Privacy Policy

This privacy policy sets out how Storm Publishing Ltd collect, use and share your personal data (your information) in connection with our publishing business. It also explains your rights to access or change your personal data.

We are the data controller which means we decide how your data is used and protected. We value your privacy and our responsibility to protect your information seriously.

Storm Publishing Ltd is a company registered in England under company number 14306843.

Address: Stafford House, Loudwater Heights, Rickmansworth, WD3 4AX.

Email: hello@stormpublishing.co

The information you provide to us might include: your name, email address, phone number and gender. If you are submitting a manuscript or job application you will provide additional information about your academic and work history, references and any other information you choose to supply.

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.

Most of the personal information we process is provided to us directly 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 email lists;
– complete one of our surveys;
– submit manuscripts to us by email or via our website;
– enter into a contract with us;
– submit a job application to us;
– provide us with biographical information about you e.g. by completing an author questionnaire

We use your information lawfully and never sell your information to third parties. We may in some circumstances share your information, as set out below in Sharing your information. The details of how we use your information and why are set out here:

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

  • to keep in contact with you and send you marketing communications about our news, authors or books;

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

  • to provide customer service and support;
  • if you are an author, in fulfilling your publishing contract. That may include receipt, review, editing, production, marketing of your manuscript and payment of your royalties;

Sometimes we will use your information based on 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 consider 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). If you have any concerns about our processing you have rights and choices which include the right to object see Your Data Protection Rights section for more details.

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

  • to contact you about submissions you made;
  • to respond to your queries and correspondence;
  • to manage your account with us;
  • to process any job applications you submit to us;
  • to operate a safe and lawful business or where we have a legal obligation;
  • to 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;
  • to measure or understand the effectiveness of advertising;
  • to deliver relevant advertising and make relevant recommendations and suggestions to you about our products and services;
  • to analyse your use of our website and your responses to our communications;
  • to personalise, enhance, modify or otherwise improve the services and/or communications that we provide to you;
  • To work with our third party recruitment agency to process any job applications you submit to us.

We will also collect certain information about how you use our website 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. To opt out of being tracked by Google Analytics across all websites, visit http://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout.

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.

Articles on this site may include embedded content (e.g. videos, images, articles, etc.). Embedded content from other websites behaves in the exact same way as if the visitor has visited the other website. These websites may collect data about you, use cookies, embed additional third-party tracking, and monitor your interaction with that embedded content, including tracking your interaction with the embedded content if you have an account and are logged in to that website.

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

– if you provide us with your email account, this might link 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 will receive information about you from third parties if they are referring you to us for publication. For example, if you have a literary agent making submissions on your behalf, your agent will provide us with information about you;
– if you are a job applicant we may contact your referees to provide information about you.

We use your information lawfully and never sell your information to third parties. We may in a limited number of circumstances share your information with third parties.

Before we share your information 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:

  • 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.

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;
  • our marketing or publicity services providers;
  • our editorial and production service providers, peer-reviewers, third-party manuscript readers
  • our royalty system software provider;
  • our financial services and payment service provider;
  • our warehousing and delivery service providers;
  • our accountants, auditors, technical consultants and legal advisors;

Your information is securely stored and we look for opportunities to minimise the amount of personal information we hold about you. Where appropriate we anonymise your information. We use appropriate security measures to protect your information against any unauthorised access or unlawful use.

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. We take measures to reduce the amount of information we hold about you and how long we hold it for. For example:

  • we archive our email and paper correspondence regularly and destroy unnecessary information;
  • we retain information relating to commercial contracts for approximately 7 years after expiration or termination whichever is the sooner;
  • we 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;
  • we delete information collected through marketing channels 2 years after our last interaction with you;
  • we destroy CVs and related information from job applicants who have not been shortlisted for interview once the recruitment process is complete. The shortlisted candidates’ CVs and related information is kept until after the successful candidate’s probation period, which can be 6 months from their start date.

Under data protection law, you have rights including:

  • Your right of access – You have the right to ask us for copies of your personal information.
  • Your right to rectification – You have the right to ask us to rectify personal information you think is inaccurate. You also have the right to ask us to complete information you think is incomplete.
  • Your right to erasure – You have the right to ask us to erase your personal information in certain circumstances.
  • Your right to restriction of processing – You have the right to ask us to restrict the processing of your personal information in certain circumstances.
  • Your right to object to processing – You have the right to object to the processing of your personal information in certain circumstances.
  • Your right to data portability – You have the right to ask that we transfer the personal information you gave us to another organisation, or to you, in certain circumstances.
  • You are not required to pay any charge for exercising your rights. If you make a request, we have one month to respond to you.

Please contact us at hello@stormpublishing.co if you wish to make a request.

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

This Privacy Notice was last updated on 6th October 2022.