PRIVACY POLICY
Big Bear Press.
Effective October 2, 2026.
We updated this policy on October 2, 2026, to add Airtable, which now runs our submission form.
Big Bear Press is a business name used by The Ursa Major Group LLC, a Virginia limited liability company. This policy explains what happens to your information when you use bigbearpress.com or write to us.
The short version
We collect very little information. We use it to answer you, to send you the news you asked for, and to read the manuscripts you send us. We don’t sell it, rent it, or trade it, and we don’t run advertising on this site.
What we collect
Most of what we collect is information you give us on purpose.
If you sign up for the mailing list, we collect your email address.
If you use the contact form, we collect your first name, your last name, your email address, and whatever you write in the message. There’s a box you can tick to join the mailing list at the same time, and it isn’t ticked for you.
If you send us a submission, we collect everything you enter in the submission form. That covers your story title, word count, genre, a short blurb about the story, and your manuscript. It also covers your legal name, your pen name if you use one, your email address, your phone number, your author bio, and any website or platform link you give us. The form asks you to tick four boxes confirming the work is yours and follows our guidelines, and we keep a record of those answers.
The rest is collected automatically when you use the site.
This site runs on Squarespace, which sets cookies in your browser. Some of them are necessary to make the site work at all. Others count visits so we can see which pages people actually read. Squarespace publishes the full list of what it sets and how long each one lasts.
When you first arrive, a banner asks what you want to allow. You can accept everything, or choose Manage cookies and switch off anything that isn’t strictly necessary. The site works either way.
The forms Squarespace runs on this site use Google reCAPTCHA to keep automated spam out. To work out whether you’re a person, Google collects information about your device and how you’re using the site. Google’s own privacy terms cover that part.
Our submission form is built on Airtable and sits inside a page on our site. Airtable collects technical information about your device and browser to run the form, and Airtable’s own privacy terms cover that part.
What we do with it
Your email address goes on the mailing list only if you asked for it. Every email we send carries an unsubscribe link, and it works.
Contact form messages come to us, and we answer them.
When you send a submission, Airtable emails you to confirm we received it. We read every submission, and we answer every one. If we want to publish the work, we come back to you with an offer.
Visit counts tell us which pages are worth keeping and which ones nobody reads.
We don’t use any of it for advertising, and we don’t build profiles of you.
Who else touches it
Three companies handle your information for us, and none of them buys it from us.
Squarespace hosts the site and stores the mailing list and the contact form messages.
Google provides the reCAPTCHA on our forms.
Airtable runs our submission form. It stores everything you send through the form, including your manuscript, and sends the email confirming we received it.
We don’t sell, rent, trade, or otherwise hand your information to anyone else. If a court order or the law ever required us to produce something, we’d comply, and we’d tell you about it unless we were forbidden to.
How long we keep it
Mailing list: we keep your address until you unsubscribe.
Contact messages: we keep them while the conversation is still useful, and we clear out old ones periodically.
Submissions we decline: we delete the manuscript within 30 days of responding to you.
Submissions we accept: we keep the correspondence and the agreement for as long as the business and our records need them.
What you can ask us to do
You can ask us what we hold about you, ask us to correct it, or ask us to delete it. Email jimmy@bigbearpress.com and we’ll take care of it. We’re not going to make you prove anything beyond showing that the address is yours.
Unsubscribing is faster than asking. Use the link at the bottom of any email we send.
Children
This site isn’t aimed at children, and we don’t knowingly collect information from anyone under 13. If you think we have, tell us, and we’ll delete it.
If you are writing from outside the United States
We’re a small press in Virginia, and our systems are in the United States, so anything you send us comes here. You can ask us to delete it at any time, the same as anyone else.
Changes to this policy
If we change this policy, we change the date at the top. If we ever change it in a way that matters to you, we’ll say so on the site rather than leaving you to notice.
How to reach us
Email jimmy@bigbearpress.com. A person reads it.