Terms of Service

01Agreement to these terms

These Terms of Service (“Terms”) form a legal agreement between you and SJF Ventures LLC (“SJF,” “we,” “us,” or “our”), of 30 N Gould St Ste N, Sheridan, WY 82801, United States.

By using www.sjfliterature.com, submitting an inquiry, or engaging our services, you accept these Terms. If you do not accept them, please do not use the site or engage us.

You must be at least 18 years old and able to enter into a binding contract. If you are engaging us on behalf of a company, imprint, or estate, you confirm you have authority to bind it.

02Your rights in your work

To do the work you have engaged us for, you grant SJF Ventures LLC a limited, non-exclusive, revocable licence to read, edit, format, typeset, reproduce, and distribute your work — strictly as instructed by you and only for the duration and purpose of the engagement. This licence exists solely so we can perform the services, and it ends when the engagement ends.

Separately, and only with your written permission, we may name you as a client and display your cover, title, and a short testimonial in our own portfolio and marketing. You can withdraw that permission at any time by writing to us.

03What you warrant to us

When you send us a manuscript, you confirm that:

• The work is original to you, or you hold all rights necessary to publish it.
• You have cleared permissions for any third-party material it contains — quotations beyond fair use, song lyrics, photographs, illustrations, charts, or licensed content.
• The work does not infringe any copyright, trademark, or other proprietary right.
• The work is not defamatory, does not violate anyone's privacy, and does not contain unlawful content.
• It is not currently under an exclusive publishing contract with another party that would prevent this engagement.
• Any factual claims, particularly in memoir, biography, health, legal, or financial writing, have been checked by you.

You agree to indemnify SJF Ventures LLC against third-party claims arising from a breach of these confirmations. We may pause or end an engagement if a credible rights or legality issue emerges, and will explain our reasoning if we do.

04Our work for you

SJF Ventures LLC provides publishing and literary services: editorial development, copy editing and proofreading, cover and interior design, production and formatting, distribution and retailer setup, author websites and platform, and launch and ongoing marketing.

Scope, deliverables, milestones, timelines, and price are set out in your written roadmap and engagement agreement. Where those documents conflict with these Terms, the engagement agreement governs the specifics of your project and these Terms fill the gaps.

How we commit

• We perform the services with professional skill and care, using qualified editors, designers, and marketers.
• We keep to the agreed schedule and tell you promptly, with a revised date, if anything slips.
• We provide the revision rounds set out in your roadmap, and we correct work that does not match the agreed brief at our own cost.
• We advise you honestly, including when our advice is that you should not buy a service from us.

05What we need from you

A book runs on collaboration, and delays are almost always caused by a gap in one of the following.

• Materials on time — the manuscript, author photograph, biography, and any supplied assets, in the formats agreed.
• Timely decisions — approvals and feedback within the windows set out in your roadmap, so specialists are not left idle.
• Consolidated feedback — one considered response per round rather than a running stream, which is what allows a revision round to be a revision round.
• Accurate information — correct details for accounts, payments, tax forms, and copyright registration.
• Account access where needed — for retailer or advertising accounts already in your name.

If materials or approvals are outstanding for more than 30 days, we may reschedule your project into the next available production slot. Delays caused on your side do not extend fixed deadlines such as a dated launch window.

06Fees and payment

Final files, production assets, and account handover are released once the balance for the relevant milestone has been paid.

07Intellectual property in our materials

Design assets we create for your book — your cover, your interior layout, your marketing artwork — are transferred to you on final payment for that milestone, and are yours to use without restriction.

Our own underlying materials remain ours: this website and its design, our templates, checklists, internal frameworks, process documentation, and the SJF Ventures LLC name and marks. Nothing in an engagement transfers those to you, and they may not be copied or redistributed.

Third-party licensed assets used in your book — stock imagery, fonts, illustrations — are governed by the licence terms of their originators. We will tell you the scope of any licence purchased for your project, including any limits on later reuse.

08Confidentiality

We treat your unpublished manuscript, your commercial terms, your sales figures, and your plans as confidential. Access is limited to the team members and contracted specialists working on your book, each bound by written confidentiality terms.

We will not use your manuscript, correspondence, or project data to train artificial intelligence or machine learning models, and we do not permit our contractors to do so. Full detail on how we handle your data is in our Privacy Policy.

You agree to keep our pricing, proposals, and process documentation confidential in the same way.

09Website use

You may browse www.sjfliterature.com and use its forms for genuine inquiries. You may not attempt to gain unauthorised access to the site or its systems, scrape or harvest content or contact details, submit false or automated inquiries, introduce malicious code, or reproduce the site's design or copy.

The site is provided as-is. We work to keep it accurate and available, but do not warrant uninterrupted access or freedom from error. Links to third-party sites are provided for convenience and we are not responsible for their content or practices.

10Cancellation and termination

You may cancel an engagement in writing at any time. What you owe, and what is returned to you, is determined by our Refund Policy and your engagement agreement.

We may end an engagement, on written notice, if fees remain unpaid after notice, if required materials or approvals are outstanding for more than 90 days, if a rights or legality problem cannot be resolved, or if conduct toward our team is abusive or discriminatory.

On termination, we hand over all completed and paid-for deliverables in usable formats, transfer any accounts held in your name, and return or delete your materials in line with our retention schedule. Clauses on intellectual property, confidentiality, warranties, indemnity, and liability survive termination.

11Limitation of liability

To the fullest extent permitted by law, SJF Ventures LLC is not liable for lost profits, lost sales, lost royalties, lost data, loss of anticipated savings, or any indirect or consequential loss arising from these Terms or our services.

Our total aggregate liability arising from an engagement is limited to the total fees you have paid us for that engagement in the 12 months preceding the claim.

Nothing in these Terms limits liability for fraud, fraudulent misrepresentation, death or personal injury caused by negligence, or any other liability that cannot lawfully be limited. If your jurisdiction does not allow certain exclusions, those exclusions do not apply to you.

12Resolving disputes

If something goes wrong, write to hello@sjfliterature.com first. A director will review the matter personally and respond within 10 business days. Most disputes end there, and we would always rather fix a problem than argue about one.

If a matter cannot be resolved between us within 30 days, the parties agree to attempt mediation in good faith before commencing proceedings.

These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of Wyoming, United States, without regard to conflict of law principles. The state and federal courts located in Wyoming have exclusive jurisdiction, save that we may seek injunctive relief in any competent court to protect confidential information or intellectual property.

13General

• Entire agreement. These Terms, your roadmap, your engagement agreement, our Privacy Policy, and our Refund Policy form the whole agreement between us.
• Order of precedence. Where documents conflict, the signed engagement agreement prevails, then these Terms, then all other materials.
• Changes. We may update these Terms; the effective date above always shows the current version. Material changes affecting active engagements are notified to clients by email, and do not apply retroactively to work already contracted.
• Severability. If any provision is held unenforceable, the rest remains in force.
• No waiver. Failing to enforce a right on one occasion does not waive it.
• Assignment. You may not assign an engagement without our written consent. We may assign to a successor entity, subject to the same obligations.
• Independent contractors. SJF Ventures LLC acts as an independent service provider. Nothing here creates a partnership, joint venture, employment relationship, or agency between us.
• Force majeure. Neither party is liable for delay caused by events beyond reasonable control.