Who writes here
Different authors publish their books through Velvet-Aura, each writing in their own field, and each with an author profile on Amazon Author Central linked from their page here. The full list lives on the authors page and grows as new writers join. The press is run by the publisher named in the imprint, who is responsible for this website.
Articles in the journal carry the name of the author whose work they sit closest to. A piece about the dichotomy of control is signed by the author of our Stoicism books, because that is the shelf it comes from. If you want to know who stands behind a sentence, the byline is not decoration.
How the reading guides are chosen
Our reading guides recommend books, and some of those books are ours. That is a conflict of interest, so here is how we handle it.
We never place one of our own titles above the established classic in a field. In the Stoicism guide, Marcus Aurelius comes first and stays first. Where one of our books appears, it is marked in the text as ours, in the same paragraph, not in a footnote. We include books from other publishers that compete with our own subjects, because a list that quietly omits the competition is an advertisement wearing a guide's clothes.
No publisher, author or agency has ever paid us to include a book, and we do not accept payment for placement. If that changes, this page changes first.
How we earn money
Two ways. We sell our own books, and we take part in the Amazon Associates programme, which means that links to books from other publishers earn us a small commission if you buy through them. That commission costs you nothing extra.
Links to our own books never carry an affiliate tag. Every page that contains affiliate links says so above the first one, and again in the footer. Our full position is in the privacy notice.
Books we have read
The reading guides are compiled by us and read through by people who know the subject from the inside rather than from a summary. Lisa read the ADHD shelf while trying to understand a partner. Gerald came to the retirement books after watching a colleague leave a job he had held for decades. Peter, Enis and Christian each sign the guide they worked on, and the note at the end of each guide is theirs, in their words.
They are readers, not clinicians. Nothing on this site is professional advice, and we say so where it matters most.
Health and psychology topics
We write about ADHD, attention, and the psychological weight of retirement. Articles on those subjects cite primary sources such as the National Institute of Mental Health or peer-reviewed work, link to them directly, and end with a note stating that the article is not medical advice and not a diagnosis. Where a reader might reasonably act on what they have read, we point them toward a qualified clinician instead of toward a book.
Corrections
If something here is wrong, we would rather know. Guides carry the date they were last checked, and we update them rather than quietly reposting them with a fresh year in the title. Write to us through the address in the imprint and tell us what we got wrong.
What we do not do
This site sets no cookies, runs no tracking, loads no external scripts and embeds nothing from third parties. Fonts are served from our own domain. There is no newsletter signup pestering you and no advertising anywhere on the site.