Your information
When you ask us something. Our Ask us forms, requesting a book, asking for a recommendation, general enquiries and author submissions, reach us as email, and we answer the same way. Nothing you type is stored in a website database: the message goes to the shop's inbox, a bookseller replies, and that's the whole journey. We keep the email conversation only as long as we need it to help you. Our forms use Cloudflare Turnstile to keep automated spam out; it checks a submission comes from a real person without tracking you.
Counting visits. We use Umami, a privacy-focused analytics service, to count visits - which pages people read and roughly where visitors come from. It sets no cookies and cannot identify you; we can see that someone read the events page, never who.
The newsletter. Our monthly letter is delivered through Ghost. When you subscribe, Ghost holds your email address to send it; every letter has an unsubscribe link that works straight away.
Events and buying online. Tickets are sold by Eventbrite. Buying links take you to Bookshop.org, Hive or Libro.fm; Hive links pass through Webgains, the affiliate network that records the referral, on the way. When you book or buy, those companies handle your details under their own privacy policies. We receive a share of the sale, never your payment details.
Looking inside a book. Some book pages offer a Look inside preview. Nothing loads until you press it. When you do, the preview comes from one of two services publishers use to share sample pages, Jellybooks or Book2Look, and it opens in its own window on our page, which says which one. Each runs under its own privacy policy inside that window: Jellybooks uses Google Analytics and a session cookie to run its reader, and Book2Look sets its own cookies and shows its own cookie notice. Close the preview and it's gone. We don't see who opens one, and neither service is told anything about you by us.
Cookies. Browsing this site sets no advertising or tracking cookies. Using a form sets a single essential security token that protects the form from abuse. A Look inside preview can set cookies inside its own window, as described above, and only once you've opened it.
Your rights. UK data protection law gives you the right to ask what we hold about you, to correct it, or to have it deleted. Because we deliberately keep so little, the answer is usually "the emails you've sent us" - but ask any time at [email protected] or in the shop. If you're unhappy with how we've handled your information, you can complain to the Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk.