Privacy
We collect only what we need to run the contests and send you the magazine. We don't sell your details, we don't show ads, and we don't track you around the web.
What we collect
- Your email address and name, when you buy an entry credit or sign up for the newsletter. Your email is how you sign in: we send you a link, so there's no password.
- Your entry credits and payments: how many credits you've bought and used. Card details go straight to Stripe; we never see them.
- Your stories: the files you upload, their titles and word counts, and the feedback and placing each one gets.
- Where you came from: when you buy a credit or sign up, the link that brought you here (for example a newsletter or a post), and, if you choose to tell us, how you heard about The Quarry.
Who we share it with
Only the services that run the site, and only what each one needs:
- Stripe takes payments.
- Resend sends our emails: sign-in links, receipts, results and the newsletter.
- Cloudflare stores the story files you upload (in Cloudflare R2), and counts visits to the site (see Tracking, below).
- Render hosts the site and its database.
- Anthropic: Claude, Anthropic's AI assistant, reads each entry through Anthropic's API to help Jonathan write feedback. Jonathan reads and judges every story himself, and an AI never decides who wins.
Your stories are never used to train AI. We don't send them anywhere for training, and Anthropic doesn't train its models on what's sent through its API.
Your name stays off the judging: Jonathan reads each story by its entry number. If your story is published, it appears under the byline you choose.
How long we keep your stories
If your story doesn't place, or is withdrawn or disqualified, we delete its file 90 days after the contest's results. Your page keeps its title, placing and feedback, and reminds you to download the file before then. Files of winning and runner-up stories are kept, since we publish them.
Deleting your account
Email hello@thequarry.press from the address you entered with, and we'll delete your account within 30 days. That removes your name, your email, your sign-in, your story files and your feedback.
- What we keep, without your name or email: payment records, which tax law requires us to keep for about seven years (Stripe keeps its own as well), and an anonymous record of each entry: its entry number, contest and placing.
- Unused credits are forfeited, unless you bought them in the last 30 days; then they're refunded.
- A story in a contest that's still open is withdrawn, and its credit refunded.
- A published story stays in its issue, credited the way you prefer, unless you also ask us to remove it, which you can do once its 90 days of exclusivity are over.
Tracking and cookies
We count visits with Cloudflare Web Analytics, which doesn't use cookies or follow you from site to site. There's no Google Analytics, no Facebook or Meta pixel, and no ad trackers.
The only cookie we set is the site's own session cookie, which keeps you signed in to your page and keeps our forms secure. If a link to us carried a tag saying where it was posted (for example "instagram"), or you came from another website, that cookie also remembers that one fact, and we keep it with your purchase or newsletter signup, so we know which places bring writers. If you tell us at checkout how you heard about us, we keep that answer too. That's why there's no cookie banner.
The newsletter
When you buy an entry credit, the form offers the newsletter with the box already ticked; untick it and we won't add you. If you've unsubscribed before, the box stays unticked for you, and you're only added back if you tick it. If you sign up on the site instead, we email you only after you confirm your address. Every newsletter has a link to unsubscribe in one click.
Questions
Ask us anything about your details, or ask for a copy of what we hold about you: email hello@thequarry.press.