Terms and Conditions

These terms and conditions govern the rights and obligations arising from the purchase of personalized children's books through the Hero of the Book web application.

1. Introductory provisions and contact details

These terms and conditions (hereinafter the "Terms") govern, in accordance with Section 1751(1) of Act No. 89/2012 Coll., the Civil Code (hereinafter the "Civil Code"), the mutual rights and obligations of the contracting parties arising in connection with or on the basis of a purchase contract concluded between the seller and the buyer through the web application operated at heroofthebook.nz (hereinafter the "website").

The operator and seller is:

• Name: Lukáš Kantor
• Company ID (IČO): 03177009, VAT ID (DIČ): CZ9109235410
• Registered office: Milíkov 244, 739 81 Milíkov
• Contact e-mail: contact@heroofthebook.nz
• Registration: registered in the Trade Register maintained by the competent municipal trade licensing office; a self-employed natural person not registered in the Commercial Register.

(hereinafter the "seller"). The buyer is a consumer or an entrepreneur who concludes a contract with the seller through the website (hereinafter the "buyer").

An order may be placed and a user account may be set up only by a person over 18 years of age with full legal capacity. Where the book is to be a gift for a child, or where a child is to appear in it, the order is placed by the child's legal guardian, or by a person who has the consent of the legal guardian (see Art. 9).

If you are buying from New Zealand, read this. These Terms choose Czech law (Art. 16), but the Consumer Guarantees Act 1993 and the Fair Trading Act 1986 protect you all the same: under section 43(1) of the Consumer Guarantees Act 1993 that Act has effect notwithstanding anything to the contrary in an agreement. The seller applies both Acts to your purchase in any event. Where these Terms promise you more than the law does, they say so expressly, and that promise is a contractual commitment of the seller. Where these Terms would give you less than New Zealand law, the law prevails.

2. Definition of the product

The subject of the purchase is a personalized children's book created to order on the basis of the data entered by the buyer (in particular the child's name, the uploaded photograph and an optional dedication), in the form of:

• a digital book — an electronic file in PDF format made available in the user account; and/or
• a printed book — a physical A4 hardcover copy, produced according to the selected and approved content.

An audiobook may be ordered together with the digital book — an audio recording of the text of the created book, narrated by a synthetic voice and made available in the user account. In the gift workshop, the seller further offers gift add-ons made from the illustrations of the buyer's book (see Art. 14) and gift vouchers (see Art. 13).

In New Zealand only the digital book and the audiobook can be ordered. The seller's print partner does not deliver to New Zealand, so printed books and printed gift add-ons are not offered on this website. Where these Terms mention them, those provisions concern orders delivered to other countries.

The illustrations are created using artificial intelligence tools. Given the nature of the generation process, the resulting appearance of the character may differ from the uploaded photograph; it is an artistic rendering, not a faithful reproduction of the photograph.

3. User account

A book can be started without registration. To save books, edit them and order a print, it is advisable to set up a user account. The buyer is obliged to provide correct and truthful data and to protect the account access credentials. The seller may cancel the account, in particular if the buyer breaches their obligations under these Terms.

4. Creation process and conclusion of the contract

The book is created in the following steps:

• the buyer selects a story, enters the child's name and uploads a portrait photograph of the child; the book may have up to five characters (for example a sibling, a friend, a parent or a grandparent) and for each of them a name may be entered and a portrait photograph uploaded,
• the system creates text drafts of the story free of charge (a title and a brief outline), of which the buyer selects one and may adjust its title. No illustration is created before payment, so the buyer does not see the appearance of the characters in advance; it arises only during generation after payment,
• to generate the complete book (all pages and illustrations), the buyer places an order and pays for it.

The presentation of the products on the website is of an informative nature and does not constitute a proposal to conclude a contract within the meaning of Section 1732(2) of the Civil Code. The contract is concluded at the moment the buyer completes the order and pays the price; the seller confirms acceptance of the order to the buyer by e-mail. The buyer acknowledges that generation of the entire book begins after payment.

5. Price and payment terms

Prices on the website are stated in New Zealand dollars and are the full price you pay; nothing is added at checkout. The price of the digital book is stated with the product (currently NZ$14.99).

GST. The seller is established in the Czech Republic. A digital book or audiobook that it supplies to you is a remote service on which New Zealand GST would be charged only once the seller's supplies to New Zealand exceed NZD 60,000 in 12 months (sections 8(3)(c) and 51(1)(a) of the Goods and Services Tax Act 1985). The seller is below that threshold and is not registered for GST in New Zealand, so its prices contain no GST and its receipts are not GST tax invoices.

The buyer chooses the payment method when completing the order. The seller offers card payment and bank transfer; the offer may differ between the individual language versions of the website and the list shown in the order is always the binding one.

Card payment is processed through the Stripe payment gateway. The seller does not store payment card details.

Payment by bank transfer. If the buyer chooses a bank transfer, the seller issues a payment request stating the account number, the amount, the payment reference (variabilní symbol) and the due date, and sends the same details to the e-mail address given in the order. The payment reference is the only detail by which an incoming payment is matched to the order, so the buyer states it in the payment instruction. The price is paid at the moment the amount is credited to the seller's account; only then is the condition under Art. 4 met. If an amount other than the one in the payment request arrives, the payment is not matched automatically: the seller contacts the buyer by e-mail, the buyer pays any shortfall and the seller returns any overpayment to the account from which the payment came. If the amount is not credited within the period stated in the payment request, the request lapses and the order remains unpaid; the buyer may request a new payment request at any time and pay for the order again.

Where a bank transfer is offered to a buyer in New Zealand, it is an international payment. Any fees charged by the buyer's bank or by intermediary banks are borne by the buyer, and the amount stated in the payment request must reach the seller's account in full.

The seller issues a tax document and sends it to the buyer's e-mail.

6. Delivery

The digital book is delivered by being made available in the user account, or by sending a download link, usually immediately after the generation is completed (typically within minutes). The printed book is usually dispatched within 5 working days of confirmation of the order and payment; the buyer is informed by e-mail when it is handed over to the carrier. Printed books are not delivered to New Zealand (Art. 2).

Where the order is paid by bank transfer, the periods under this Article start to run only when the amount is credited to the seller's account (Art. 5), not when the order is completed — until then the seller starts neither the creation nor the production.

7. Cancelling an order

New Zealand law gives no general right to cancel an online purchase without a reason. The cooling-off period in sections 36K to 36M of the Fair Trading Act 1986 applies only to uninvited direct sales, that is, where a trader comes to your home or workplace or telephones you uninvited. An order you place on this website on your own initiative is not such a sale. We would rather say this plainly than let you discover it after ordering.

The seller does not offer a no-reason cancellation of a book either. A personalized book is created for one child and cannot be sold to anyone else, and its creation begins straight after payment (Art. 4). Before you pay, nothing binds you: you can see the free text draft, change it, or simply leave.

What you do have:

• The guarantees under the Consumer Guarantees Act 1993. If the book or the audiobook is faulty or not as ordered, you are entitled to have it put right, and where the failure is substantial or cannot be put right, to a refund (Art. 8 and the complaints policy). These rights cannot be excluded by any term of these Terms.
• A refund if we cannot deliver. If the seller is unable to create the book you paid for, it refunds the full price without delay.
• Gift vouchers: 14 days. A voucher that has not been applied may be cancelled within 14 days of purchase, see Art. 13. No New Zealand statute requires this; it is the seller's contractual commitment.

You can send a cancellation through the form on the Cancelling Your Order page, by e-mail or by post.

8. Rights arising from defective performance and complaints

For a buyer in New Zealand, the rights in case of a fault are those of the Consumer Guarantees Act 1993: the product must be of acceptable quality (sections 6 and 7), fit for any particular purpose made known to the seller (section 8) and must correspond with its description (section 9). If it does not, the buyer may require the seller to put it right within a reasonable time; if the seller does not, or if the failure is of a substantial character or cannot be put right, the buyer may reject the product and choose a refund or a replacement, and may claim compensation for any reasonably foreseeable loss (sections 18 to 23). Those rights cannot be excluded or limited by agreement (section 43(1)). Whether a PDF book or an audiobook is "goods" under that Act is not settled in the Act itself; the seller applies these guarantees to them in any event.

The buyer may report a fault to the seller at the contact e-mail address. An artistic rendering of a character that differs from the uploaded photograph is not a fault, because the book is illustrated and is not described as a reproduction of the photograph (Art. 2).

As its own contractual commitment, the seller settles a complaint without undue delay and no later than within 30 days of the day it is raised, unless a longer period is agreed with the buyer. In the case of a justified complaint about a digital book, the seller will usually correct the text or regenerate the affected page; where that is not possible, it refunds the price. The detailed procedure is in the complaints policy.

9. License and intellectual property

By uploading a photograph, the buyer declares that they are entitled to use it for the purpose of creating the book or a gift add-on. This applies to the photograph of every character — in the case of a child, the buyer declares that they are the child's legal guardian or have the consent of the legal guardian; in the case of an adult, that they have that person's consent — and likewise to the buyer's own photograph uploaded into a gift card and printed on it. The buyer grants the seller a non-exclusive licence to use those photographs to the extent necessary to create the book and the ordered gift add-ons.

For the created book, the buyer obtains a license for personal, non-commercial use (printing for own use, viewing, giving as a gift). The story templates and the illustration style remain the intellectual property of the seller, or of its providers.

The seller does not depict characters from television series, films, games or books. These are works protected by copyright, or signs protected as trade marks, and the seller holds no licence to them. A book that is sold is not covered by the exception for a reproduction for personal use (Section 30(1) of Act No. 121/2000 Coll., the Copyright Act), and owning a plush toy, a toy or a picture is not a licence either (Section 9(3) of the same Act); the buyer's consent makes no difference, because it is the seller who publishes the book.

If the buyer uploads a photograph of such a character or enters it by name, the seller points this out while the book is still being created and offers the buyer an original character instead: it keeps the name, the kind, the colour and the other properties the buyer entered and appears in the book in the same role, but it will not resemble the protected original. The buyer may also replace the character with a different photograph or remove it from the book. If the buyer insists on the protected character being depicted, the seller is entitled to refuse the order and to refund the price already paid in full.

10. Liability and limitations

The buyer may not upload content that is unlawful, infringes the rights of third parties or good morals. The seller is not liable for damage caused by incorrectly or unlawfully uploaded data. Outputs generated by artificial intelligence are creative in nature and their exact form is not guaranteed.

11. Personal data protection

The processing of personal data, including the handling of the uploaded photograph of the child, is described in detail in the Privacy Policy.

12. Out-of-court resolution of consumer disputes

No out-of-court body is competent to decide a consumer dispute with us. New Zealand has no approved dispute resolution scheme for a seller established abroad, and the Czech Trade Inspection Authority (Česká obchodní inspekce), which handles such disputes for customers in Europe, cannot take your case: Article 2(1) of Directive 2013/11/EU opens its dispute resolution only to a consumer resident in the European Union. We would rather tell you that plainly than send you to Prague to be turned away. The European Commission's online dispute resolution platform no longer exists either. Regulation (EU) 2024/3228 repealed it with effect from 20 July 2025, and it stopped accepting complaints on 20 March 2025.

What is open to you:

• Write to us first at contact@heroofthebook.nz. We reply no later than the following working day, and we would much rather put things right ourselves.
• The Commerce Commission (comcom.govt.nz, 0800 943 600), which enforces the Fair Trading Act 1986, for example if you believe we have misled you about the product or about your rights. It does not decide individual disputes, but it takes complaints.
• Consumer Protection at the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (consumerprotection.govt.nz), which explains your rights under the Consumer Guarantees Act 1993 and how to enforce them.
• A chargeback with your card issuer. It rests on the card scheme rules rather than on a statute, but in practice it is the quickest way to get money back for something that was not delivered or not as described.
• The Disputes Tribunal, which hears claims up to NZD 60,000 under section 10 of the Disputes Tribunal Act 1988. The parties appear without lawyers and the fee is low.

Our terms choose Czech law, and that choice is valid (Article 3 of Regulation (EC) No 593/2008). It cannot take away the protection New Zealand law gives you: under section 43(1) of the Consumer Guarantees Act 1993 that Act has effect notwithstanding any provision to the contrary in any agreement.

13. Gift vouchers

The seller sells gift vouchers entitling the holder to draw products from the website's offering. After payment, the seller sends the voucher by e-mail in the form of a unique code; the code is applied in the order.

• The voucher is issued for a specific product or a number of books (e.g. a digital book, an audiobook, a printed book, a bundle of several books), not for a monetary amount — its value therefore does not decrease if prices rise later. We also offer a voucher for free credit in a chosen amount, which can be applied to any product.
• The voucher is valid for 3 years from the date of sale. This is the minimum required by section 36WB of the Fair Trading Act 1986; a shorter expiry would be void and replaced by 3 years by law (section 36WB(2) and (3)). After it expires, the voucher can no longer be applied.
• The voucher may also be applied in parts (in the case of a bundle of several books); it cannot be exchanged for money nor can cash be paid out from it.
• Applying the voucher gives rise to a separate contract for the delivery of a book, which is governed by these Terms including Art. 7.
• Printed books are not offered in New Zealand (Art. 2), so a voucher bought here is not issued for one. Where a voucher for a printed book is redeemed for delivery to another country, postage is not included, unless the buyer expressly paid extra for it when purchasing the voucher (the "pay for shipping as well" option); in that case, the voucher holder pays nothing extra when ordering the print. Otherwise, postage is paid by the voucher holder when ordering the print according to the price list valid at the time of the order.

Cancelling the purchase of a voucher. New Zealand law gives no right to cancel an online purchase without a reason (Art. 7). The seller nevertheless lets a buyer who is a consumer cancel the purchase of a voucher within 14 days without giving a reason; it refunds the amount paid within 14 days of receiving the cancellation. This is the seller's contractual commitment, not a statutory right. The cancellation can be sent through the form on the Cancelling Your Order page, by e-mail or by post. If the voucher has been partly applied in the meantime, the book already provided is governed by Art. 7 and only the unused part of the voucher's value is refunded.

14. Gift add-ons from the workshop

Within the "gift workshop", the seller offers gift add-ons (e.g. a greeting card, a coloring page, a canvas print), made to order from the illustrations and characters of the buyer's already created book. Printed add-ons are not delivered to New Zealand (Art. 2).

• The add-on is ordered and paid for separately, independently of the book from which the illustrations originate.
• These are goods made to the buyer's requirements. Once production has started, the seller does not offer a cancellation without a reason (see Art. 7); the guarantees under the Consumer Guarantees Act 1993 apply in full (Art. 8).
• Rights arising from defective performance are governed by Art. 8 and the complaints procedure; an artistic rendering that differs from the underlying illustrations is not considered a defect, nor are minor printing deviations usual for the given production method.
• The delivery period and shipping are governed by the same rules as for the printed book (Art. 6).
• Information about the manufacturer and the safety notices for the physical add-ons are set out in Art. 15.

15. Information about the manufacturer and product safety

No physical goods are delivered to New Zealand (Art. 2). This Article concerns products placed on the market in the European Union and is kept for completeness.

Physical goods (the printed book, an additional copy of the book, a gift card, a canvas print and other gift add-ons from the workshop) are produced to order according to the buyer's input and the seller places them on the market under its own name and brand. Within the meaning of Article 3(8) of Regulation (EU) 2023/988 on general product safety, the manufacturer is therefore the seller:

• Name: Lukáš Kantor
• Postal address: Milíkov 244, 739 81 Milíkov
• Electronic address: contact@heroofthebook.nz

The seller is established in the European Union, so its own responsibility under that Regulation applies and there is no need to designate a responsible person under Article 16 thereof. Printing and finishing are carried out for the seller by contractual production partners in the European Union.

In the offer, the product is identified by its name, description, image and the dimensions stated with the offer; the particular item produced is identified by the order number stated in the order confirmation.

Safety notice: the goods offered are not a toy within the meaning of Directive 2009/48/EC and are not intended for play. Hand the product to children under three years of age only under the supervision of an adult. The canvas print is stretched on a wooden frame — hang it out of the reach of small children.

If the seller establishes that a product it has supplied presents a risk, it will inform the affected buyers without undue delay and take corrective action under Articles 35 and 36 of that Regulation. Product safety enquiries and reports may be sent to contact@heroofthebook.nz.

16. Final provisions

Matters not governed by these Terms are governed by the law of the Czech Republic. If the buyer is a consumer with their habitual residence in another country, the choice of Czech law does not deprive them of the protection afforded by the mandatory provisions of the law of their own country (Article 6(2) of Regulation (EC) No 593/2008). For a buyer in New Zealand these are in particular the Consumer Guarantees Act 1993, which has effect notwithstanding any contrary agreement (section 43(1)), and the Fair Trading Act 1986. The seller is entitled to amend the wording of the Terms; for contracts already concluded, the wording effective at the time of conclusion of the contract applies. If any provision is invalid, this does not affect the validity of the remaining provisions.