We take your privacy and our responsibility to protect your information seriously.

 

WHO WE ARE

Our company (company, we, us, our) is part of the Hachette UK Group of companies (See here).

 

We are your Data Controller.  Click here to find our company information. As your Data Controller we decide how your data is used and protected. This privacy notice (Privacy Notice), together with our Cookie Policy, sets out ways in which we collect, use and share your personal data (your information) in connection with our publishing business.  It also explains what right you have to access or change your personal data.

 

This Privacy Notice applies to anyone visiting our websites, including authors and customers. To read our privacy notices for employees and job applicants click here.

 

Read our Privacy Notice to understand:

 

Contact information

Children

What information we collect about you

How we use information we collect about you

Who can see your information

When we share your information

How we look after your information

How long we keep your information

International transfers of your information

Rights and choices

 

 

CONTACT INFORMATION

 

Contact us

 

For information about our Company click here.

 

For any queries about your personal data and how it is processed you can contact us at:

 

Legal Department (GDPR)

Hachette UK Limited

Carmelite House,

50 Victoria Embankment,

London EC4Y 0DZ, UK

 

Email: privacy@hachette.co.uk

 

 

 

 

CHILDREN

 

Websites of our companies publishing children’s books and that may be attractive to children, will contain parental consent procedures if we are processing information from children under 13.

 

Where our websites are not directed at children under 13, they are intended for adults.  However, you can also read our Privacy Notice for 13 – 17 year olds here.

 

 

WHAT INFORMATION WE COLLECT ABOUT YOU

 

The information you provide to us might include: your name, postal address, email address, phone number, gender and date of birth. If you’re creating an account, you will provide a password and if you are ordering books you will provide your payment details. If your agent sends a manuscript or proposal for a book you or your agent will provide additional information about your academic and work history, references and any other information you choose to supply. Your information includes anything which identifies you so if you contribute to a blog or provide other user generated content to us it may include additional personal information.

 

If you provide us with more sensitive information this is known as Special Category (“Sensitive”) information and may include details about a person’s racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious, philosophical or similar beliefs, trade union membership, genetics, biometrics, health, sexual life, sexual orientation or about criminal offences or proceedings. This type of information will be treated differently and we will explain why we are collecting it and it will only be used with your explicit consent.

 

We collect your information when you:

 

• interact or correspond with us in letters, by phone, SMS, email or via our website;
• attend events we hold or interact with us in person;
• create an account on our website;
• subscribe to our mailing lists;
• complete one of our surveys;
• use our mobile device or website applications (apps);
• submit manuscripts to us by post, email or via our website;
• enter into a contract with us;
• order books or other products from our website;
• enter a competition or prize draw;
• take part in a pre-order giveaway or other promotion;
• provide us with biographical information about you (e.g. by completing an author questionnaire)

 

Information about how you use our website and apps:

 

We will also collect certain information about how you use our website and apps and the devices that you use to access them. This includes your IP address, geographical location, device information (such as your hardware model, mobile network information, unique device identifiers), browser type, referral source, length of visit to the website, number of page views, the search queries you make on the website and similar information. This information is collected by Google Analytics on our behalf and by some of our apps using cookies. We may also place advertising cookies such as Facebook Pixel to enable us to serve you advertisements about our products and services on third party websites and applications. For more information on cookies please read our Cookie Policy.

 

Our website may include links to third party websites, plug-ins and applications. By clicking on those links or enabling these connections you may allow third parties to collect or share data about you. We do not control these websites and are not responsible for their privacy notices. Please ensure that you read the privacy notices on any such external websites.

 

Information we receive from third parties:

 

In certain circumstances, we will receive information about you from third parties. For example:

 

• if you choose to register for a website user account you may choose to link this account to your social media account (such as Twitter or Facebook). By providing your social media account details you are authorising that third-party provider to share with us certain information about you;

 

• we may use third party providers to verify information provided by you in connection with any manuscript you submit to us for publication. For example, we will use third-party databases or websites to confirm your publication history.

 

• we may receive information about you from third parties if they are referring you to us for publication. For example, if you are the co-author of a manuscript, your co-author will be required to provide us with information about you. Or if you have a literary agent making submissions on your behalf, your agent will provide us with information about you;

 

• if you give permission for us to connect you to a bookseller or other third party running a competition or other event involving one of our books or authors;

 

• publishers for whom we provide distribution services;

 

• when we acquire rights from other publishers

 

 

HOW WE USE INFORMATION ABOUT YOU

 

We use your information lawfully. We do not sell your information to third parties. However, we may share your information as set out in the section ‘When we share your information’. The details of how we use your information and the legal bases for our use are set out below:

 

When we have your consent to contact you, we may use your information to:

 

• to keep in contact with you and provide you with marketing communications about our news, events, authors or books and those of other Hachette UK companies that we believe may interest you;

 

• tell you about new website features or services;

 

• send you newsletters;

 

• share your information with third parties such as authors, co-publishers or marketing partners so that they can contact you with information that might interest you (as described in the section, ‘When we share your information’)

 

In the following circumstances we will use your information to carry out our contract with you:

 

• to process your requests to purchase our products from our website;

 

• to provide customer service and support;

 

• if you are an author, illustrator or other licensor, to administer your publishing contract including receipt, review, editing, production, marketing of your manuscript and payment of your royalties;

 

Sometimes we will use your information on the basis of our ‘legitimate business interests’ (legitimate interests). This means our legitimate interests in conducting and managing our business and our relationship with you.

 

Where we use your information for our legitimate interests, we make sure that we take into account any potential impact that such use may have on you. Our legitimate interests don’t automatically override yours and we won’t use your information if we believe your interests should override ours unless we have other grounds to do so (such as your consent or a legal obligation).

 

We may use your information for the purposes listed below on the basis of our legitimate interests to:

 

• contact you about products you bought from us;

 

• contact you about submissions you made or content you provided to us to;

 

• respond to your queries and correspondence

 

• administer your account with us;

 

• process any job applications you submit to us;

 

• deal with enquiries or complaints about the website as necessary to provide customer support in providing the correct products and services to our website users;

 

• carry out aggregated and anonymised research about general engagement with our website in providing the right kinds of products and services to our website users;

 

• operate a safe and lawful business or where we have a legal obligation;

 

• enable us to comply with our policies and procedures and enforce our legal rights, or to protect the rights, property or safety of our employees;

 

• measure or understand the effectiveness of advertising;

 

• deliver relevant advertising and make relevant recommendations and suggestions to you about our products and services, sometimes via platforms including but not limited to Facebook and Amazon;

 

• analyse your use of our websites and apps and your responses to our communications;

 

• personalise, enhance, modify or otherwise improve the services and/or communications that we provide to you;

 

• detect and prevent fraud and unauthorised access or illegal activity;

 

• improve security and optimisation of our network sites and services including trouble shooting, testing and software development and support;

 

If you have any concerns about our processing, you have rights and choices which include the right to object (please see the section headed ‘Your Rights and Choices’).

 

 

WHO CAN SEE YOUR INFORMATION

 

Your information may be processed by our staff or by the staff of third parties we work with to deliver our business.

 

Processing can mean any activity that involves the use of information about someone that can identify them. All uses, for example, obtaining, recording, storing, disclosing, organising, retrieving, deleting and destroying are types of data processing.

 

We take measures to ensure that third parties processing your information on our behalf are acting lawfully in accordance with our instructions and are subject to appropriate confidentiality requirements.

 

We also have adequate technical and organisational safeguards in place in our company and with third party processors to protect your information. Third party processors of your information include our:

 

• website hosts and operators, IT support providers, database operators, site analytics providers and software developers;

 

• marketing or publicity services providers;

 

• editorial and production service providers, peer-reviewers, third-party manuscript readers

 

• royalty system software provider;

 

• financial services and payment service provider;

 

• warehousing and delivery service providers;

 

• auditors, technical consultants and legal advisors;

 

• fraud detection services;

 

 

WHEN WE SHARE YOUR INFORMATION

 

We share your information within the companies that make up the Hachette UK group of companies as well as with our parent company and their parent companies.

 

Where we share your information outside our group of companies, and where such third party would also become a data controller of your information, you will be asked to consent to a third party sharing your information and if you choose to give your permission, any interaction you have with such a third party is governed by their privacy terms. The third party would become a data controller of your information with us, and the third party could make decisions about how to use your information. Before we share your information in such a case, we require third parties to enter into a data sharing agreement which stipulates that they must maintain appropriate security to protect your information from unauthorised access, processing or use.

 

We will share your information with the following third parties:

 

• selected publishing partners and authors;

 

• selected marketing partners;

 

• any prospective seller or buyer of businesses or assets, only in the event that we decide to acquire, transfer or sell any business or assets;

 

• any other third parties (including legal or other advisors, regulatory authorities, courts and government agencies) where necessary to enable us to enforce our legal rights, or to protect the rights, property or safety of our employees or where such disclosure may be permitted or required by law or where we have a legal obligation to do so

 

 

HOW WE LOOK AFTER YOUR INFORMATION

 

We look for opportunities to minimise the amount of personal information we hold about you. Where appropriate we anonymise and pseudonymise your information. We use appropriate technological and operational security measures to protect your information against any unauthorised access or unlawful use, such as:

 

• ensuring the physical security of our offices, warehouses or other sites;

 

• ensuring the physical and digital security of our equipment and devices by using appropriate password protection and encryption;

 

• maintaining a data protection policy for, and delivering data protection training to, our employees;

 

• limiting access to your personal information to those in our company who need to use it in the course of their work.

 

 

HOW LONG WE KEEP IT

 

We will retain your information for as long as is necessary to provide you with the services that you have requested from us or for as long as we reasonably require to retain the information for our legitimate interests, such as for the purposes of exercising our legal rights or where we are permitted to do so for purposes of academic, literary expression and research purposes. We operate a data retention policy and look to find ways to reduce the amount of information we hold about you and the length of time that we need to keep it. For example, we

 

• archive our email and paper correspondence regularly and destroy unnecessary information;

 

• operate a best practice email retention policy requiring password protected folders and departmental shared drives to provide restricted access to information;

 

• auto-delete deleted emails periodically;

 

• conduct regular access reviews to keep access profiles and policies up to date;

 

• conduct periodic review and purge cycles of documents in accordance with our document retention policy;

 

• retain information relating to orders, refunds and customer queries for approximately 7 years;

 

• retain information relating to commercial contracts for approximately 7 years after expiration or termination whichever is the sooner;

 

• maintain a suppression list of email addresses of individuals who no longer wish to be contacted by us. So that we can comply with their wishes we must store this information permanently;

 

• delete information collected through marketing channels two years after our last interaction with you except where you subscribe for our newsletters on the Company website, where the period is three years.

 

 

INTERNATIONAL TRANSFERS OF YOUR INFORMATION

 

Our company is located in the UK.

 

Whenever we transfer your personal information out of the European Economic Area (EEA) we will take all steps necessary to ensure that it is adequately protected and processed in accordance with this Privacy Notice by using all appropriate cross-border transfer safeguards such as

 

• by entering into the European Commission’s Standard Contractual Clauses with the provider which give personal data the same protection it has in the EEA; and

 

• where the provider is in the US, the EU-US Privacy Shield if the provider is part of the EU-US Privacy Shield Framework.

 

Please contact us if you would like additional information on the specific means used by us when transferring your personal data outside of the EEA.

 

YOUR RIGHTS AND CHOICES

 

Your Right to Object

 

You have the right to object to our using your information for direct marketing and on the basis of our legitimate interests (refer to the section ‘How we use your information’ above to see when we are relying on our legitimate interests). If you want to do this, you can contact us using the details in the section ‘Contact information’.

 

Your Right to Withdraw Consent

 

You have the right to withdraw your consent for our use of your information in reliance of your consent (refer to section ‘How we use your information’ to see when we are relying on your consent), which you can do by contacting us using any of the details in the section ‘Contact Information’.

 

Your Other Rights and Choices

 

You also have other choices and rights in respect of the information that we hold about you, including the right to:

 

• request access to the information that we hold about you to check that we are acting lawfully;
• receive a copy of any information we hold about you in a structured, commonly-used, machine readable format or in another format of your choice;

 

• request that we transfer your information to another service provider in a structured, commonly used, machine-readable format;

 

• ask us to correct information we hold about you if it is inaccurate or incomplete;

 

• ask us, in certain circumstances, to delete information we hold about you;

 

• ask us, in certain circumstances, to restrict processing of your information.

 

You may exercise your rights and choices by contacting us using the details above in the ‘Contact information’ section.

 

You can also prevent processing for marketing activities by checking certain boxes on forms that we use to collect your data to tell us that you don’t want to be involved in marketing.

 

Your Right to Complain

 

Please contact us if you have any questions or are unhappy about the way your information is used. We hope we will be able to resolve any problems or issues that you may have.

 

You also have the right to lodge a complaint about us and our use of your information to the UK Information Commissioner’s Office (https://ico.org.uk) or the relevant authority in your country of work or residence.

 

 

CHANGES TO THIS PRIVACY NOTICE

 

We may make changes to this Privacy Notice from time to time. We will post any changes to our site.

 

This Privacy Notice was updated on 29^th January 2019.