Terms & Conditions

In force from October 2026.

1. Who we are

Tweedlecoate is a trading name of Martin Higgins, a sole trader. Email: enquiries@tweedlecoate.co.uk. Phone: 07395 444396. Address: Bramleys, Chaffcombe, TA20 4BH.

“We” and “us” mean Tweedlecoate. “You” means the author or client we are working with. If you are buying as an individual, not for a business, you are a “consumer” and the extra protections in these terms apply to you by law. If you are buying for a business, see section 17.

2. How a contract starts

You send us your work through our submissions page. We read it and decide whether we can publish it. If we can, we send you a quote. A quote is open for 30 days unless it says otherwise.

A contract exists when you accept the quote in writing (an email reply is fine) or tick to accept on our order form. These terms are sent with every quote, and by accepting you agree to them. The version in force on the day you accept is the one that applies to your contract.

We can turn down any submission before a contract exists. We don’t have to give a reason.

3. Prices and costs

The price on your accepted quote is fixed. We won’t raise it unless you ask for extra work, and we will agree that in writing first.

Prices shown on the website can change before you accept a quote. Some costs come from printers and other suppliers, and these can change too. If a supplier cost isn’t in your quote, we pass it on at cost and tell you before we incur it.

We are not VAT registered, so no VAT is added to our prices.

4. Paying us

Invoices under £1,000 are paid in full before work starts.

For invoices of £1,000 or more, we can offer staged payments. The stages are agreed in writing before work starts, and the first payment is due when the project begins. Each later payment is due before work on the next stage starts. If a payment is late, we can pause work until it arrives.

Milestone projects. Larger projects, such as ghostwriting, are split into milestones agreed in the project plan. Typical milestones are: research and planning, writing in sections or chapters, your review and revisions, and final approval ahead of publication. Each milestone has its own deliverable, its own payment, and your sign-off before we move on.

Monthly services. Some services, such as writing coaching, are paid monthly and renew each month until you cancel. Before you agree, your quote or order tells you the monthly price, what each month includes, the date payment is due and how to cancel. There is no minimum term, and each month is paid in advance.

You can stop at any time using the link in your Stripe payment emails, or by emailing us. Either way, we’ll confirm in writing. If you cancel before your next payment date, you won’t be charged again, and your last paid month runs to its end. We don’t refund a month that has already started, apart from your 14-day right to cancel in section 5 if you are a consumer. If you cancel within those 14 days, you pay for what we’ve already done (a call already held, for example) and we refund the rest.

Monthly services are paid automatically by card through Stripe, on the same date each month, until you cancel. We tell you this before you sign up, along with the price and the date of the first payment. We’ll email you a reminder at least 7 days before a payment, and at least once every six months. We’ll give you at least 30 days’ notice of any price change, and you can stop before it takes effect. If a payment fails, we can pause the service until it’s paid.

5. Starting work and cancelling

We start work when your payment arrives (or your first staged payment) and you have asked us to start.

If you are a consumer, you can cancel for any reason within 14 days of accepting the quote. Tell us by email. You don’t need to give a reason. If you have asked us to start work before the 14 day period has lapsed we’ll refund what you’ve paid within 14 days of hearing from you, minus a fair share of the price for work already done. That share is worked out as a proportion of the total price. We don’t charge a cancellation fee.

Your right to cancel ends once the service is fully complete, for example when your book has been published.

How we work out our share. Your quote lists the main stages of the work and the share of the price each stage carries (for example manuscript assessment, interior formatting, cover design, and registration and uploads). If you cancel, we keep the share for each stage we have completed, plus a proportion of any stage under way, and refund the rest. If you ask, we’ll send you a PDF record showing the work done up to the date you cancelled, such as page layouts and cover progress. It’s a record of the work, not the working files.

What happens to the work if you cancel. Our design and layout files, and the covers and layouts made from them, stay ours. The free licence in section 8 applies only to a book whose fees have been paid in full. If you cancel, we won’t publish the book, and you can’t use the covers or layouts. Your own text stays yours.

Outside work. Some of the work in your package may be done by outside suppliers, such as a cover artist. It is paid for out of the fee you pay us and is not charged on top. Your quote will tell you if we expect to use one. If you cancel after we’ve committed to pay a supplier, the amount we’ve paid counts as work done towards that stage, and we keep it. If you ask, we’ll show you the supplier’s invoice. We won’t count the same work twice.

If we fail to do something we promised, your legal rights to a repeat of the work, a price reduction or a refund are not affected by anything on this page.

6. How we work, and approving your book

We do our work with reasonable care and skill.

For a book project: we format your book, then send you the finished cover and finished interior files to approve. Check them carefully. Once you approve, we submit the files to our printer, who produces a proof. We check that proof against the files you approved.

Once you’ve approved the files, any further change is a change request. Typo-level corrections after launch are covered by the correction rounds on our Services & Pricing page. Your package includes the first round, and further rounds are charged at the rates shown. Content changes, such as rewording, adding or removing material once formatting has started, are charged separately, and we’ll send you a quote before doing the work.

If a mistake is in something you approved, we aren’t responsible for it. If we make a mistake that differs from what you approved, we fix it free of charge.

7. Book orders and delivery

We place author-copy orders on the printer’s system for you. The printer makes and posts the books. The price we quote you covers printing, delivery and handling. You pay before we place the order.

Delivery times are the printer’s estimates, not promises. If books arrive damaged, faulty or not as ordered, tell us within 14 days and we’ll sort out a replacement or refund with the printer. You don’t have to deal with the printer yourself. We may ask for evidence of damage or faults to pass on to the printer.

8. Your work, our work, and copyright

Your writing. You keep the copyright in everything you write. You give us permission to publish, print, distribute and sell your book in the formats we agree, for as long as it remains on sale.

Our design work. We keep the copyright in the covers, graphics and other designs we make. You can use them for free, for as long as you like, for your book and its marketing, including on social media, in catalogues and on your own website. You can’t sell the designs separately from your book.

Our use of your work. We can use your book’s title, cover, blurb, extracts, and the author name and biography you give us, to promote the book and Tweedlecoate. That includes our website, social media, book listings and any other marketing methods.

Your promises. You confirm that you wrote the work (or have permission to use it), that it doesn’t break anyone’s copyright, and that it isn’t defamatory or illegal. If you include other people’s material, such as quotes or images, you are responsible for getting permission.

ISBNs. We register ISBNs in Tweedlecoate’s name as publisher.

9. What we will and won’t publish

We judge your work before we make an offer. After a contract exists, we’ll only remove or stop work on content that is illegal or breaks these terms. We’ll tell you why. We’ll refund the fees for work not yet done.

10. Artificial intelligence

Your book must be your own creative work. Using AI as a tool is fine: research, brainstorming, grammar and spelling help, accessibility, and editing images you created. Text or images that AI mainly generated are not fine, unless we agree otherwise in writing before the contract starts. If you’re unsure whether something counts, ask us.

If a platform asks us to declare AI-generated content, we’ll do so accurately based on what you’ve told us.

Tweedlecoate’s use of AI is for business efficiency purposes. We don’t use it to replace our human creativity.

11. Royalties

When your book sells, the printer and retailers pay royalties to us. We pass them on to you after we receive the money which is usually 3-4 months after the sale is made. Each payment comes with a statement showing the amount paid.

Royalties are defined as the remaining income from sales after the costs of those sales are taken out. Costs will include wholesale discounts, printing, shipping and handling—these can vary with sales channel, global region and other factors.

For books with more than one author, we pay as the authors agree between themselves and tell us in writing. Payments to overseas authors may carry transfer costs which are applied automatically by the bank transfer systems so what you receive may be less than the amount sent.

12. How long your book stays on sale, and withdrawing it

Books we publish stay on sale for as long as we are able to keep them available. There’s no ongoing charge to you.

To withdraw your book, email us. We’ll take it off sale across our sales channels as soon as we reasonably can. Once a book has been registered, it stays listed in bibliographic databases such as Nielsen. It just can’t be bought. Copies already sold are not affected, and we’ll still pay royalties earned up to the withdrawal. Withdrawing doesn’t entitle you to a refund of publishing fees.

13. Marketing

We don’t offer marketing as a service. We’re happy to give advice, but marketing a book is best done by the author. We can’t promise sales, reviews, rankings or royalty income.

14. Complaints, and what we’re responsible for

If something goes wrong, email us at enquiries@tweedlecoate.co.uk and we’ll reply within 5 working days and try to put it right.

We’re responsible for losses that are a foreseeable result of us breaking these terms. We’re not responsible for lost sales, lost profit or loss we couldn’t have foreseen. Nothing in these terms limits our liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, for fraud, or for anything else the law doesn’t allow us to limit. Your legal rights as a consumer are not affected.

15. Things outside our control

If something beyond our control stops us doing the work (for example illness, serious disruption to a supplier or the printer, power or internet failure, or an event like flood or war), we’ll tell you and do the work as soon as we can. If it goes on for long, you can cancel and we’ll refund the fees for work not yet done.

16. Changes to these terms

We may update these terms from time to time. An update applies to contracts made after it goes live.

For ongoing arrangements, such as monthly services and royalty payments on books already on sale, we may change the terms for a good reason: a change in the law, a change by a printer, retailer or payment provider we rely on, a new or changed service, or to correct an error or make the terms clearer. We’ll email you at least 30 days before the change takes effect and tell you what is changing. If you don’t want the change, you can cancel a monthly service, or withdraw your book from sale, before it takes effect, at no cost. If you carry on after that date, the new terms apply to you. A change never applies to royalties you have already earned.

We can’t change a project you’ve already agreed and paid for, such as a fixed-fee publishing package or a ghostwriting milestone plan, without your agreement in writing.

17. If you are buying for a business

The statutory cancellation right in section 5 applies to consumers only. Business clients can cancel before work starts for a full refund. Once work has started, you pay for work done to that point. For business clients, our total liability under a contract is limited to the fees you paid for that service.

18. Courses

When you buy an online course, you get a personal licence to access it for as long as the course is available or the period stated at purchase if different. You can’t share your login or copy or resell the course content. Because course access is digital content, you will be asked at checkout to agree that access starts straight away and that you lose your 14-day right to cancel once it does. If you haven’t started the course, you can cancel within 14 days for a full refund.

19. Competitions

Competition rules are on the relevant competition page and apply in addition to these terms.

20. Your data

Our Privacy Policy explains how we use your personal data.

21. Law

These terms are governed by the law of England and Wales. If you live in Scotland or Northern Ireland, you can also bring a claim in your local courts. Our services are offered to authors based in the UK. If you live elsewhere, tell us before you accept a quote so we can agree in writing whether we can work together.