Terms & Conditions

1. Definitions

• "Buyer" means you, the person placing the Order.

• "Contract" means the Order together with our Order Confirmation.

• "Faulty" means containing a fault, defect, or a clear production error (such as the wrong photo/face or the wrong name).

• "Order" means your order for a Product placed through the Store.

• "Price" means the price shown at checkout, including postage/packing and any tax charged at that time, subject to any promotional discount applied.

• "Product" means a personalized book or other item we offer for sale through the Store.

• "Store" means our online store at handbookformothers.com, operated via Shopify, through which Products are offered for sale.

• "Terms" means these Terms and Conditions.

2. Site access and use

You may not use the Store unlawfully or improperly, or in breach of these Terms. We may review the content of your Order — including any photo or text you submit — for compliance with these Terms and our guidelines, and may refuse to process an Order where we reasonably believe it breaches them.

3. Intellectual property

All intellectual property rights in the Store itself (text, design, branding, and other site content, other than the photo and personal details you submit) belong to us or our licensors. Store content may only be used by you for the purpose of placing an Order, and may not be reproduced, copied, distributed, or republished without our written permission.

The text, templates, and design of our books, other than the photo and personal details you provide, remain our property or that of our licensors. You retain ownership of your own photo; you grant us only the limited licence described in Section 5.

4. Orders and specifications

Placing an order constitutes an offer to purchase. All Products are offered subject to availability and to our acceptance. Upon placing an Order, you will automatically receive an Order Confirmation, including the Order details, Price, and an estimated production/delivery time; this automatic confirmation acknowledges receipt of your Order but does not by itself constitute our final acceptance of it. Even after an Order Confirmation has been sent, we reserve the right to reject, cancel, or request changes to any Order without obligation to give a reason — for example, where a submitted photo does not meet our guidelines, or where a name or other text you submit is inappropriate, offensive, or otherwise unsuitable for a children's book.

If we need to contact you for clarification or a replacement — for example, because an uploaded photo is unclear, low-resolution, or otherwise unsuitable for printing — any estimated production or delivery time runs from the date we receive the requested replacement or clarification from you, not from your original Order date.

Because personalization is performed manually after we receive your photo, no preview of the finished book is available before production begins. We aim for the resulting artwork to resemble the real face in your photo in a realistic style (not a cartoon or caricature), with an approximate 80% likeness to the uploaded photo under normal conditions (i.e., a clear, well-lit, front-facing photo that meets our guidelines). This is a creative, AI-assisted process in which some artistic interpretation is inherent, and a difference in the degree of likeness within this expected range is not considered "Faulty" — only a clear production error, such as using an entirely different child's photo or the wrong name, qualifies as that.

We aim to display and describe our books accurately, but we cannot guarantee that printed colours will exactly match what you see on your screen. We may revise, discontinue, or modify Products at any time without prior notice, and shall have no liability if a Product becomes unavailable.

5. Your submission and representations

By uploading a photo and placing an order, you confirm that:

• (a) you are at least 18 years of age (the legal age of majority), and you are either the parent or legal guardian of the child shown in the photo, or have obtained the explicit permission of the child's parent or legal guardian to submit it;

• (b) you hold all rights necessary to allow us to use the photo to produce your order;

• (c) you grant us a limited, non-exclusive licence to use the photo solely to produce, personalize, and fulfil your order, including transmitting it to our AI-processing and printing partners for that purpose; and

• (d) the photo does not depict any illegal, harmful, or inappropriate content.

We reserve the right to refuse, cancel, or refund any order where we reasonably believe these conditions are not met.

6. Pricing and payment

We may change the price of a Product before you place an Order. If a Product is listed at an incorrect price, we will charge the lower price if the correct price is lower than shown, or, if the correct price is higher, we will at our discretion either contact you or cancel the Order and notify you.

All prices are shown in the currency displayed at checkout. Payment is processed via Shopify's supported payment methods, and payment in full is required for the Contract to take effect.

Depending on your delivery address, the Price shown at checkout may already include applicable tax.

Where the Price does not include applicable tax for your delivery country, your order may be subject to import duties, customs fees, or local taxes charged once the delivery reaches you. These charges are your responsibility as the importer of the goods and are not included in our Price. Customs policies vary by country; we recommend checking with your local customs office if you are unsure.

You confirm that any payment details you provide are accurate and that you are authorized to use the chosen payment method.

7. Delivery

Books are produced on demand and shipped by our print-on-demand production partner or another partner we may use; delivery times shown are estimates only, and we are not liable for delays outside our reasonable control. If you fail to take delivery of an Order without a valid reason, we are not obliged to refund the Price.

8. Risk and property

Risk of loss or damage to your Order passes to you on delivery to the address provided. Ownership of the Order does not pass to you until we have received payment in full.

9. Right of cancellation and returns

Because our Products are personalized to your specifications, they are custom-made goods and are not generally returnable once production has started. You may cancel an Order only in the following circumstances:

(a) Non-delivery: if we have failed to deliver your Order within 30 days of the date you placed it, you may cancel for a full refund of all sums paid.

(b) Faulty products: if your book arrives physically damaged or defective, or contains a clear production error on our part (for example, use of an entirely different child's photo or the wrong name — see Section 4 regarding the expected degree of likeness), contact us within 14 days of delivery at contact@handbookformothers.com. We will offer a reprint or a refund at our discretion, in accordance with the Swiss Code of Obligations (Art. 197 ff. OR).

Because production begins promptly after an Order is placed, we do not offer a right to cancel before production begins; once an Order is placed, it cannot be cancelled except as set out above.

This does not cover dissatisfaction with content you yourself submitted (such as a photo you chose or text you provided) where it was reproduced correctly. Under Swiss law there is no general statutory right to withdraw from a purchase; to the extent EU or other consumer law applies to you, personalized or custom-made goods are generally excluded from any standard right of withdrawal.

10. Disclaimers

We take reasonable care to keep the Store accurate, but we do not warrant that all content is complete, current, or error-free, and we may change or remove Store content at any time without notice. The Store and its content are provided "as is," and we do not guarantee uninterrupted or error-free operation, or that the Store is free of viruses or similar issues.

11. Limitation of liability

We warrant that any Product you purchase is of satisfactory quality and reasonably fit for its ordinary purpose. To the extent permitted by law, our liability for any breach of this Contract is limited to the net purchase price of the Product concerned (excluding tax and delivery costs). Nothing in these Terms excludes or limits our liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, fraud, or any liability that cannot be excluded under mandatory Swiss law. Subject to the foregoing, we are not liable for indirect, incidental, or consequential losses, or for imperfections in AI-generated content that fall within reasonable quality expectations for this type of product. We are not liable for any failure or delay caused by circumstances outside our reasonable control (such as strikes, power failures, or government action). We are likewise not liable for a data breach or security incident that originates within the systems of a third-party service provider (such as our payment processor, AI-processing partners, or production partner) and is not attributable to a failure on our part to exercise reasonable care in selecting that provider, to the extent permitted by mandatory Swiss, EU, or other applicable law.

12. Indemnity

You agree to indemnify us against claims, losses, or costs arising from your breach of these Terms, your misuse of the Store, or content you submit that infringes the rights of a third party (for example, submitting a photo of a child without proper authorization, as described in Section 5).

13. Data protection

Our processing of your personal data, including any photo you provide, is described in our Privacy Policy, which forms part of these Terms.

14. Governing law and jurisdiction

These Terms are governed by Swiss law, excluding the United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods (CISG). The place of jurisdiction is Wettingen, Aargau, Switzerland, determined in accordance with Art. 32 of the Swiss Civil Procedure Code, to the extent permitted by law; mandatory consumer-protection rules of your own country of residence, where applicable, remain unaffected.