Who we are

Tell Me Again operates tellmeagainbooks.com. We make personalised memory books: the buyer chooses the questions, and we help with the asking.

Tell Me Again is a sole proprietorship operated by Melisa Ames, trading as Tell Me Again, at 3916 N Potsdam Ave, Apt 2432, Sioux Falls, SD 57104, United States. You can reach us at hello@tellmeagainbooks.com.

The two people this policy covers

Most shops have one customer. We have two people whose information matters, and they are usually not the same person:

• The buyer — the person who commissions the book, chooses the questions and pays.
• The storyteller — usually a parent, grandparent or partner, who writes the answers or is interviewed.

The storyteller has not bought anything and may not have been part of the decision. Their information is theirs, not the buyer’s, so we ask them directly rather than treating the buyer’s agreement as covering them.

What we collect from the buyer

• Order details — your name, email, delivery address, and the questions chosen. If you use the contact form, we also keep your name, email and message so we can reply.
• Payment details — handled by Stripe, our payment processor. We never see or store full card numbers.
• What you tell us about the storyteller — their first name, your relationship to them, anything you tell us to help us ask well, and whether you chose our gentle question set.

Choosing the gentle question set tells us which questions to offer, and nothing more. We don’t ask why it was chosen, and we don’t record anything about the storyteller’s health or memory.

Why we are allowed to use it: we use the buyer’s order details because we need them to carry out the contract you made with us; we keep accounting records because the law requires it; we use the mailing-list address and contact-form messages because you asked us to reply, and you can stop that at any time. The storyteller’s answers are used only with their own explicit consent.

What we collect from the storyteller

Their answers. In practice that can include their childhood, their family, their working life, their beliefs, their health, their bereavements and their relationships.

Under UK and EU data protection law some of that is special category data, which carries extra protection. We handle it on the basis of the storyteller’s own explicit consent, asked for directly:

• In the workbook, on a page at the front, before any question is answered.
• In the interview, out loud at the start, before anything is recorded.

They can decline any individual question, stop at any point, or ask us to remove something after the fact — including after the book is printed, in which case we reprint the affected pages at no charge.

Recordings and transcripts

This section applies to the Full Interview and The Written Story only.

We record the conversation so it can be written up accurately. We say so at the start and ask permission before recording begins. The recording is used to produce a transcript and then a draft.

The recording is deleted once the book is approved and delivered. The transcript is deleted at the same time. The storyteller may ask for a copy of their recording or transcript at any time before then, and we send it to them directly; nothing goes to the buyer unless the storyteller asks us to send it.

Only Melisa hears the recording. Turning it into text may be done with the help of an AI model, under our instruction and under the terms described in the next section; no other person hears it.

How we use it, including the AI part

To make and deliver the book: to choose and typeset the questions, to produce the workbook, to conduct and write up the interview, to print and ship, and to answer your emails about the order.

We want you to know exactly where a machine is involved in your book, because for most of it there isn’t one.

Choosing the questions

You choose them yourself: three from each of eight subjects, and one you write in your own words. Everyone is offered the same list, and nothing is picked for you. If you tell us about a subject to steer towards or away from, or ask for gentle questions, we use it when we set the book, and may use an AI model, under our instruction, to help word the questions.

Prompt & Print and Guided Completion — the storyteller’s own words, untouched

The book is filled in by hand. When it comes back to us, the pages are photographed and placed in the finished book as they are, in the storyteller’s own handwriting. No AI reads, transcribes or rewrites a word of it. If you choose the typed page facing each handwritten one, that transcript is typed and checked by Melisa.

The Full Interview and The Written Story — a recording, a draft, and a person

Turning a recording into text, and a transcript into a first draft of the story, may be done with the help of an AI model, under our instruction. Every line of every draft is then read, edited and approved by Melisa before anyone in the family sees it. That step is the work, not a formality: the judgement about what matters, and the ear for how the storyteller actually talks, are hers.

What the AI is, and what it cannot do with your story

The model is Claude, made by Anthropic, used through Anthropic’s commercial service. At the time of writing, Anthropic’s commercial terms state that they may not train their models on customer content, and that inputs and outputs are deleted from their systems within thirty days; we will update this if that changes. So the storyteller’s story does not become part of any AI’s training, and it does not stay on anyone’s servers once the book is made.

Melisa also uses AI tools to proofread her own writing — the letters, the emails, the pages of this website. She writes; it checks her spelling.

Who we share it with

Only what is needed to fulfil an order:

• Stripe, our payment processor, to take payment.
• Tally, which runs the form you fill in to start an order and stores what you typed.
• Lulu Press, Inc. (Durham, North Carolina), our print partner, who receives the book’s contents and the delivery address, holds them only to print and ship, and is not permitted to use them for anything else. Books for UK addresses are printed in the UK.
• Shipping carriers, who receive the delivery address.
• Anthropic, whose Claude model helps turn interview recordings into text and a first draft, under our instruction and their commercial terms (see above).
• 20i, who host this website and our email. Their routine backups keep a copy of deleted material for up to 7 days; email is not backed up.
• For orders in the UK, the completed workbook is received and photographed by a member of Melisa’s family in the UK, who acts only on our instructions and holds it only until the book is approved and returns it to you by tracked post.

We do not sell personal information, and we do not share it between Tell Me Again and any other business we run.

How long we keep it

What	How long
Order and delivery details	For as long as tax law requires, then deleted
Chosen questions and notes about the storyteller	Deleted 30 days after the book is delivered
Interview recording	Deleted once the book is approved and delivered
Transcript and drafts	Deleted once the book is approved and delivered
The photographs of a handwritten workbook, and the original	The working photographs are deleted 30 days after the book is delivered (the finished book file, which contains the pages as printed, is kept for 12 months, below); the original workbook is posted back to you within 14 days of the book’s approval, or destroyed if you ask
Finished book files	Kept for 12 months so a family can order more copies, then deleted
Our print partner’s order record	Kept by them for their own accounting; the book file itself they do not retain beyond fulfilment, and we delete it from our printer account when we delete our own copy, 12 months after delivery
Mailing list address	Until you unsubscribe

If the storyteller dies before the book is finished, nothing is deleted on this timetable while the family is deciding what they want to happen — see our terms.

Our website and email host keeps routine backups for up to 7 days, so a deleted item can survive in a backup for up to a week after we delete it. Email is not backed up by the host; we delete order emails on the same timetable as the rest.

Cookies and the mailing list

If you gave us your name and email to hear when we are open, we use it for exactly that and nothing else. The form on this site sends your address to us by email and we keep it in a private list we maintain ourselves. Every email we send has a way to unsubscribe, and unsubscribing deletes the address.

This site uses the cookies it needs to work — the ones that remember a page has loaded and keep the site fast. It also uses Google Analytics, which sets cookies to count visits and show which pages are read; it does not tell us who you are. We do not run advertising cookies.

Your rights

Whether you bought the book or answered the questions, you can ask to see, correct, export or delete what we hold about you, or ask us to restrict or object to how we use it, except where we are legally required to keep it. The storyteller can withdraw their consent at any time: that means telling us to stop, to remove something, or to delete what we hold. Withdrawing consent does not affect anything done before it was withdrawn. Email hello@tellmeagainbooks.com.

The storyteller has these rights in their own name. They do not need to go through whoever bought the book, and we will act on a request from them directly.

Data protection regime

Tell Me Again is the data controller for the information described here, and we are based in South Dakota, United States. Personal information you give us is therefore processed in the United States. If you are in the UK or the EEA, that is a transfer outside your country; we rely on the standard data-protection clauses approved for that purpose in our contracts with the companies we use, and we apply the same care wherever the information is held.

Where we collect personal information from people in the UK or the European Economic Area we handle it in line with the UK GDPR and the EU GDPR. If you are in the UK you have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office at ico.org.uk. If you are in the EEA you have the right to complain to the supervisory authority in your country.