Who we are
Neon Squid creates beautiful non-fiction books for inquisitive kids (and kids at heart). Our books are for children who want to decipher ancient scrolls, orbit distant stars, and dive into the deepest oceans.
Neon Squid is an imprint of Priddy Books. Priddy Books is a trading division of Macmillan Publishers International Limited, which is part of the Holtzbrinck Publishing Group. Macmillan Publishers International Limited (“we”, “us”, or “our”) is a “data controller” for the purposes of the EU General Data Protection Regulation, the UK General Data Protection Regulation and the Data Protection Act 2018 (as amended from time to time) (“Data Protection Law”). This means that we are responsible for and control the processing of your personal information (which means information that identifies you or could identify you). For full details about how to get in touch with us see the “How to contact us” section below.
We are committed to protecting your personal information and being transparent about the personal information we hold and how we use it. This Privacy Notice describes the ways in which we collect and use your personal information in connection with the Neon Squid website and related activities. It also tells you about your rights and how the law protects you.
Please note that separate privacy notices apply to other trading divisions of Macmillan Publishers International Limited.
If you have come to this page because you would like to stop receiving marketing emails from us, you can unsubscribe at any time by following the “unsubscribe” link at the bottom of our emails.
Children
This website contains information about our books and products for children but it is directed at adults, not children and we do not knowingly collect personal information from children through this website. You must be over 18 to sign up to receive our email newsletters.
Personal information we hold and how we use it
The personal information which we hold and how we use it will depend on our relationship with you. To find out more, please go to the sections of this Privacy Notice which relate to you.
Personal information we collect about readers of our books and visitors to our website and how we collect it
As a reader of our books or visitor to our website, you are generally in control of the personal information which you provide to us. The personal information you provide may include:
- Your name and contact details (including your email address, postal address and telephone number) date of birth, country of residence and your age or age range.
- Your feedback and reviews of our books and responses to our surveys and other market research.
- Your entries into our competitions and promotions.
- Your preferences in receiving consumer marketing from us.
- Personal information in content you provide on our site.
- Information you provide when you correspond and communicate with us, for example, if you contact us via email, telephone, post or via our social media channels to ask us a question about one of our books we will keep a record of that correspondence as well as internal correspondence relating to your enquiry.
We may also receive information about you from third parties, for example:
- If you participate in a survey or other market research initiative which a third party is administering on our behalf, they may provide us with your contact details and responses.
- If you have given your personal information to a third party and have provided them with permission to pass it on to us.
- We sometimes provide prizes for competitions which are being run by third parties, so we may be provided with the winner’s contact details so that we can administer the prize.
When you visit our website we also collect certain information about you automatically, including information about how you use our website and the device that you use to access our website. The information we collect might include your Internet Protocol (IP) address, geographical location, device information, 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 may be collected by cookies or by third-party website analytics service providers on our behalf. For more information on cookies and what you can do to disable certain cookies on our website, please refer to our Cookies Policy.
How we use your personal information – readers of our books and visitors to our website
We use the personal information of readers of our books and visitors to our website for the following purposes:
- To provide you with convenient and optimal access to our website.
- To send you our consumer email newsletters when you have opted-in to receiving them, to monitor the performance and effectiveness of our email marketing, and to assess whether you are still interested in receiving our email newsletters.
- To provide you with advertising about our books.
- To enable you to participate in prize draws, competitions and other promotions.
- To administer, test, support and maintain this website, assist us in diagnosing technical problems and deal with enquiries or complaints about the website and provide customer support.
- To assess what website content is popular and perform analytics and analysis on how people are using our website and to evaluate and improve people’s experience of our website.
- To communicate with you in connection with your requests and enquiries and about changes to our policies.
- To ensure that our site works properly on your device, for example if you’re looking at it on a mobile phone we change our website to make it work better for you.
- To carry out surveys and other market research, including aggregating and anonymising personal information for this purpose.
- To protect, investigate, and deter against fraudulent, unauthorised, or illegal activity.
- To enable us to comply with our policies and procedures, enforce our legal rights, process any claims we receive in connection with our products, services or the website and enforce the usage terms of the website.
Personal information we collect about business contacts and how we collect it
This section applies to all people who we work with when we, publish, promote, licence rights to and sell our books. This includes licensees, persons seeking permission to use material in our books, media professionals, bloggers, vloggers, influencers, book reviewers, booksellers, librarians and educators, service providers, suppliers and other business contacts.
As a business contact, we will collect your personal information in the course of our business dealings with you. The nature of the information which we collect will depend on our relationship with you and may include:
- Your name and contact details (including your work email address, postal address and telephone number).
- Your job title, organisation and details about your role.
- Your responses to our surveys and other market research.
- Your preferences in receiving marketing from us.
- Your gender.
- Your preferences, feedback and reviews of our books.
- Feedback on any service which you or your organisation are providing to us.
- Financial and/or payment details, including proof of bank details and taxation information.
- Information you provide when you correspond with us, for example, if you contact us via email, telephone, post or via our social media channels we will keep a record of that correspondence as well as internal correspondence relating to your enquiry.
You may provide this information to us directly or we may obtain it from third party sources. For example:
- We use publically available sources and dedicated media databases to obtain contact details for business purposes and may collect information about you from your organisation’s website.
- We may be provided with your contact details if you or your services are referred or recommended to us by a third party.
- In certain circumstances we use a third party provider to conduct due diligence on our suppliers. This may lead to us being provided with personal information relating to criminal convictions and offences (such as fraud, bribery) and other information relevant to our decision as to whether to conduct business with you or your company. This information is obtained from publically available sources.
Special categories of personal information – business contacts
Data Protection Law recognises that certain categories of personal information are more sensitive. These are known as “special categories” of personal information and include information such as your race or ethnicity, religious or philosophical beliefs, sexual orientation, political opinions, information about your health, or alleged commission or conviction of criminal offences.
We do not routinely collect special categories of personal information from our business contacts although, it is possible that you may provide this type of information to us voluntarily or we may receive information about criminal convictions from publically available sources when carrying out due diligence on our suppliers. If we are provided with any special categories of personal information we will treat that information with extra care and confidentiality and always in accordance with Data Protection Law and this Privacy Notice.
How we use your personal information – business contacts
We use personal information of business contacts for the following purposes:
- To administer, manage and develop our business.
- To correspond with you in connection with the publication, sale and promotion of our books or any service which you or organisation is providing to us.
- To provide you with direct marketing about our books unless you have asked to be taken off our mailing lists.To enable you to review our books and provide you with advance copies.
- To respond to queries and enquiries such as permission requests.
- Unless you have asked us not to, we use business contact details to provide you with information that we think will be of interest about us and our books.
- To select appropriate persons and organisations to provide services to us.
- To receive services from you or your organisation and pay you in respect of that service, for example where a supplier is providing us with IT or other outsourced services we will handle personal information about the individuals who are involved in providing the service to us.
- To correspond with you in connection with the services which you or your organisation is providing to us and monitor services provided for quality purposes.
- To maintain an historic archive about our backlist and publishing history.
- To protect, investigate, and deter against fraudulent, unauthorised, or illegal activity.
- To enable us to comply with our policies and procedures, enforce our legal rights and process any claims we receive.
We have security measures in place at our offices, including CCTV.
We use CCTV to maintain the security of our premises, prevent and investigate crime, and in the interests of health and safety. The images captured are securely stored and only accessed where necessary (e.g. to look into an incident). CCTV recordings are typically automatically overwritten after a short period of time unless an issue is identified that requires investigation (such as a theft)
In the unlikely event that you have an accident on our premises we will also collect details of the accident in order to comply with relevant health and safety legislation.
We collect personal information concerning our own personnel as part of the administration and management of our business activities. If you are an employee, contractor, consultant or freelancer, you should refer to the HR Privacy Notice available on the company intranet or otherwise provided to you.
When applying for a role with us , applicants should refer to the information made available when applying for the job and our Recruitment Privacy Notice which is available here. [Insert Link to recruitment Privacy Notice]
Sharing your personal information
We may share your personal information with selected third parties, although it is likely that the exact identity of the third parties with whom we share your personal information will change during your relationship with us. Depending on that relationship, it is anticipated that your personal information will be disclosed to the following categories of third parties:
- Third parties who provide data processing and IT services to us including website hosting providers, data back-up, security and storage providers and cloud-based software providers.
- Other third party service providers who help us run and improve our business. For example providers of email services, marketing services, survey and market research providers, and providers of fulfilment and postal services.
- Other companies which are related to us through common ownership who provide IT and system administration services and undertake group level reporting.
- Professional advisors such as external lawyers, external auditors, insurance or tax consultants and claims handlers.
- Third parties with whom we may choose to sell, transfer or merge parts of our business or our assets.
- Any other third parties (including regulatory authorities, the police, courts and government agencies) where necessary to enable us to enforce or protect our legal rights, or where such disclosure may be permitted or required by law.
The legal reasons for using your personal information
When we collect and use your personal information, we only do so in accordance with at least one of the legal reasons allowed by Data Protection Law.
One of these reasons is where we have obtained your specific consent to use your personal information, such as when our subscribers to our consumer newsletter consent to receiving email marketing communications from us.
Another is when we need to use your information to perform the contract we have entered into with you, such as when we use personal information to pay our suppliers.
Another is where using your information is necessary to comply with a legal obligation. For instance, where we are ordered by a court or regulatory authority to disclose your personal information.
In certain circumstances we may collect and use personal information where this is necessary in our legitimate interests or the legitimate interests of a third party. This broadly means that we can use your personal information if we have a genuine legitimate reason and we are not harming your rights and interests in doing so.
Some examples of our legitimate interests include:
- Promoting our books and growing our business. For example when we provide you with information that we think will be of interest about us and our books.
- Evaluating and improving our business, products and service. For example when we ask people to review our books and collect information about how users interact with our website and e-mails.
- Protecting against fraud and other risks to our business, for example when we collect personal information in the course of carrying out due diligence on our suppliers.
- Ensuring network and information security and the security of our premises, for example, when we use CCTV at our premises.
Whenever we process your personal information based on our “legitimate interests” we make sure that we take into account your rights and interests and will not process your personal information if we feel that there is an imbalance between your rights and interests and ours.
Where we store your personal information
Neon Squid is based in the UK, but we are part of a global publishing group and we also use third party service providers located in other countries to help us run our business. As a result of this we may transfer personal information of individuals located within the European Economic Area (the European Economic Area being the European Union and Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway, which is also referred to as the “EEA”) outside of the EEA and may also transfer personal information of individuals located within the UK outside of the UK.
Countries outside of the EEA and the UK may not have data protection laws that provide the same level of protection as those within the EEA and the UK and so whenever we transfer your personal information outside the EEA or the UK, we take steps to ensure that all personal information is protected with adequate safeguards, such as by entering into approved standard contractual clauses.
Please contact us if you would like further information on the specific mechanism we use when transferring your personal information out of the EEA or the UK or wish to request a copy of the relevant safeguards which we have put in place.
How we keep your personal information safe
We take looking after your information very seriously. We have implemented appropriate physical, technical and organisational measures to protect the personal information we have under our control, both on and off-line, to protect it from improper access, use, disclosure, alteration, destruction and loss.
We have also put in place procedures to deal with any suspected data breach and will notify you and any applicable regulator of a breach where we are legally required to do so.
How long we hold your personal information
We will retain your personal information for as long as is necessary for each purpose which we use it for. We take a number of factors into account when determining the appropriate retention period for personal information, including the nature of the data, the business purposes for which it was collected, any legal or contractual obligations which require us to retain it, whether retention is necessary for the purpose of exercising or defending our legal rights and whether we are permitted to retain it for the purposes of literary expression or archiving.
We operate a Personal Data Retention and Disposal Policy. Please contact us if you would like to be provided with the details of the retention periods for specific aspects of your personal information.
In some circumstances we may anonymise your personal information so that it can no longer be associated with you, in which case we may use such information without further notice to you.
Links to other websites
Our website may contain links to other websites, for example to enable you to “click to buy” our books from third party retailers. Please be aware that this Privacy Notice does not apply to such websites and that we are not responsible for your information that third parties may collect through these websites. We encourage you to be aware of this when you leave our website, and to read the privacy and cookie policies of other sites that collect or use personal information.
Direct Marketing
If you would like to stop receiving marketing emails from us, you can unsubscribe at any time by following the “unsubscribe” link at the bottom of our emails.
If you no longer wish to receive our catalogues by post, please contact us and we will remove you from our distribution list. We do not pass customer data on to third parties for third party direct marketing purposes.
Your legal rights
You have various rights in law in respect of the personal information we hold about you which are set out in more detail below:
- Access: You have the right to request confirmation that we are holding your personal information and to access a copy of the personal information that we hold about you. This is known as a “data subject access request” and enables you to check that we are handling your personal information lawfully.
- Correction: You can ask us to change or complete any inaccurate or incomplete personal information we hold about you.
- Erasure: You can ask us to delete or remove your personal information where it is no longer necessary for us to use it, you have withdrawn consent, or where we have no lawful reason for keeping it.
- Objection: You can object to our processing of your personal information where we are relying on a legitimate interest if there is something about your particular situation which makes you believe it impacts on your fundamental rights and freedoms. You also have the right to object where we are processing your personal information for direct marketing purposes.
- Withdraw consent: If you have given us your consent to use personal information you can withdraw your consent at any time.
- Transfer: You can ask us to provide the personal information which you have provided to us back to you or to a third party in a structured, commonly used, electronic form, so it can be easily transferred.
- Restriction: You can ask us to suspend the processing of your personal information, for example if you want to establish its accuracy or where you have objected to our use of it.
If you wish to exercise any of these rights, you can do so by contacting us.
Please note that some of these rights only apply in certain circumstances and we may not be able to fulfil every request. If this is the case you will be notified of this at the time of your request. If you make a request we may require specific information from you to help us confirm your identity. This is to ensure that personal information is not disclosed to anyone who does not have the right to receive it.
If your personal information changes
It is important that the personal information which we hold about you is accurate and current. Please keep us informed if your personal information changes.
If you don’t provide us with your personal information
Where we need to collect personal information by law, or under the terms of a contract we have with you and you fail to provide that information when requested, we may not be able to perform our contract with you or we may be prevented from complying with our legal obligations.
Cookies
Our website uses cookies to distinguish you from other users of our site. This helps us to provide you with a good experience when you browse our website and also allows us to improve our site. For detailed information on the cookies we use and the purposes for which we use them see our Cookies Policy. [Insert Link to Cookies Policy]
Complaints
We hope that you won’t ever need to, but if you would like to complain about our use of your personal information, please contact us using the contact details set out below.
You also have the right to lodge a complaint with the competent data protection authority. If you are located in the UK the competent data protection authority is the Information Commissioner’s Office (“ICO”). For further information on your rights and how to complain to the ICO, please refer to the ICO website.
How to contact us
Macmillan Publishers International Limited is a company registered in England. Our company number is 02063302 and our registered office is at: Cromwell Place, Hampshire International Business Park, Lime Tree Way, Basingstoke, Hampshire, RG24 8YJ.
If you would like to stop receiving marketing emails from us, you can unsubscribe at any time by following the “unsubscribe” link at the bottom of our emails.
For further information about our privacy practices, to request to exercise any of your privacy rights described in this notice or to make a complaint please use the postal address of the Neon Squid office:
The Stables, 4 Crinan Street, London N1 9XW
or send an email to hello@neonsquidbooks.com
Updates to this Privacy Notice
We may make changes to this Privacy Notice from time to time. We will post any changes to on our website, or notify you of any material changes directly.
This Privacy Notice was last updated in November 2023.
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© Neon Squid 2023
