soon as you start to feel you’re in trouble.
7. Deadlines
So that I can give your work equal attention with all my other clients in the time leading up to their calls, I need you to submit all assignments and homework by the time and date I tell you.
Unless I tell you otherwise, your written work must be in my email inbox by 8 am UK time on the Monday morning before your scheduled call.
Please mark your own schedule or set yourself reminders to turn in your work to deadline. I do not send you reminders of an impending deadline unless we have agreed that I will.
If you miss your submission deadline, I will not have time to do your written work justice before our call. That means you will get less benefit from the coaching cycle because I will not have had time to give deep thought to your work.
8. Deferrment
Life situations happen that are beyond our control: serious illness of or accidents to ourselves or our family or lifestyle changes that impact our ability to work.
If something this unfortunate should happen to you, and you wish to defer your coaching, please notify me as soon as possible. I will take any request under consideration and propose a solution that is equitable for both of us.
9. Cancellation
You may cancel your entire coaching agreement with me but please be aware that I do not offer refunds of money you have already paid to me. The free call we have together before you commit to coaching is the way for us to get to know each other and determine whether we’re a good fit. You can ask all your questions and evaluate me and the process before you commit.
10. Liability
It’s really hard to think what liability I might attract by helping you to write a better book but just in case I’m being unimaginative, let’s make it absolutely clear that in entering into our contract to work together, you agree that I am not and will not, and cannot be construed to be, liable to you or to any third party for loss or damages of any kind suffered by you or that third party. Period.
And I hope there will never be any dispute between us about what we agreed but for the record, these terms are governed by the laws of England and Wales and the courts of England have exclusive jurisdiction to settle any such dispute.
Reboot your Book
All the terms on this page also apply to the mini-series called Reboot Your Book (unless patently ridiculous). But the three most important terms are Number 10, ‘Liability’ and two new ones: no refunds, and no sharing:
No refund – due to the digital nature of Reboot Your Book, I do not give refunds.
No sharing – do not share the materials or the URL of Reboot Your Book that sits behind the paywall with anyone else. I am trusting you on this. The page is not password protected.
I have built every part of the kit by hand and out of my own head. Copyright rests with me as creator and if you share Reboot Your Book with others, you would be stealing from me.
You don’t want that on your conscience, do you?
PRIVACY POLICY
I respect your privacy and promise not to spam you.
If you do succumb under the weight of email, just press the big Unsubscribe button.
HOW I TREAT YOUR INFORMATION
Ruth Bullivant is the trading and author name of Ruth Pedley. Ruth Pedley is a natural person with a real identity in law and the administrator of the website ruthbullivant.com
By using ruthbullivant.com, you agree to the conditions of this Privacy Policy which informs you about what happens to the data I, Ruth Pedley collect from you. It also explains when and how I can use this information.
INFORMATION
COLLECTED FROM USERS
When you fill out a form on the site, you will be asked to provide your contact information. Otherwise, there is probably not much point in filling out the form. This information (your personal information) will be used by me, Ruth Pedley to contact you in response to your request and to send you information about my work, if you have asked for that. I will not transfer it, sell it or give it to any other party unless required by law to do so.
You have the right to remain silent … no, sorry, wrong script – you have the right not provide your contact information but if you do not, you will not be able to submit the contact form.
NEWSLETTER & CRM
Please note that you can unsubscribe from my newsletter by clicking on the unsubscribe link at the end of every newsletter.
I use MailerLite to manage my email marketing subscriber list and to send emails to my subscribers. MailerLite is a third-party provider, which may collect and process your data using industry standard technologies to help me monitor and improve my newsletters. MailerLite’s privacy policy is available at https://www.mailerlite.com/privacy-policy . If you subscribe to my newsletter, your name and email address will be kept private and saved on MailerLite’s secure servers.
I will only email you to send you news about my writing and publications and/or to offer free or discounted books from other authors you may enjoy, and/or general advice related to writing, publishing, or marketing.
Your email address may be used for remarketing purposes, such as running Facebook Ads to you, or generating “Lookalike” audiences based off your email address via “digital fingerprinting.” Note that this does not involve the sharing of your email address.
I use a client relationship management system called Capsule and your email address is also stored on their secure servers. Capsule’s Privacy Policy can be found here.
COOKIES ARE NOT BISCUITS
Cookie Notice
This site may use cookies and keep track of browsing behaviour and traffic information such as URL, ISP, IP addresses, entry page, exit page and other statistical, demographic or aggregated information from its visitors. This non-personal information cannot be linked to your personal data but can be used to improve this website and the information it contains. You can always change your browser configuration if you do not want to accept cookies from this site although it could result in problematic viewing of the site.
The site may contain affiliate links for companies I use and trust such as Author Accelerator, Amazon, iBooks, Kobo and other book sellers. If you click on one of my affiliate links, a cookie will be placed on your computer and should you make a purchase on that website, I, Ruth Pedley (trading and writing as Ruth Bullivant), if I am very lucky, may be paid a commission. You will not pay a penny more by going through these links than if you went to the companies direct. These affiliate links are carefully selected based on my experience with these service providers.
limitation of my liability
By using this site, you acknowledge that I, Ruth Pedley (coaching and writing as Ruth Bullivant) accept no type of liability invented by the wit of lawyers, law makers or the courts for any direct, indirect, incidental, consequential, punitive or any other type of damage associated with this site, including but not limited to any virus that may infect your computer. All efforts are made to ensure such consequences don’t occur but you are solely responsible for any damage your equipment or you suffer that is related to downloading material obtained from this site or from sites linked to this site.
I am not liable for the unavailability of the site, its failure or that of site functions – except to the extent required by applicable laws. This site will contain links to other sites and other sites may link to this site. These links are added for pure convenience and I am not responsible for the accuracy, reliability or completeness of the content from these other sites. Accessing these sites is done at your own risk.
LIMITATION ON YOUR USAGE OF THIS SITE
You cannot copy, modify, distribute, license, disseminate, display, reproduce, transfer, sell or offer to sell or act in any similar way in relation to any material, information, product, image, text, code or service viewed or obtained from this site without written permission from me.