Privacy

Who we are

Chapter Novels is a publisher of serialised fiction based in the United Kingdom, and is the data controller for the information described here.

Contact: chapternovels@gmail.com. Our registered details and postal address are available on request.

What we collect

A visitor number

On your first visit we store a random number in a cookie called vid, kept for a year. It is not your name and it is not linked to you as a person. It exists so that reading chapter 1 today and chapter 2 tomorrow counts as one reader rather than two.

What you read

We record which books and chapters are opened, roughly how far down a chapter people scroll, and which advert or link brought you here. This is stored against the visitor number above.

Your email address, if you give it

If you enter your email to follow a book, or if you subscribe, we store it.

Things kept only in your browser

Your place in each book, whether you have dismissed a prompt, and where you first arrived from are stored on your own device and never sent to us.

Payment details — which we never see

Card details are entered on Stripe’s own checkout page and are never sent to or stored by us. We receive only a customer reference, your email address, and whether the subscription is active.

Why we are allowed to

We handle your email address and subscription status because we need them to provide the subscription you paid for. We keep reading statistics because a small publisher cannot tell which books work without them — you can object to this, and we will stop. Where the law requires your consent, such as for non-essential cookies, we ask for it first.

Who else sees it

We do not sell your information, and we do not share it for anyone else’s advertising. It reaches these companies only so the site can function:

• Vercel — hosts the site and provides visitor statistics.
• Neon — runs the database the above is stored in.
• Stripe — takes payments and is the seller of record for your subscription. Stripe has its own privacy policy covering the card details you give it.

These providers may store data outside the UK. Where they do, they are required to protect it to UK standards.

How long we keep it

Reading statistics are kept for as long as they are useful for deciding what to publish next. Subscription records are kept for six years after your last payment, because tax law requires it. If you ask us to delete your email address we will, unless we still need it for that tax record.

What you can ask for

You can ask for a copy of what we hold about you, ask us to correct or delete it, or object to us using it. Email chapternovels@gmail.com and we will respond within one month.

If you are unhappy with how we have handled it, you can complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office at ico.org.uk.

Children

Chapter publishes romance written for adults and is not intended for under-16s. We do not knowingly collect information from them.