Terms & conditions

Last updated: 24 August 2026

1. Who you are dealing with

This site is operated by Sebastian Howarth, a sole proprietor trading under that name, of Unit 6, 6 Protea Place, Morningside Manor, Sandton, Gauteng 2196, South Africa.

• Email: books@sebastianhowarth.com for orders, seb@sebastianhowarth.com for everything else
• Telephone: +27 79 500 9692

The Electronic Communications and Transactions Act requires an online seller to publish these details. They are also simply how you reach a human if something goes wrong.

2. What these terms cover

They apply when you order a book through this site and when you use the site generally. Ordering means you accept them. If you do not, please do not order.

They work alongside our delivery and refunds policy and our privacy policy, both of which form part of them.

3. Ordering

1. You must be 18 or older, or have a parent or guardian's permission.
2. Choosing an edition and paying is an offer to buy. The contract is formed when we email you a confirmation. Until then no contract exists, even if payment has been taken.
3. If we cannot fulfil an order — a mistake in the price, an edition that cannot be produced, a delivery address we cannot reach — we will tell you and refund you in full. That is the whole of our liability in that situation.
4. Obvious pricing errors. If a price is plainly wrong (a decimal point in the wrong place), we are not obliged to honour it. We will contact you, and you can confirm at the correct price or take a full refund.
5. You are responsible for the accuracy of the address you give us.

4. Pre-orders

The Synthetic Hunger releases on 25 September 2026. A pre-order is paid now and dispatched on or after that date. Delivery estimates run from release day, not from the day you order.

If the release date moves we will email you. You may then keep the order or cancel it for a full refund. See the delivery and refunds policy.

Signed copies are only available on orders delivered within South Africa, because those are the only ones produced by the author. Overseas copies are printed near you and are not signed. This is stated on the order form before you pay.

5. Prices and payment

1. All prices are in South African rand. Any figure shown in another currency is an estimate for guidance, not the amount charged.
2. Payment is taken by PayFast. Their terms apply to the payment itself. We never see or store your card details.
3. The price and delivery cost are shown in full before you pay.
4. Prices may change at any time, but never for an order already placed.

6. Delivery and risk

Delivery times, costs and the refund process are set out in the delivery and refunds policy. In short: risk in a printed book passes to you when it is delivered to the address you gave. Ownership passes once it is paid for in full.

7. Digital editions

1. Buying an eBook or audiobook gives you a personal, non-transferable licence to read or listen to it. You do not own the copyright. The eBook is supplied as a PDF.
2. Do not redistribute, resell, upload or share the file. Lending your own device to a friend is fine; putting the file online is not.
3. Digital editions are delivered by email on release day and cannot be returned once downloaded. See the refunds policy.

8. Copyright

The Synthetic Hunger, The PanTerran Saga, the cover artwork and everything written on this site belong to Sebastian Howarth or are used with permission. You may quote short extracts for review or comment with attribution. Anything else — reproducing, adapting, training a model on it, or selling it — needs written permission.

9. Using the site

Please do not:

• try to break into, overload or interfere with the site or its server;
• scrape it or harvest personal information from it;
• submit anything unlawful, abusive or deliberately false through its forms;
• place orders you have no intention of paying for.

We may refuse service to anyone doing these things.

10. Availability

We try to keep the site up but do not promise it will always be available. It may be down for maintenance, or because something has broken. Nothing here makes us liable for that.

11. Our liability

Nothing in these terms limits our liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, for fraud, or for anything else that cannot lawfully be limited — including your rights under the Consumer Protection Act, which these terms do not affect.

Beyond that, and as far as the law allows, our liability for any order is limited to the amount you paid for it. We are not liable for indirect losses such as lost profit or disappointment at a late delivery.

12. Complaints and disputes

Please tell us first: the contact form, or reply to any email from us. Most problems are quickest to fix directly.

If we cannot resolve it, you may refer the matter to the National Consumer Commission.

13. Governing law

These terms are governed by the law of the Republic of South Africa, and the South African courts have jurisdiction. If you bought as a consumer elsewhere, this does not remove protections you have at home that cannot be contracted out of.

14. Changes

We may update these terms. The version that applies to your order is the one published when you placed it. The date at the top shows when this was last changed.