Privacy policy

PRIVACY NOTICE

This is the privacy notice of Spring Literary (we, us, our).

INTRODUCTION

This is a notice to inform you of our policy regarding all the information we record about you. It sets out the conditions under which we collect and use your personal data in connection with our business. It also explains what rights you have to access or change your personal data.

If you object in whole or in part to the terms laid out below, please do not use this website. Our policy complies with UK law, including that required by the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

PERSONAL DATA WE COLLECT

Information that you provide to us when you:

make a query by phone, email, in writing or via our website;

submit manuscripts or other content to us by post, email or via our website;

enter into a contract with us to represent you;

submit an application to a job vacancy;

interact with our social media channels.

Information you provide to us will include (depending on the circumstances):

Identity and contact data: Title, names, addresses, email addresses, phone numbers, other contact information;

Financial and contract data: If we represent you, you may also provide us with your bank details, VAT and tax information, immigration and residency information, photographs of you, images and samples of your work, any existing contracts (and related correspondence) with publishers or other licensees of your work; contact details of people who you have entrusted to liaise with us on your behalf;

Employment and background data: job title, academic and work history, qualifications, skills, projects and research, references.

Information we collect about you:

Information contained in correspondence. For example, if you contact us by website, email, post or telephone, we may keep a record of that correspondence;

Website usage data: We may collect information about your interactions with the website, including information such as login data, IP address, page views, searches, requests, orders, preapprovals, confirmations, agreements between you and other website users, and other actions on the website.

Technical information: We will also collect certain information about how you use our website, details of specific content and or pages you visit on our website (including duration of visits), Internet Protocol (IP) address used to connect your computer to the internet, device(s) you use to access our website, and your geographical location. This information may be collected by a third party on our behalf and/or may be collected using cookies.

INFORMATION WE RECEIVE FROM THIRD PARTIES

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

Publishers and other licensees of your work: If we represent you, you will normally authorise us to receive information about you from your publishers and other licensees such as information about your contracts, performance, royalties and other payments;

Third parties who can verify information: If you submit a manuscript to us for our review, we may use third party providers to verify the information that you provide to us in connection with that submission. For example, we will use third-party databases or websites to confirm your publication history;

HOW WE USE INFORMATION ABOUT YOU AND RECIPIENTS OF YOUR INFORMATION

We will use your information for the purposes listed below either on the basis of: performance of your contract with us and the provision of our services to you; your consent (where we request it); where we need to comply with a legal or regulatory obligation; or our legitimate interests or those of a third party (including our website hosting and platform providers).

We use your information for the following purposes:

To provide you with access to our website in a manner convenient and optimal and with personalised content relevant to you including sharing your information with our website hosts and developers (on the basis of our legitimate interest to ensure our website is presented in an effective and optimal manner);

To manage our relationship with you, which will include notifying you about changes to our terms of use or privacy policy (on the basis of performing our contract with you, to comply with our legal obligations and on the basis of our legitimate interests to keep our records updated and study how our website and services are used);

To contact you and manage and facilitate our business relationship with you, including (if we represent you):

the administration of your contract with us (including administration of any contracts with third parties when we represent you on such contracts);

recording and processing of payments;

a variety of activities relating to your written or illustrated works such as confidentially sharing information with third parties and promotional activities.

To deal with enquiries or complaints about the website and share your information with those providing related services to us (such as website developers, IT support providers) as necessary to provide support (on the basis of our legitimate interest in providing the correct services to our website users and to comply with our legal obligations);

Social media interactions: to interact with users on social media platforms including Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and TikTok, for example, responding to comments and messages, posting, ‘retweeting’ and ‘liking’ posts (on the basis of our legitimate interest in promoting our brand and communicating with interested individuals);

Research: to carry out aggregated and anonymised research about general engagement with our website (on the basis of our legitimate interest in providing the right kinds of services to our website users);

Fraud and unlawful activity detection: to protect, investigate, and deter against fraudulent, unauthorised, or illegal activity, including identity fraud (on the basis of our legitimate interests to operate a safe and lawful business or where we have a legal obligation to do so);

Compliance with policies, procedures and laws: 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 and share your information with our technical and legal advisors (on the basis of our legitimate interests to operate a safe and lawful business or where we have a legal obligation to do so).

Where we refer to using your information on the basis of our “legitimate interests”, we mean our legitimate business interests in conducting and managing our business and our relationship with you, including the legitimate interest we have in:

personalising, enhancing, modifying or otherwise improving the services and/or communications that we provide to you;

detecting and preventing fraud and operating a safe and lawful business;

improving security and optimisation of our network, sites and services;

in the case of website usage data (as above) we gather information to understand how users interact with our website and to prevent misuse of the website but this information will only be used anonymously and we will not use it to identify an individual or group of individuals;

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). If you have any concerns about our processing, please refer to details of “Your rights to the information we hold about you” below.

WHO WE MIGHT SHARE YOUR INFORMATION WITH

In connection with the purposes and on the lawful grounds described above and in addition to the recipients of your information as described above, we will share your personal information when relevant with third parties such as:

Our service providers: third parties we work with to deliver our business (including, for example, hosting or operating the website and our databases and site analytics, our bank and our accountants);

Squarespace: as our website hosting and platform provider Squarespace will gather Website Usage Data (as above) and use it anonymously for purposes such as their own website usage analysis, service improvement and website security;

Full details of the data that Squarespace is entitled to use as our service provider can be found at this page: https://www.squarespace.com/privacy/

Publishers, licensees, sub-agents, advisors and service companies: if we represent you, any publishers or other licensees of your work (or prospective publishers and licensees) as well as sub- or co-agents, advisors (such as your solicitor or accountant) and editorial service providers, where applicable.

Prospective sellers and buyers of our business: any prospective seller or buyer of such business or assets, only in the event that we decide to sell or buy any business or assets; and

Other third parties (including professional advisers): any other third parties (including legal or other advisors, regulatory authorities, HMRC, courts, law enforcement agencies 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.

We require third parties to maintain appropriate security to protect your information from unauthorised access or processing.

The personal data that we collect from you may be transferred to and stored at a destination outside the EEA including but not limited to the USA. By submitting your personal data to us you agree to this transfer, processing or storage. We will take all steps reasonably necessary and available to us to safeguard and ensure that your personal data is treated securely and in accordance with applicable laws.

This may include sharing your personal data with licensees or purchasers of your work or sub-agents (as applicable and including prospective parties).

Squarespace as our website hosting and platform provider may transfer Website Usage Data (as above) out of the EEA in an anonymised, or pseudonimised form for the purposes described above and using a lawful data transfer mechanism that is recognized under EU Data Protection Law as providing an adequate level of protection for such data transfers.

COOKIES

We use cookies to ensure that you get the most out of our website. Cookies are small amounts of information in the form of text files which we store on the device you use to access our website. Cookies allow us to monitor your use of the software and simplify your use of the website.

If you do not wish for cookies to be installed on your device, you can change the settings on your browser or device to reject cookies. For more information about how to reject cookies using your internet browser settings please consult the “Help” section of your internet browser (or visit http://www.aboutcookies.org). Please note that, if you do set your Internet browser to reject cookies, you may not be able to access all of the functions of the website.

The cookies that are used on our website are known as Functional and Required Cookies and Analytics and Performance Cookies and these are the default cookies set by Squarespace, our website hosting and platform provider.

Further details on the cookies used can be found at this page: https://www.squarespace.com/cookie-policy, but our website does not use cookies that are not relevant (for example cookies that involve logging into a website are not used).

Our website may contain content and links to other sites that are operated by third parties that may also operate cookies. We don’t control these third party sites or cookies and this Privacy Notice does not apply to them. Please consult the terms and conditions and Privacy Notice of the relevant third party site to find out how that site collects and uses your information and to establish whether and for what purpose they use cookies.

HOW WE LOOK AFTER YOUR INFORMATION AND HOW LONG WE KEEP IT FOR

We will retain your information for as long as is necessary to provide you with the services/activities we are undertaking and to comply with our legal obligations.  

YOUR RIGHTS TO THE INFORMATION WE HOLD ABOUT YOU 

You have certain rights in respect of the information that we hold about you, including:

the right to be informed of the ways in which we use your information, as we seek to do in this Privacy Notice;

the right to ask us not to process your personal data for marketing purposes;

the right to request access to the information that we hold about you;

in certain circumstances, the right to receive a copy of any information we hold about you (or request that we transfer this to another service provider) in a structured, commonly-used, machine readable format

the right to request that we correct or rectify any information that we hold about you which is out of date or incorrect;

the right to withdraw your consent for our use of your information in reliance of your consent (refer to relevant sections above to see when we are relying on your consent), which you can do by contacting us;

the right to object to our using your information on the basis of our legitimate interests (refer to relevant sections above to see when we are relying on our legitimate interests) (or those of a third party)) and there is something about your particular situation which makes you want to object to processing on this ground;

in certain circumstances, the right to ask us to limit or stop processing information about you, or erase information we hold about you; and

the right to lodge a complaint about us to the UK Information Commissioner’s Office (https://ico.org.uk/), as well as with the relevant authority in your country of work or residence.

Please note that we may need to retain certain information for our own record-keeping and research purposes. We may also need to send you service-related communications relating to your website user account even when you have requested not to receive marketing communications.

USE OF SITE BY CHILDREN

Our website is not intended for children. We do not knowingly collect or maintain the personal information of children under the age of 13. We will take appropriate steps to delete the personal information of persons under the age of 13.

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.