Your work. Your choices. Your rights.
At Presence, support never means taking over.
Every creator has the right to be recognized as the author of their work, to make meaningful choices about their book, to understand the publishing process, and to decide what parts of their life they choose to share.
Your work belongs to you. Your voice remains your own.
Support without substitution.
Your Rights as a Creator
These rights guide every Presence project. Support may look different for every creator, but these principles do not.
1. The Right to Your Own Work
Your creative work belongs to you. You retain copyright in your original poems, stories, artwork, photographs, and other creative material. Publishing with Presence does not transfer ownership of your work to us.
2. The Right to Your Own Voice
Your way of creating is valid. You may write, type, dictate, draw, communicate through AAC, work from handwritten pages, or use other forms of support. We may help prepare your work for publication, but support should never replace your ideas, meaning, or voice.
3. The Right to Make Choices
You have the right to participate meaningfully in decisions about your book. That can include its title, cover, artwork, order, dedication, author biography, formatting, publication, and how your work is shared.
4. The Right to Say No
You have the right to say no to changes, photographs, videos, interviews, social-media posts, public events, or other uses of your work or personal information. You may also change your mind when possible. However, once a book or other material has been printed, distributed, or publicly shared, some uses may not be reversible.
5. The Right to Privacy
Your story belongs to you, and so does your personal information. You decide what you want readers to know about you. You are not required to disclose a disability, diagnosis, medical information, guardianship, or other private information in your book, author biography, on our website, or in promotion.
6. The Right to Be Included
You are an author. Presence does not define creators by disability or separate their work simply because they create or communicate differently. Your work deserves to be presented with the same dignity and care we bring to every book.
7. The Right to Individualized Support
Your way of creating is valid. You may write, type, dictate, draw, use a communication device or other form of communication, work from handwritten pages, or use other forms of support. The support should fit you—not require you to fit the process.
8. The Right to Understand
You have the right to understand what is happening with your book. We will explain the publishing process in a way that works for you and give you opportunities to ask questions. Information may be explained again, shown visually, written in plain language, or shared with a support person you choose.
9. The Right to Your Earnings
If your book earns royalties, you have the right to understand where that money comes from and how much your book has earned. Presence does not keep a percentage of your book royalties. 100% of the royalties attributable to your book are yours.
10. The Right to Dignity
Your book will not be promoted by reducing you to a diagnosis or using your disability to make your story seem more inspiring. You have the right to help decide how you and your work are presented to readers.
11. The Right to Have Support
You may include a trusted person in the publishing process if you want support understanding information, communicating choices, or participating in decisions. Having support does not automatically mean someone else makes your choices for you.
12. The Right to Autonomy
You have the right to participate in decisions about your work to the greatest extent possible. Having a disability does not automatically mean someone else makes decisions for you. When another person has legal authority to make certain decisions on your behalf, we will still make every reasonable effort to include you, understand your wishes, and respect your preferences.
13. The Right to Change Your Mind
You may ask questions, reconsider a choice, or say you no longer want to move forward. We will respect changes whenever reasonably possible. Some decisions cannot be undone after a book has been printed, distributed, sold, or information has already been made public. We will help you understand when a decision may become difficult or impossible to reverse before it happens.
14. The Right to Be an Author
You are not a project, a diagnosis, or a success story for someone else.
You are an author.
Your ideas matter. Your creative work matters. Your choices matter. Presence exists to help remove barriers between your creative expression and the printed page—not to take ownership of what was already yours.
Your words already matter.
