We are Bloomsbury Publishing Plc. We are the data controller in relation to the personal data processed in accordance with this policy (except where this policy explains otherwise). Our contact and other details are set out at the end of this policy.

This privacy notice is issued on behalf of the Bloomsbury Group, so when we mention Bloomsbury, "we", "us" or "our" in this privacy notice, we are referring to the relevant company in the Bloomsbury Group responsible for processing your data.

We are an independent publishing company. We publish books and other publications (including journals and periodicals) in print and digital format and also own and/or operate online publishing platforms in specific subject areas (“Bloomsbury Digital Resources”, “BDRs”). We sell our products both directly to consumers and also to business customers (including retailers, professional bodies and entities, and educational institutions, and other organisations).

We have appointed a data protection officer (DPO) who is responsible for overseeing questions in relation to this privacy notice. If you have any questions about this privacy notice, including any requests to exercise your legal rights, please contact the DPO using the details set out below. You may contact the DPO in relation to processing of personal data by any company in the Bloomsbury Group; the DPO acts a central point of contact in relation to data protection matters across the whole group.

We collect and process personal data as follows:

If you are an individual customer of ours or if you have registered individually to set up an account for any purpose via any of our websites or BDRs (including for personalisation purposes where you are an employee, contractor, or student of one of our business customers).

We may collect your individual contact and other information that you give to us to enable us to fulfil any orders you make, or otherwise to communicate with you in relation to the supply of books and other products or services by us, including BDRs (for example, in order to supply books that you have ordered, to sell tickets to events we organise, to allow you to use any of our online forums (where applicable), to personalise your use of BDRs or to send you a newsletter that you have signed up to).

Information that you give us may include (apart from your name and contact information such as your email address, postal address or phone number and IP address) credit card, bank account or other financial details relevant to payments made by you and other information relating to you that is included in any communications between us and you in the course of the provision by us of our products or services.

If you are (or you work for) a business customer of ours, such as a bookshop or other retailer or a wholesaler

We may collect your individual contact and other information that you give to us to enable us to fulfil any orders that you (or the person that you work for) makes or otherwise to communicate with you in relation to the provision of products or services by us (for example, in order to supply books that you or the person that you work for has ordered). Information that you give us may include (apart from your contact information such as your email address, postal address or phone number) credit card, bank account or other financial details relevant to payments made by you and other information relating to you that is included in any communications between us and you in the course of provision by us of our products or services.

If you use or browse any of our websites, or otherwise participate in any activities via our websites

We may collect information on your visits to our website, including content that you look at and how you move around different sections of our website. This is to enable you to participate in activities on our website as selected by you and also for analytics purposes to understand how you and other people use our website so that we can make it more intuitive. We may keep a record of the content on our website that you have clicked on and use that information to target marketing or advertising to you that is relevant to your interests and which we have identified based on information that you have provided or content you have looked at. This may involve the use of cookies, which is explained in our cookie policy.

If we wish to send you newsletters, or advertising, marketing, or promotional material

We may collect your individual contact details to send you newsletters, promotional copies of books, or other marketing material to advertise, market or promote our goods and services or to enable you to know what we are publishing (this will be subject to your prior consent where appropriate). For example, you may sign up to receive one or more of our regular newsletters. We may combine your contact details with other information we obtain about the things you are interested in and that are relevant to the products or services provided by us (for example, when you buy something from us or browse our website and view content) to help us ensure that material that we send you is relevant to what you are interested in.

If you review any of our books

We may collect your individual contact details to send you promotional copies of books for review by you; for example, if you are a journalist or academic with a potential interest in a particular publication. These details may be combined with information regarding your areas of interest, so that we can make sure that what we send you is likely to be relevant to the areas that you are interested in. If you review one of our books, we may retain a copy of the review as part of the information we keep about you. If you have reviewed one of our books at our request, we may use your name as a reviewer to promote and market the book concerned.

If you enter any of our competitions

We may collect information relevant to your participation in the competition or event, including your contact details and any other information we specifically ask you for at the time that is relevant to the competition concerned. We will use this information for the purposes of managing and administrating the competition concerned, but not for any other purpose (such as marketing) except to the extent that this is separately agreed with you at the time.

If you are an author, illustrator, designer or other contributor to any books or games that we publish or if we are evaluating you or any of your work to assess whether or not to ask you to contribute or to publish or produce any of your work

We may collect your individual contact details, details of your past work and details of the work proposed for contribution or publication by you, together with other information relating to you that is relevant to the decision to commission or accept your work for publication or to publishing the work concerned, and we may use this information for the purposes of evaluating your work (or proposed work) and for dealing and communicating with you in relation to publication and sale of your work. Other information relating to you may include, for example, bank account or other financial details, and other information relating to you that is included in any communications between us and you or anyone you work with in the course of working with you in relation to the publication or exploitation of your work. Where any of our associated companies outside the UK are to be responsible for publishing and selling your work in the territories for which they are responsible, we may transfer personal data relating to you to those associated companies to the extent necessary to enable them to publish and sell your work in accordance with the relevant agreement with you, and to enable them to communicate directly with you or your agent as required. If, while working with you, we arrange for your attendance at any events, or for any travel by you, we may process your personal data to the extent necessary to arrange the attendance or travel concerned.

If you provide goods or services (or you work for someone who supplies goods or services) to us

We may collect your individual contact information to enable us or other suppliers of ours to communicate with you in relation to the provision of goods or services by you or the person that you work for (for example, in relation to the management and administration of the provision of the relevant goods or services) and other personal information relating to you to in the course of provision of the goods or services concerned. This may include, for example, bank account or other financial details, and other information relating to you that is included in any communications between us and you or anyone you work with in the course of provision of the goods or services.

If we are assessing your suitability or ability to provide goods or services to us or to any of our group companies

We may collect relevant personal information relating to you to the extent necessary to enable that assessment to take place – for example, if we need to assess or confirm your age, your right to work in the UK, your skills and previous experience, your qualifications or whether there is anything that would adversely affect your suitability or ability to provide the goods or services concerned. This will be explained to you in more detail at the time we collect the personal data and, where appropriate, will be subject to your prior consent.

If you are a shareholder

We may collect your individual contact information to enable us or our relevant service providers to communicate with you in relation to your shares, and to manage and administer your shareholding and the payment of any relevant dividends. The information relating to you may include, for example, bank account or other financial details, and other information relating to you that is included in any communications between us in relation to your shareholding. We normally send regular updates to shareholders to keep them informed with regard to our business, and to provide other information relevant to their shareholding (for example, discounts available to shareholders). This is part of good practice with regard to keeping shareholders informed, rather than for marketing purposes, but if you no longer wish to receive it then you may opt-out by contacting us accordingly.

If you apply for a position with us

We may collect personal information in relation to you in connection with any application by you for a position with us. We collect information that is specifically provided by you as part of the application process, including: name, address, email, telephone number; CV (if applicable); equal opportunities monitoring information (defined as special categories data) - this information is purely for statistical analysis; answers to application question; any other information you wish to provide in support of your application. We will use your details and information to assess your suitability for employment with us, to assist us in interviewing you, and to carry out our statistical analysis of our recruitment processes. If your application is successful and you accept a position with us, your personal information will become part of your HR file and will be processed in accordance with our employee data protection policy. If you are unsuccessful, we will keep your personal information for a period of 12 months and will then delete or archive it (and you otherwise may ask us to delete it at any time). This does not apply to you if you are applying for a position with our offices in the USA, Australia, or India (recruitment in these places is governed by different terms).

We normally process personal data only in the UK or in the EU, or in non-UK or EU countries that are certified as providing an adequate level of protection for personal data.

Where necessary in order to manage our business, we may share relevant personal data with our group companies outside the UK or EU, but only to the extent necessary in order to provide the services concerned.

Where you order products from us that are distributed from any of our warehouses outside the UK or EU, we will share information relating to you (your name and address together with the products you have ordered) to the extent necessary to enable our service partner who operates the relevant warehouse to deliver the relevant products to you.

Where personal data is transferred in relation to providing our services (including where personal data is hosted on our behalf in countries which are not certified as providing an adequate level of protection) we will take all steps reasonably necessary to ensure that it is subject to appropriate safeguards, such as relying on a recognised legal adequacy mechanism which may include by entering into approved standard contractual clauses relevant to transfers of personal information and that it is treated securely and in accordance with this privacy policy.

All personal data processed by us is stored securely (the level of security being appropriate to the nature of the data concerned and the other relevant circumstances). Unfortunately, the transmission of information via the internet is not completely secure. Although we will do our best to protect your personal data, we cannot guarantee the security of your data transmitted to our website and any transmission is at your own risk. Once we have received your information, we will use appropriate procedures and security features to try to prevent unauthorised access.

We may where appropriate share your personal data with:

• Appropriate third parties including:
  
  o our business partners, customers, suppliers and sub-contractors for the performance of any contract we enter into or other dealings we have in the normal course of business with you or the person that you work for;
  
  o payment processing service providers (such as Paypal, Stripe and GoCardless) in connection with purchases you make from us;
  
  o our auditors, legal advisors and other professional advisors or service providers;
  
  o credit or other similar reference agencies for the purpose of assessing your suitability or ability where this is in the context of us entering (or proposing to enter) into a contract with you or the person that you work for.
  
  
• In relation to information obtained via our website:
  
  o our advertisers and advertising networks that require the data to select and serve relevant adverts to you and others. We do not disclose information about identifiable individuals to our advertisers, but we will provide them with aggregate information about our users. We may also use such aggregate information to help advertisers reach the kind of audience they want to target. We may make use of the personal data we have collected from you to enable us to comply with our advertisers' wishes by displaying their advertisement to that target audience and subject to the cookie section of this policy;
  
  o analytics and search engine providers that assist us in the improvement and optimisation of our site and subject to the cookie section of this policy.

We may disclose your personal data to third parties:

• In the event that we sell or buy any business or assets, in which case we may disclose your personal data to the prospective seller or buyer of such business or assets subject to the terms of this privacy policy.
  
  
• If we or substantially all of our assets are acquired by a third party, in which case personal data held by it about its customers will be one of the transferred assets.
  
  
• If we are under a duty to disclose or share your personal data in order to comply with any legal obligation, or in order to enforce or apply our terms of supply and other agreements with you or the person that you work for; or to protect the rights, property, or safety of our business or others. This includes exchanging information with other companies and organisations for the purposes of fraud protection, or credit risk reduction.

The legal basis on which we process your personal data is as follows:

• Where it is necessary to obtain your prior consent to processing in order for us to be allowed to do it, we will obtain and rely on your consent in relation to the processing concerned (in relation to any processing we are carrying out with your consent, see below for how to withdraw your consent).
  
  
• Otherwise, we will process your personal data where the processing is necessary:
  
  o for the performance of a contract to which you are a party or in order to take steps at your request prior to entering into such a contract;
  
  o for compliance with a legal obligation to which we are a subject; or
  
  o for the purposes of the legitimate interests pursued by us or another person, provided that this will only be in circumstances in which those legitimate interests are not overridden by your interests or fundamental rights and freedoms which require protection of personal data.

We process personal data only for so long as is necessary for the purpose(s) for which it was originally collected, after which it will be deleted or archived except to the extent that it is necessary for us to continue to process it for the purpose of compliance with legal obligations to which we are subject or for another legitimate and lawful purpose.

You have the following rights in relation to personal data relating to you that we process:

• You may request access to the personal data concerned.
  
  
• You may request that incorrect personal data that we are processing be rectified.
  
  
• In certain circumstances (normally where it is no longer necessary for us to continue to process it), you may be entitled to request that we erase the personal data concerned.
  
  
• Where we are processing your personal data for marketing purposes or otherwise based on our legitimate interests, you may in certain circumstances have a right to object to that processing.
  
  
• Where we are processing personal data relating to you on the basis of your prior consent to that processing (such as in relation to marketing by email), you may withdraw your consent, after which we shall stop the processing concerned.
  
  To exercise any of your rights (including withdrawing relevant consents or obtaining access to your personal data), you should contact us as set out below. To unsubscribe from any electronic newsletters or other marketing communications, you can click on the unsubscribe link in the relevant communication.
  
  If you have a complaint about any processing of your personal data being conducted by us, you can contact us or lodge a formal compliant with the Information Commissioner.

The Information Commissioner is the supervisory authority in the UK and can provide further information about your rights and our obligations in relation to your personal data, as well as deal with any complaints that you have about our processing of your personal data.

Our contact details are:

Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
50 Bedford Square
London
WC1B 3DP
United Kingdom

Company Number 01984336
ICO Registration Number Z7552956

Contact: Data Protection Officer
Email: [email protected]
Phone: +44 (0)20 7631 5000

Any changes we make to our privacy policy in the future will be posted on this page. Please check back frequently to see any updates or changes to our privacy policy.

This policy was last updated in August 2023.