Terms of Service

Last updated: April 2026

These terms govern your subscription to The Deductivist, a newsletter operated by Matthew Blackwood, and they exist for the same reason a butler exists: to handle the formalities so nobody has to think about them twice. By subscribing, you agree to them. If you do not agree to them, the correct course of action is not subscribing — a solution so elegant Holmes himself would have deduced it from the doormat.

The Service

The Deductivist is a weekly email newsletter on the art of observation and behavioural deduction. It arrives whether or not you were expecting it, which is, one might argue, rather the point.

• Free subscription. You receive the free PDF guide and up to five introductory emails, at no cost, on the theory that the first taste should always be free and the second one should require a decision.

• Paid subscription. You receive one new issue every week, full access to the archive, and all future issues for as long as your subscription remains active, along with breakdowns of the reasoning behind each technique, simulators for practising it under conditions that cannot fire you if you get it wrong, and the full version of every exercise — not the excerpt, not the teaser, the whole diagnostic — active being a state we, and Stripe, monitor closely.

We reserve the right to adjust the publishing schedule in exceptional circumstances (we are aware "exceptional circumstances" is doing a great deal of quiet work in that sentence, and we intend to keep it that way). Subscribers will be notified in advance of any significant changes to content or format. The newsletter does not believe in surprises. It believes in revelations, which are different, and better, and always footnoted.

Pricing and Billing

The paid subscription costs €5.90 per month, or its local equivalent as calculated by Stripe, an organisation that has strong and largely correct opinions about currency conversion.

Payments are processed by Stripe. Your subscription renews automatically each month until cancelled, in the manner of a habit nobody quite remembers forming. You will receive a payment confirmation by email after each successful charge, so that no one is left wondering where their money has gone. (We do not store your payment information ourselves — a policy adopted less out of virtue than out of a firm belief that we should not be trusted with it, and Stripe should. All payment data is handled exclusively by Stripe, in accordance with their privacy policy at stripe.com/privacy.)

Cancellation

You may cancel your paid subscription at any time, without fee, without ceremony, and without having to explain yourself to anyone — a courtesy the newsletter extends more generously than most relationships.

To cancel, click "Manage subscription" in any email from us, or contact us directly at https://substack.com/@thedeductivist. Cancellation takes effect at the end of your current billing period; you will go on receiving issues until then, because we have already been paid for them and intend to deliver what was promised, unlike certain institutions we could name but won't. After cancellation, you will not be charged again, and you will lose access to paid content — the two facts being, upon reflection, rather closely related.

Refunds

If, within seven days of your first payment, you find the newsletter is not for you, we will refund it in full. No inquest. No character reference required.

To request a refund, email us at https://substack.com/@thedeductivist within that seven-day window. Refunds for subsequent billing periods are considered case by case, in the manner of a jury that has read the file and formed opinions. We aim to resolve all requests within five business days, on the assumption that nobody enjoys waiting for money that is rightfully theirs.

Intellectual Property

All content published in The Deductivist — text, structure, and the PDF guides — belongs to Matthew Blackwood, in the plain and unglamorous sense that he wrote it and you did not.

You may not reproduce, distribute, or resell any of it without prior written permission. You may, however, share individual insights or brief excerpts, provided you attribute them to thedeductivist.com — a small courtesy, and one Holmes would have insisted on, being a man who cared a great deal about being correctly cited.

Limitation of Liability

The Deductivist provides educational content for informational purposes only. We make no guarantees about the outcomes of applying the techniques described within, for the same reason a gym cannot guarantee you will use the equipment: results depend, stubbornly and entirely, on what you actually do with them.

To the fullest extent permitted by law, The Deductivist is not liable for any indirect, incidental, or consequential damages arising from your use of our content. We deduce things. We do not accept responsibility for what you deduce from them.

Governing Law

These terms are governed by the laws of the Czech Republic, a jurisdiction chosen not for drama but for accuracy — it is, after all, where this is being written. Any disputes shall be resolved under Czech law and, where applicable, EU consumer protection regulations, which exist whether these terms mention them or not. As a consumer in the EU, you retain every right the law already grants you. These terms do not, and cannot, take any of them away — a fact we mention not out of generosity but because pretending otherwise would be both illegal and embarrassing.

Changes to These Terms

We may update these Terms of Service from time to time, in the way that all documents eventually require updating, usually just after everyone has stopped reading them.

Active subscribers will be notified of any material changes by email at least fourteen days before they take effect. Continued use of The Deductivist after that point constitutes acceptance of the updated terms — silence, in this one instance, being treated as consent rather than as the mystery it usually is.