Privacy Policy

Who we are

Lesedi House Inc. is the publishing division of Lesedi Innovation House (Pty) Ltd, registration number 2019/486871/07.

What personal information we collect

Depending on how you deal with us, we may collect your:

• Name and contact details, including your email address and WhatsApp number.
• Book and manuscript details, such as the title, genre, language, word count and publishing services you request.
• Payment and transaction details needed to confirm payments and keep financial records. Lesedi House does not need to store your full card details when PayFast processes a payment.
• Messages, enquiries, documents and other information you send to us.

How we collect it

We collect personal information when you use our website estimate form or author dashboard, communicate with us by email or WhatsApp, make a payment, or otherwise provide information to us.

Our WhatsApp assistant, Naledi, uses artificial intelligence to reply to enquiries and collect the information needed to assist prospective authors. You may ask to speak to a person if you do not want to continue with the automated assistant.

Why we use your information

We use personal information only where reasonably necessary to:

• Prepare and send publishing quotations.
• Respond to enquiries and communicate with authors.
• Set up, manage and deliver publishing projects.
• Process and confirm payments.
• Prepare agreements, invoices and other project records.
• Meet our legal, tax, accounting and financial-record obligations.
• Protect our website, systems, clients and business.

Who we share it with

We may share relevant information with trusted service providers that help us operate. These include Zoho Books for accounting and financial records, PayFast for payments, Meta and WhatsApp for messaging, Anthropic for AI-assisted editorial work, and our website host.

Information may be processed outside South Africa, including in the United States, with the author's consent and appropriate safeguards. We limit sharing to what is reasonably needed for the service. We do not sell personal information.

Manuscripts, editorial tools and retention

Manuscripts are confidential and are used only to provide the services the author ordered. Editing may be carried out by Lesedi House's appointed editors, who are bound by confidentiality, and with the help of AI tools including Anthropic's Claude, under human oversight. Author manuscripts are not used to train AI models.

Memoirs may contain special personal information, such as health, religion or family matters, about the author and other people. We process it only to edit and publish the book, with the author's consent.

Manuscript files are kept for 24 months after the project ends, unless deletion is requested earlier. Financial records are kept for as long as the law requires. Other personal information is kept only while needed for its stated purpose or a lawful record-keeping requirement.

How we keep it secure

We use reasonable technical and organisational safeguards to protect personal information against loss, misuse, unauthorised access, alteration or disclosure. These safeguards include controlled access, secure service providers, protected accounts and secure website connections. No online system is completely risk-free, but we review our safeguards and respond to suspected security incidents.

Your rights under POPIA

Subject to POPIA and any lawful reasons that may require us to retain information, you may:

• Ask whether we hold personal information about you and request access to it.
• Ask us to correct information that is inaccurate, incomplete, misleading or out of date.
• Ask us to delete or destroy information that we are no longer authorised to keep.
• Object to certain processing of your personal information.
• Raise a concern with us or lodge a complaint with South Africa's Information Regulator.

WhatsApp project updates

Project updates are sent by WhatsApp only with the author's consent. Consent can be withdrawn at any time by replying STOP or switching WhatsApp updates off in the author dashboard. Email and the dashboard remain available.