Privacy policy

Privacy Policy

last updated: November 2025

1. Introduction 

This privacy notice provides you with details of how we collect and process your personal data through ordering books with TWH Press or using our website (www.twhpress.com). TWH Press is the publishing wing of The Writing House. 

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time, including to reflect changes to our practices or for other operational, legal, or regulatory reasons. We will post the revised Privacy Policy on the Site, update the "Last updated" date and take any other steps required by applicable law.

By providing us with your data, you warrant to us that you are over 13 years of age.

Locutions Limited (trading as TWH Press and The Writing House) is a joint controller and are therefore responsible for your personal data (referred to as “we”, “us” or “our” in this privacy notice).

Contact Details

Our full details are:

Full name of legal entity: Locutions Limited

Email address: team@twhpress.com

Postal address: Unit A St Andrews Court, Wellington Street, Thame, Oxfordshire, OX9 3WT

It is very important that the information we hold about you is accurate and up to date. Please let us know if at any time your personal information changes by emailing us at the above email address.

2.  Joint Controllers: How We Work with Authors

TWH Press and the authors who sell books through our platform are "joint controllers" of your personal data. This means we work together and share responsibility for protecting your information.

What we share: When you purchase a book, we share your name, email address, and the book title with that book's author.

Why we share it:

• To provide our core service of connecting readers with authors

What authors do with your information: Authors use your contact details to send you occasional updates about their books, business, writing events, and related content. 

Your rights: You can:

• Request a copy of the information we or the author holds about you
• Ask us to correct any mistakes
• Object to the data sharing or unsubscribe from author emails
• Request deletion of your information
• Contact either us or the author with any concerns

Our responsibilities:

TWH Press handles the initial collection and sharing of your data. We make sure authors understand their responsibilities before giving them access to customer information.

Author responsibilities:

Each author must keep your information secure, use it only for the purposes explained here, respect your rights, and delete your information if you ask them to.

 Joint Controller Arrangement:

For details of how we and authors divide responsibilities, contact team@twhpress.com.

3. What data do we collect about you, for what purpose and on what grounds do we process it. 

Personal data means any information capable of identifying an individual. It does not include anonymised data.

We may process the following categories of personal data about you:

• Communication Data that includes any communication that you send to us whether that be through the contact form on our website, through email, text, social media messaging, social media posting or any other communication that you send us. We process this data for the purposes of communicating with you, for record keeping and for the establishment, pursuance or defence of legal claims. Our lawful ground for this processing is our legitimate interests which in this case are to reply to communications sent to us, to keep records and to establish, pursue or defend legal claims.
•  Customer Data that includes data relating to any purchases of goods and/or services such as your name, title, billing address, delivery address email address, phone number, contact details, purchase details and your card details. We process this data to supply the goods and/or services you have purchased and to keep records of such transactions. Our lawful ground for this processing is the performance of a contract between you and us and/or taking steps at your request to enter into such a contract.
• User Data that includes data about how you use our website and any online services together with any data that you post for publication on our website or through other online services. We process this data to operate our website and ensure relevant content is provided to you, to ensure the security of our website, to maintain back- ups of our website and/or databases and to enable publication and administration of our website, other online services and business. Our lawful ground for this processing is our legitimate interests which in this case are to enable us to properly administer our website and our business.
•  Technical Data that includes data about your use of our website and online services such as your IP address, your login data, details about your browser, length of visit to pages on our website, page views and navigation paths, details about the number of times you use our website, time zone settings and other technology on the devices you use to access our website. The source of this data is from our analytics tracking system. We process this data to analyse your use of our website and other online services, to administer and protect our business and website, to deliver relevant website content and advertisements to you and to understand the effectiveness of our advertising. Our lawful ground for this processing is our legitimate interests which in this case are to enable us to properly administer our website and our business and to grow our business and to decide our marketing strategy.
• Marketing Data that includes data about your preferences in receiving marketing our third parties and your communication preferences. We process this data to enable the author of the book you purchased to contact you if you if you have requested this. The only data we will pass on to them is your name and email address. We would not pass on your address or telephone number. Our lawful ground for this processing is our legitimate interests which in this case is to connect the customer with the author of the book they have purchased when the customer requests it.

Information We Obtain from Third Parties

Finally, we may obtain information about you from third parties, including from vendors and service providers who may collect information on our behalf, such as:

• Companies who support our Site and Services, such as Shopify.
• Our payment processors, who collect payment information (e.g., bank account, credit or debit card information, billing address) to process your payment in order to fulfill your orders and provide you with products or services you have requested, in order to perform our contract with you.
• When you visit our Site, open or click on emails we send you, or interact with our Services or advertisements, we, or third parties we work with, may automatically collect certain information using online tracking technologies such as pixels, web beacons, software developer kits, third-party libraries, and cookies.

Any information we obtain from third parties will be treated in accordance with this Privacy Policy. We are not responsible or liable for the accuracy of the information provided to us by third parties and are not responsible for any third party's policies or practices. For more information, see the section below, Third Party Websites and Links.

Information We Collect through Cookies

We also automatically collect certain information about your interaction with the Services ("Usage Data"). To do this, we may use cookies, pixels and similar technologies ("Cookies"). Usage Data may include information about how you access and use our Site and your account, including device information, browser information, information about your network connection, your IP address and other information regarding your interaction with the Services.

Sensitive Data

We do not collect any Sensitive Data about you. Sensitive data refers to data that includes details about your race or ethnicity, religious or philosophical beliefs, sex life, sexual orientation, political opinions, trade union membership, information about your health and genetic and biometric data. We do not collect any information about criminal convictions and offences.

Where we are required to collect personal data by law, or under the terms of the contract between us and you do not provide us with that data when requested, we may not be able to perform the contract (for example, to deliver goods or services to you). If you don’t provide us with the requested data, we may have to cancel a product or service you have ordered but if we do, we will notify you at the time.

We will only use your personal data for a purpose it was collected for or a reasonably compatible purpose if necessary. For more information on this please email us at team@twhpress.com. In case we need to use your details for an unrelated new purpose we will let you know and explain the legal grounds for processing.

We may process your personal data without your knowledge or consent where this is required or permitted by law.

We do not carry out automated decision making or any type of automated profiling.

3. How we collect your personal data 

We may collect data about you by you providing the data directly to us (for example by filling in forms on our site, payment link or by sending us emails). We may automatically collect certain data from you as you use our website by using cookies and similar technologies. Please see our cookie policy for more details about this on this page.

We may receive data from third parties such as analytics providers such as Google based outside the UK and/or the EU, advertising networks such as Facebook based outside the UK and/or the EU, such as search information providers such as Google based outside the UK and/or the EU, providers of technical, payment and delivery services, such as data brokers or aggregators.

We may also receive data from publicly availably sources such as Companies House and the Electoral Register based inside or outside the UK and/or the EU.

4. Marketing communications  

Our lawful ground of processing your personal data to send you marketing communications is either your consent or our legitimate interests (namely to grow our business).

Under the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations, we may send you marketing communications from us if (i) you made a purchase or asked for information from us about our goods or services or (ii) you agreed to receive marketing communications and in each case you have not opted out of receiving such communications since. Under these regulations, if you are a limited company, we may send you marketing emails without your consent. However you can still opt out of receiving marketing emails from us at any time.

You can ask us or joint controller authors to stop sending you marketing messages at any time by following the opt-out links on any marketing message sent to you. If third party authors do not do this then email us at team@twhpress.com and we will contact the third party author to also request this. We have terms in our contract with them that they must stop sending marketing emails when requested or they will be in breach of their contract with us. 

If you opt out of receiving marketing communications this opt-out does not apply to personal data provided as a result of other transactions, such as purchases, warranty registrations etc. 

5. Disclosures of your personal data

We may have to share your personal data with the parties set out below:

• Service providers who provide IT and system administration services.
• With business and marketing partners, including Shopify, to provide services and advertise to you. For example, we use Shopify to support personalised advertising with third-party services. Our business and marketing partners will use your information in accordance with their own privacy notices.
• Professional advisers including lawyers, bankers, auditors and insurers
• Government bodies that require us to report processing activities.
• Third parties to whom we sell, transfer, or merge parts of our business or our assets.

We require all third parties to whom we transfer your data to respect the security of your personal data and to treat it in accordance with the law. We only allow such third parties to process your personal data for specified purposes and in accordance with our instructions.

6. Third Party Websites and Links

Our Site may provide links to websites or other online platforms operated by third parties. If you follow links to sites not affiliated or controlled by us, you should review their privacy and security policies and other terms and conditions. We do not guarantee and are not responsible for the privacy or security of such sites, including the accuracy, completeness, or reliability of information found on these sites. Information you provide on public or semi-public venues, including information you share on third-party social networking platforms may also be viewable by other users of the Services and/or users of those third-party platforms without limitation as to its use by us or by a third party. Our inclusion of such links does not, by itself, imply any endorsement of the content on such platforms or of their owners or operators, except as disclosed on the Servic

7. International Transfers

We are subject to the provisions of the UK General Data Protection Regulations that protect your personal data. Where we transfer your data to third parties outside of the UK, we will ensure that certain safeguards are in place to ensure a similar degree of security for your personal data. As such:

• We may transfer your personal data to countries that the relevant regulatory authorities in the United Kingdom have approved as providing an adequate level of protection for personal data by; or
•  If we use US-based providers that are part of a UK regulator approved privacy framework, we may transfer data to them, as they have equivalent safeguards in place; or
• Where we use certain service providers who are established outside of the UK, we may use specific contracts or codes of conduct or certification mechanisms approved by the United Kingdom regulators which give personal data the same protection it has in the UK.

If none of the above safeguards is available, we may request your explicit consent to the specific transfer. You will have the right to withdraw this consent at any time. 

 

8. Data Security 

We have put in place security measures to prevent your personal data from being accidentally lost, used, altered, disclosed, or accessed without authorisation. We also allow access to your personal data only to those employees and partners who have a business need to know such data. They will only process your personal data on our instructions and they must keep it confidential. 

We have procedures in place to deal with any suspected personal data breach and will notify you and any applicable regulator of a breach if we are legally required to.

 

9. Data retention

We will only retain your personal data for as long as necessary to fulfil the purposes we collected it for, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, accounting, or reporting requirements.

When deciding what the correct time is to keep the data for we look at its amount, nature and sensitivity, potential risk of harm from unauthorised use or disclosure, the processing purposes, if these can be achieved by other means and legal requirements.

For tax purposes the law requires us to keep basic information about our customers (including Contact, Identity, Financial and Transaction Data) for six years after they stop being customers.

In some circumstances we may anonymise your personal data for research or statistical purposes in which case we may use this information indefinitely without further notice to you.

Please be aware that no security measures are perfect or impenetrable, and we cannot guarantee “perfect security.” In addition, any information you send to us may not be secure while in transit. We recommend that you do not use unsecure channels to communicate sensitive or confidential information to us.

 

10. You legal rights 

Under data protection laws you have rights in relation to your personal data that include the right to request access, correction, erasure, restriction, transfer, to object to processing, to portability of data and (where the lawful ground of processing is consent) to withdraw consent.

You also have the right to opt out of Sale or Sharing or Targeted Advertising. You may have a right to direct us not to "sell" or "share" your personal information or to opt out of the processing of your personal information for purposes considered to be "targeted advertising", as defined in applicable privacy laws. Please note that if you visit our Site with the Global Privacy Control opt-out preference signal enabled, depending on where you are, we will automatically treat this as a request to opt-out of the "sale" or "sharing" of information for the device and browser that you use to visit the Site.

We use Shopify's ad services such as Shopify Audiences to help personalize the advertising you see on third party websites. To restrict Shopify merchants that use these ad services from using your personal information for such services, visit https://privacy.shopify.com/en.

If you are within the UK, you can see more about your general rights regarding data protection at: 

https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guide-to-the-general-data-protection-regulation-gdpr/individual-rights/ If you wish to exercise any of the rights set out above, please email us at the email address at the top of this section.

You will not have to pay a fee to access your personal data (or to exercise any of the other rights). However, we may charge a reasonable fee if your request is clearly unfounded, repetitive or excessive or refuse to comply with your request in these circumstances.

We may need to request specific information from you to help us confirm your identity and ensure your right to access your personal data (or to exercise any of your other rights). This is a security measure to ensure that personal data is not disclosed to any person who has no right to receive it. We may also contact you to ask you for further information in relation to your request to speed up our response.

We try to respond to all legitimate requests within one month. Occasionally it may take us longer than a month if your request is particularly complex or you have made a number of requests. In this case, we will notify you.

If you are within the UK and are not happy with any aspect of how we collect and use your data, you have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), the UK supervisory authority for data protection issues (www.ico.org.uk). We should be grateful if you would contact us first if you do have a complaint so that we can try to resolve it for you. 

If you are within the EU and are not happy with any aspect of how we collect and use your data, you have the right to complain to the data protection authority of the country in which you are based. We should be grateful if you would contact us first if you do have a complaint so that we can try to resolve it for you.

 

11. Third-party links 

This website may include links to third-party websites, plug-ins and applications. Clicking on those links or enabling those connections may allow third parties to collect or share data about you. We do not control these third-party websites and are not responsible for their privacy statements. When you leave our website, we encourage you to read the privacy notice of every website you visit.

 

Cookies

Like many websites, we use Cookies on our Site. For specific information about the Cookies that we use related to powering our store with Shopify, see https://www.shopify.com/legal/cookies. We use Cookies to power and improve our Site and our Services (including to remember your actions and preferences), to run analytics and better understand user interaction with the Services (in our legitimate interests to administer, improve and optimize the Services). We may also permit third parties and services providers to use Cookies on our Site to better tailor the services, products and advertising on our Site and other websites.

Most browsers automatically accept Cookies by default, but you can choose to set your browser to remove or reject Cookies through your browser controls. Please keep in mind that removing or blocking Cookies can negatively impact your user experience and may cause some of the Services, including certain features and general functionality, to work incorrectly or no longer be available. Additionally, blocking Cookies may not completely prevent how we share information with third parties such as our advertising partners.