Mutual Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA)

Summary in plain English

When you send us your manuscript, outline or ideas, we agree to keep them confidential, to use them only to review your book and to do any work you ask us to do, and not to claim any rights in them. In return, you agree to keep our confidential information private too, including how our free book review works, our prices and our methods. It protects both of us. This section is a summary. The numbered clauses below are the agreement.

1. The parties and how it is agreed

This is a mutual agreement between:

you, the person who submits a form on our website, and
Trexovia Technologies Ltd, trading as Fable Studio, registered in England and Wales, company number 17440850, registered office 128 City Road, London, United Kingdom, EC1V 2NX ("we", "us").

Each of us is a "Discloser" of our own confidential information and a "Recipient" of the other's.

It is agreed when you tick the box to accept our Terms and this Non-Disclosure Agreement and send a form. We keep a record of the date, the time, the version and your IP address. It applies to everything either of us shares with the other from that point, through the website, by email, by phone, by video call or through any other channel.

Please send a form before you share your manuscript. Email, WhatsApp and phone are fine for questions, but anything shared before you have accepted this agreement by sending one of our forms is not covered by it.

2. What is confidential

"Confidential Information" means anything that a Discloser shares with the Recipient in connection with the Purpose that is not public, in any form. This includes:

Your Confidential Information:

manuscripts, outlines, drafts, chapters and notes
plots, characters, ideas, titles and unpublished text
artwork, illustrations and designs
personal stories and any information about you or other people in your book
your plans, business information and contact details.

Our Confidential Information:

how our free book review works, including its criteria, methods and the way we assess a book, and the feedback we give you
our prices, quotes, rates and terms, including our service agreement templates
our working methods, processes, templates, tools and know-how
information about our clients, authors, suppliers and contractors
our business plans and any trade secrets.

It also includes anything marked as confidential, or that a reasonable person would understand to be confidential.

3. The purpose

"Purpose" means:

for us: carrying out your free book review, deciding whether to work with you, discussing and quoting for services, and, if you become a client, providing the services you ask for
for you: considering whether to work with us, understanding our recommendations and quote, and, if you become a client, working with us.

4. What each of us will do

The Recipient will:

keep the Discloser's Confidential Information confidential, and protect it with at least the same care that it uses for its own confidential information, and no less than reasonable care
use it only for the Purpose
not disclose it to anyone except its Representatives
make copies only as needed for the Purpose.

"Representatives" means the Recipient's directors, employees, freelancers, contractors and professional advisers who need the information for the Purpose, who must be bound by written or professional confidentiality obligations that are at least as protective as this agreement. The Recipient is responsible for their compliance.

Our service providers. We may also disclose your Confidential Information to service providers that help us carry out the Purpose, including AI-assisted tools such as Claude and Grammarly, provided that their terms treat the information as confidential and do not allow it to be used to train their models. If you tell us in writing that you do not want AI-assisted tools used on your Confidential Information, we will not use them on it.

5. Our methods and trade secrets

In addition, you agree that you will not:

use our Confidential Information to build, run or help anyone else to build or run a competing service, or to copy our methods
publish or share the criteria, methods or processes behind our free book review, or our prices and templates, with anyone other than your own professional advisers
try to work out our methods from the results or materials we give you, in order to pass them on.

You may share the feedback from your own free book review with your own advisers, and use our feedback to improve your book. Our trade secrets stay protected for as long as they remain trade secrets, even after the period in clause 10.

6. What is not covered

These obligations do not apply to information that:

is or becomes public, other than because the Recipient broke this agreement
the Recipient already lawfully knew, free of any duty of confidence, before it was shared
the Recipient lawfully receives from someone else who is free to share it
the Recipient develops independently, without using the Discloser's Confidential Information.

If the law, a court or a regulator requires the Recipient to disclose Confidential Information, it may do so, and where it is allowed to, it will tell the Discloser first so that they can respond.

7. Ownership

All rights in a Discloser's Confidential Information remain theirs. This agreement does not give the Recipient any licence or right in it, other than to use it for the Purpose. We do not claim ownership of your ideas or your book, and neither of us is obliged to proceed with any project.

8. Working with others

Each of us works with other people. Nothing in this agreement stops either of us from working with others, including on similar books, services or businesses, as long as we do not use or disclose the other's Confidential Information in doing so.

9. Returning or deleting information

If the Discloser asks in writing, or if the Purpose ends or we decide not to take your book forward, the Recipient will delete or return the Discloser's Confidential Information, in line with our privacy notice for personal information. A Recipient may keep copies that it is legally required to keep, and copies in routine backups until they are overwritten. Anything kept stays confidential under this agreement.

10. How long it lasts

This agreement starts when it is accepted. The obligations in it continue for five years from the date Confidential Information was last shared, or until the information becomes public (other than through a breach), whichever is earlier. Clause 5 continues for as long as our trade secrets remain secret. Our duties about personal information continue as our privacy notice explains.

11. If something goes wrong

If either of us thinks there has been a breach of this agreement, we will tell the other promptly. Damages alone may not be enough to put things right, so either of us may ask a court for an injunction or other urgent order if we believe this agreement has been or may be breached.

12. Other agreements

If you become a client, your service agreement may contain its own confidentiality terms. Those apply to the work done under it, and this agreement continues to protect everything shared before then.

13. General

This agreement, with our Terms, is the whole agreement about confidentiality of what we share with each other.
Changes to it must be in writing. The version that applies to you is the one you accepted.
Nobody other than you and us has any right to enforce it, under the Contracts (Rights of Third Parties) Act 1999.
If part of it is unenforceable, the rest still applies.
It is governed by the law of England and Wales. Disputes are dealt with under the dispute clause in our Terms, and the courts of England and Wales have jurisdiction over urgent orders under clause 11, subject to any mandatory rights you may have as a consumer where you live.

14. Questions

If you would like to talk about this agreement, or to ask for a signed copy for your records, email info@fablestudio.co.uk.

Questions about this page? Email info@fablestudio.co.uk.