Privacy Policy

This page explains what personal data this website collects, why, and what your rights are. I only collect what I need to send my newsletter, reply to messages and keep the site running.

Who I am

This website (vclarkebooks.com) is run by the author V. Clarke, who is the data controller for personal data collected here. You can get in touch about anything on this page through the contact form.

What I collect and why

When you sign up to my newsletter, your email address (and your name, if you give it) is stored by my email provider, EmailOctopus. I use it to send you the free bonus novella and occasional emails about new releases, bonus content and other author news. The lawful basis is your consent. Every email has an unsubscribe link, and you can withdraw your consent at any time.

The sign-up form is provided by EmailOctopus and uses Google reCAPTCHA to stop spam sign-ups. reCAPTCHA sends information about your device and browser to Google, which may set its own cookies. Google's privacy policy is at policies.google.com/privacy.

Contact form

When you use the contact form, I collect your first and last name, email address and message, and use them only to reply to you. The lawful basis is my legitimate interest in answering messages from readers.

To protect the form from spam, your IP address is briefly recorded to limit how many messages can be sent in an hour, and messages are checked automatically. Messages that look like spam are discarded. The lawful basis is my legitimate interest in keeping the site secure.

Website statistics

I use two privacy-friendly analytics tools, Vercel Web Analytics and Umami, to see which pages people visit and which links they click, such as links to buy a book. Neither uses cookies or tracks you across other websites. They record things like the page, the site that referred you, your browser and device type and your approximate country. Your IP address is used briefly to count unique visitors but is not stored, and I only see totals. The lawful basis is my legitimate interest in understanding how the site is used.

Who handles your data

I use these service providers to run the site. They only use your data to provide their service to me:

EmailOctopus - newsletter sign-ups and emails
Vercel - website hosting and visitor statistics
Resend - delivers contact form messages to my inbox
Google (Gmail) - my email inbox, where messages are stored
Upstash - stores the short-lived spam-protection counter
Hall Web Design - my web developer, who maintains the site and runs the Umami analytics

Some of these providers are based in, or store data in, the United States or the EU. Where data leaves the UK, the transfer is covered by UK adequacy regulations, the UK-US data bridge or the provider's standard contractual clauses. I never sell your data or share it with anyone for their own marketing.

Cookies

This website does not set any cookies of its own for visitors. The only exception is a short-lived security cookie set when the site owner signs in to the content editor, which is deleted after sign-in and expires within 10 minutes regardless. The only third-party cookies are the ones Google reCAPTCHA may set on pages with the newsletter sign-up form (the home page and the newsletter page), to protect the form from spam. You can block or delete cookies in your browser settings.

Links to other websites

The site links to other websites, such as Amazon, Goodreads, BookFunnel, Spotify, Deezer, Instagram, Pinterest and BookBub. Those sites have their own privacy policies, and nothing is shared with them unless you click a link.

How long I keep your data

Newsletter: until you unsubscribe.
Contact messages: for as long as needed to deal with your message and any follow-up, then deleted. You can ask me to delete your message at any time.
The spam-protection record of your IP address is deleted after 1 hour.
Analytics are kept only as totals that don't identify you.

Your rights

Under UK data protection law, you have the right to:

access the personal data I hold about you
have inaccurate data corrected
have your data deleted
restrict how your data is used
object to processing based on legitimate interests
receive your data in a portable format
withdraw your consent to emails at any time

To use any of these rights, get in touch through the contact form. I'll reply within one month. If you're unhappy with how your data has been handled, you can complain to the Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk.

Changes to this policy

If I change this policy, I'll update the date at the top of this page.