This Privacy Notice is for children but please read our adult Privacy Notice if you want more details.
WHO WE ARE
This Privacy Notice is for Hachette Children’s Group. Referred to as our Company and every time you see the words ‘company’, ‘we’, ‘us’ and ‘our’, they’re about our Company. You can see details about us here. We are part of a big group of companies: the Hachette UK group of companies. Click here to see a list of the other companies in our group.
We are your Data Controller – that means that we look after the information you give us and decide what to do with it. You can click here to find out more about your Data Controller.
This Privacy Notice explains what happens when you visit this site – what you tell us about yourself and what we find out about you by you being here. That information is your “data”. You can find out what choices and rights you have, and how you can control what we know about you.
We use cookies (not the tasty ones, sadly – these are a piece of information stored on your computer) to help us remember who you are and to make our website work better for you. Have a look at our Cookie Policy here if you want to learn what cookies are and how we use them.
We’re going to tell you about:
Contact information
How we collect and use your data
Who gets to see your data and where it goes
How we look after your data
How long we keep your data
How you keep control
CONTACT INFORMATION
Our full Company information is here
You can also get hold of us at this address if you want to ask any questions:
Legal Department (GDPR)
Hachette UK
Carmelite House
50 Victoria Embankment
London, EC4Y 0DZ
Email: privacy@hachette.co.uk
HOW WE COLLECT AND USE YOUR DATA
When you sign up to our newsletter, you give us your name and email address. You need to do this if you want to get information about our books and to find about our special newsletter-only competitions.
We also collect your data when you:
- send us letters, emails, phone us or use our website;
- come to our fun events and sign up for free stuff;
- you enter a competition or prize draw. We’ll ask for your home address so we can send you the prize if you win and we may ask to check that your parent or guardian agrees.
We don’t sell your data to anyone and we won’t get in touch unless you want us to. Even if you say you want to hear from us, you can always change your mind later and opt out and we won’t contact you anymore. To find out how to do this, see the section ‘How you keep Control’ below.
What you look at
Our website has cookies and software that tell us what you’re looking at and clicking on, and where you are. We keep this information because it helps us figure out what you like. If you want to learn more about how we do this, you can check out our Cookie Policy.
Using what we know about you
When we use your data, we have to have a good legal reason. Most of the time it’s because you’ve said we can, but remember, you can always change your mind and stop this. See the section ’How you keep control’ to find out how.
Sometimes we might use what we know about you to help us run our business and to make things like our websites better for you. The legal reason that lets us do this is called ‘legitimate business interests’ – let’s call it ‘interests’ for short. What’s good to know about our interests is that they are never more important than yours – so you can say NO if we’re using our interests as the reason for doing it.
Here’s a list of how we use your data and our reasons:
- to keep in touch and tell you all our news about books and authors (only when you have signed up to receive this and we may ask to check that your parent or guardian agrees);
- to send you newsletters (only when you have signed up to receive this and we may ask to check that your parent or guardian agrees);
- to reply to any of your very important questions (our interest);
- to run our business legally – there are a lot of rules we have to follow (our interest);
- to see if our advertising is working (our interest)
- to find out what else you might like (our interest);
- to make the things we send to you more personal (our interest);
- to send you advertising about stuff you might like but we can only do so if you are at least 13 years old and we may ask to check that your parent or guardian agrees (our interest);
WHO GETS TO SEE YOUR DATA AND WHERE IT GOES
People that work in our Company and at Hachette UK Limited use and see your data. Sometimes we work with other companies and the people that work there also use and see your data but only when we tell them they’re allowed to. We make sure everyone keeps your data safe so it doesn’t get lost or damaged or given to someone it shouldn’t be.
Here are some of the kinds of companies we use:
- IT and computer companies
- advertising companies
- accountants and lawyers
Sharing
Remember at the beginning we told you that we are part of a big group of companies? We share your data with these other companies in the Hachette UK group because we’re all part of the same family and they’ll keep your data safe too.
Apart from that we don’t share your data unless you say we can. But sometimes there are legal rules that mean we have to share your data and sometimes businesses get bought or sold. In those situations, we share.
Sending your data overseas
We’re in the UK. We are not allowed to send your data further than Europe without making sure that it’s just as safe as it would be in the UK. So, we don’t send it without using ways that are allowed by law.
HOW WE LOOK AFTER YOUR DATA
We try to keep as little data about you as possible. What we do keep, we keep it safe by making sure our computers have proper security and using passwords. Wherever we can, we keep the data in a way that if something did go wrong and people outside the company found it, they wouldn’t be able to tell that it belonged to you.
HOW LONG WE KEEP YOUR DATA
We only keep your data because we think you’ll be interested in our books and authors. If you stop asking us to send you things or if you don’t reply to us or your email bounces back, we delete your data 2 years after the last time we heard from you. If you signed up for a newsletter on this website we keep your data 3 years from when we last heard from you. You can ask us what data we have about you at any time (see the section ‘How you keep control’).
Also, we regularly check our databases and delete data that we don’t need or that is too old. Our email system automatically deletes our deleted items regularly, so we don’t have to! You can ask us to change or delete what we have about you. This is explained more in ‘How you keep control’.
HOW YOU KEEP CONTROL
There are lots of ways you can keep control of your data. These are your rights and choices:
- you can say no to what we’re doing if it’s because of our interests;
- you can change your mind and opt out after you opted in to something;
- you can ask to see what details we’ve got about you and ask for a copy of them;
- you can ask us to change your address or other details we have about you, or delete them, or use them less;
- and you can complain about us!
If you want to opt out and not hear from us, you can use the unsubscribe link in emails we send you.
We always want to help so please get in touch using the details in the section ‘Contact information’ if you have any questions about this. We will try to sort it out, but if we can’t you can go to the UK Information Commissioner’s Office (https://ico.org.uk) and tell them what you think we did wrong.
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 21 May 2019.
MINI GLOSSARY:
Opt out/Opt in: To opt in or out is a decision, something you choose for yourself. If you opt out, you are asking to be removed. If you opt in, you are asking to be included.
Subscribe: When you subscribe you are asking to receive something regularly (in this case, usually an email newsletter). Sometimes you have to pay for this but luckily all our newsletters are free. A subscription to a newsletter will usually be monthly, and they will be sent to you until you unsubscribe.
Unsubscribe: This is how you cancel a subscription when you don’t want to hear from a company anymore. Usually there’s a link or button at the bottom of the email they’ve sent you which will take you to a web page where you can unsubscribe.