Refund Policy

Section I

Eligibility

Every digital guide sold directly through northoward.com is eligible for a full refund within the window described below. This covers every title in the current catalog — from Reading, Slowly at $15 to The Long Middle at $42 — and any future titles we add under the same imprint.

Eligibility does not depend on the reason for the request. You do not need to justify the return, defend your reading habits, or explain what did not land. A short note is enough.

Section II

Timeframe

The refund window is fourteen days from the date of purchase, counted by the timestamp on your order confirmation. Fourteen days is long by the standards of digital sales — most publishers offer seven or nothing at all — and it is deliberate. Two weeks is roughly the time an adult reader needs to open a short book, read the first chapter properly, and know whether the voice will hold.

Requests received after the fourteenth day are considered on a case-by-case basis, but we do not guarantee them. Files damaged in delivery, or files that never arrived, are treated separately (see Section VI).

Section III

How to request a refund

Send an email to hello@northoward.com with the following:

• The order number from your confirmation email.
• The title (or titles) you wish to return.
• The email address used at checkout, if different from the address you are writing from.

You do not need a subject line beyond the word Refund. You do not need to write a review, a rationale, or a farewell. A short note is a full request.

Section IV

What happens next

We read every email in the order it arrives. You should expect a reply within forty-eight hours, usually sooner and occasionally slower on weekends. The reply will confirm the refund and note the payment method it will return to.

Refunds are issued to the original payment method — the card or account used at checkout. From the moment we process the return on our side, the funds typically appear within five to ten business days, depending on your bank. That timing is outside our control; if the funds have not arrived after ten business days, write back and we will trace it with our payment provider.

Once a refund is processed, access to the downloaded file is not revoked and no follow-up is required from you. We do not send reminder emails, marketing follow-ups, or surveys. The transaction closes quietly.

Section V

Exceptions

A small number of purchases fall outside this policy. They are:

• Bulk and institutional orders. Multi-seat licenses for teams, classrooms, libraries, and study groups are handled under a separate written agreement. If your organization purchased more than five copies of a single title, or a mixed order under a purchase order number, refund terms are set in that agreement rather than here.
• Custom or commissioned work. On the rare occasion Northoward produces a private edition or a commissioned essay for an outside party, the terms are set in the commissioning contract. This policy does not apply.
• Gift purchases claimed by the recipient. If a title was purchased as a gift and the recipient has downloaded the file, only the original purchaser may request the refund, and only within the fourteen-day window from the original order date.

For anything under the bulk or institutional heading, write to hello@northoward.com and we will find the right terms for the situation.

Section VI

Damaged or undelivered files

Digital files usually arrive without incident. When they do not, it is almost always one of three problems: the download link expired before you used it, the file was corrupted in transit, or the confirmation email landed in a spam folder and was cleared before you saw it.

If your file will not open, or the download link has expired, or the confirmation email never arrived, write to us. This is not a refund request — it is a replacement request, and it sits outside the fourteen-day window entirely. Send the order number (or the email address used at checkout) and we will reissue the download. There is no time limit on reissuing a title you already paid for.

If you can no longer locate a title purchased months or years ago and simply want a fresh copy, ask. We keep records.

Section VII

A note from the editor

A generous refund window is unusual for digital books, and we know it. The reason we offer one is that we would rather have readers who kept our titles because they wanted to than customers who kept them because the terms of sale made returning them a nuisance. A fair policy is part of the editorial standard, not a concession to it.

— Eleanor Whitfield, Editor