No Magic Words · Buy the book →
No analytics, no trackers, no ad pixels. Checkable in View Source.
Short version: this site collects your email address if you hand it over, and your payment details if you buy something — and the payment details go to the processor, not to me. There is a page counter, described below. There are no advertising trackers and no third-party pixels on any page here.
That last one is checkable rather than a promise. Open View Source or
your browser’s network tab on any page here. The only third-party
requests you’ll find are the signup form’s, which loads from
no-magic-words.kit.com and then pulls a second file from
f.convertkit.com — both Kit, which used to be called
ConvertKit. That’s the whole list. If you ever find something on this
site not named on this page, that’s a bug and I’d like to hear about
it.
Changed 2026-08-17. This page used to say there were no analytics here at all. That stopped being true on that date, and the sentence was rewritten the same day the counter went in rather than left to rot — see “Counting visits” below for what it does and does not collect.
Your email address, if you sign up. Stored by Kit (formerly ConvertKit), which runs the list and sends the mail. Kit records the standard things an email platform records — when a message was opened, which links were clicked, which form you signed up through. I use it to tell whether an email was worth sending and to stop mailing people who’ve stopped reading. I don’t sell it, rent it, share it, or upload it to an ad platform to build a lookalike audience, which is the thing people are actually worried about when they ask this question.
Your purchase details, if you buy. Handled by Payhip and its payment processor, Stripe. They get your card details; I don’t. What comes back to me is your email address, what you bought, and the amount — enough to send you the files, answer a support email, and issue a refund.
Nothing else. No account, no profile, no cross-site tracking, no fingerprinting, no ad network.
| Who | What they hold | Their policy |
|---|---|---|
| Kit | Email address, engagement history | https://kit.com/privacy |
| Payhip | Purchase record, email, billing country | https://payhip.com/privacy |
| Stripe | Card details, payment record | https://stripe.com/privacy |
| Vercel | Server logs for the site itself | https://vercel.com/legal/privacy-policy |
Vercel hosts these pages and keeps ordinary web-server logs, including IP addresses, as any host does.
Since 2026-08-17 these pages load a small script
from this domain — /_vercel/insights/script.js — which is
Vercel’s Web Analytics. It counts page views and records coarse,
non-identifying context: roughly where in the world a request came from,
what kind of device and browser, and which page referred it.
It sets no cookies, which is why there’s still no cookie banner here. There is no account, no profile, no cross-site tracking and no advertising use, and I cannot tell from it who you are or match you to your email address if you’re on the list. Vercel’s handling is covered by their policy, linked in the table above.
Why it exists, plainly: the book’s last pages link here, and almost nothing else does. Without a counter I have no way of knowing whether anyone who downloads the book ever reaches the end of it. That’s the whole reason — the same answer I’d expect from anyone else, so it’s the one I’ll give.
If that’s more than you want to be part of, blocking the script blocks it, and nothing on this site stops working without it.
If you buy the ebook on Amazon, Amazon holds that transaction and I never see who you are.
This site sets none of its own. The signup form is an embed from Kit and may set a cookie so it doesn’t re-ask people who’ve already signed up; Kit’s policy covers it. That’s why you don’t see a cookie banner here — there’s nothing to consent to that isn’t strictly needed to make the form work.
Only what you signed up for: the context pack, the posts as they publish, and a note when the book comes out. Every message has an unsubscribe link, it works immediately, and using it is not held against you.
If you bought something, you’ll also get the receipt and delivery mail for it, which is a transactional message and separate from the list. Unsubscribing from the list doesn’t stop those, and shouldn’t.
Wherever you live, you can ask me to show you what’s held about you, correct it, or delete it. Email carlos@nomagicwords.com and I’ll do it within thirty days, usually the same week. You don’t need to cite a regulation at me, and I’m not going to make you prove you’re covered by one.
Deletion means deletion: removed from Kit, not “suppressed” or archived. The one exception is a purchase record, which has to survive for tax and accounting reasons — and even that I can strip down to the amount and the date.
If you’re in the EU or UK, the legal basis is consent for the list (you signed up, you can withdraw it) and contract for anything you bought. If you’re in California, I don’t sell or share personal information as those terms are defined, so there’s nothing for you to opt out of.
Not aimed at, and not knowingly sold to, anyone under 16.
If this policy changes materially, the change is dated on the corrections page like anything else on this site. I’m not going to quietly rewrite it and update a timestamp.
Questions: carlos@nomagicwords.com