Privacy Policy

Cohort North Publications is committed to protecting your personal data and being transparent about how we use it. This policy explains what data we collect, why we collect it, and your rights under UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018.

Cohort North Publications is the data controller for the purposes of this policy. We are based in Northumberland, England.

What Data We Collect

We collect personal data only when you voluntarily provide it to us: through our contact form, the message form on an author's page, our newsletter signup, or when you buy an ebook or a printed book from us. This data consists of your name, your email address and, for a message, what you wrote; for a printed book, also the address we post it to. With a message we also note the internet address and browser it came from, to help us stop spam.

Why We Collect It

We use your name and email address for the following purposes only:

Contact form submissions are used solely to respond to your enquiry. A message sent from an author's page is passed to that author by email, so that they can reply to you directly. Newsletter signups are used to send you occasional updates about Cohort North Publications, such as new title announcements and news. We will never use your data for any other purpose.

Our Newsletter

Our newsletter brings news of new books and events from Cohort North Publications, a few times a year. When you sign up you are added to the list straight away. We keep your email address, your name if you gave one, and when you signed up, so we can show that you asked to hear from us. We use your name only to greet you in our emails, and your email address only to send you our news.

The list is kept on our own server in the United Kingdom. The emails themselves are sent for us by Amazon Web Services from its Stockholm region in the European Union, which UK law recognises as protecting personal data adequately; Amazon handles them only to deliver them. We do not track whether you open our emails or which links you choose.

Every newsletter has an unsubscribe link, so you can leave at any time. The same link lets you download or delete everything we hold about you.

Messages

Messages from our contact form and from authors' pages are saved on our website's database and emailed to whoever should answer them: messages to us go to our own inbox, and a message to an author goes to that author. These emails are sent from our own mailbox at no-reply@cohortnorthportal.com, hosted by Hostinger, and use your email address as the reply address, so a reply comes straight to you.

Buying an Ebook

When you buy an ebook from our website, you pay on a secure page run by Stripe, which handles your card details; we never see them. Stripe tells us your email address, the name on the card, and the country of your card and billing address, which we need to check that we are allowed to sell to you (we cannot sell ebooks to buyers in the European Union).

We keep a record of each sale: your email address and name, the countries, what you bought, the amount, an order number, and when your ebook was emailed and downloaded. Each download is logged with the internet address and browser it came from, so we can help if a download goes wrong and stop a link being shared. Your ebook is made just for you on our own server in the UK: it carries your email address and order number, and is deleted from our server 45 days after the sale.

At a market stall, you pay us in cash or by card on our card reader (run by Square), and we type your name and email address into our website so your ebook can be emailed to you. The sale is then kept in the same way as one made online, along with how you paid and which of us served you. As you have just bought from us, we also add you to Cohort North's newsletter and the author's, unless you tell us not to. Your ebook email says so, and every newsletter has a link to leave.

Online, the tick boxes for newsletters are never ticked for you. If you tick one, we add your email address to that list after you have paid, and every newsletter has a link to leave. Leah Cherie Wilkinson's newsletter is run by us as well, under this policy.

Buying a Printed Book

Our authors sell signed printed books on their own websites, starting with Leah Cherie Wilkinson's (lcwilkinson.com). We are the seller, and the data controller for those orders too. You pay on a secure page run by Stripe, which handles your card details; we never see them. Stripe tells us your name, your email address and the UK address you want the book posted to.

We keep a record of each order: your name, email address and delivery address, what you bought, any dedication you asked for, any discount code, the amount, an order number, and when it was posted. The author who signs and posts your book sees your name, email address, delivery address and dedication, and nothing else. We email you a confirmation and again when it is posted, with the tracking number if it has one. The tick box for the author's newsletter is never ticked for you.

How Long We Keep It

Messages from our contact form and from authors' pages are deleted from our website six months after they arrive; copies in our and our authors' inboxes are kept only as long as needed to deal with them. Newsletter subscriber data is kept until you unsubscribe or request deletion. After you unsubscribe we keep only your email address, marked as unsubscribed, so that you are never emailed again; ask us and we will delete that too. Sales records are kept for six years, as the law requires for our tax records; the internet addresses in the download log are deleted after six months. For printed books, your name, email address, delivery address and any dedication are deleted two years after the order, and only the amounts and what was bought are kept for the six years. We do not retain data beyond these purposes.

Third Parties

We do not share, sell, or pass your personal data to any third parties for their own use. A few services handle it on our behalf only: our website and the newsletter list run on servers we rent from Hostinger, our email is handled by Microsoft 365, Hostinger's mail service sends the emails for messages from our website, Stripe takes payments for ebooks and printed books, and Amazon Web Services (from its Stockholm region) delivers our order emails and our newsletter emails. A message you send to an author goes to that author, who is responsible for how they keep it.

Cookies

We use essential cookies only. These remember your cookie consent preference and are necessary for the website to function; your browser also remembers whether you folded the menu, and that you have seen our opening page. We do not use tracking, advertising, or analytics cookies. For full details please see our Cookie Policy.

Your Rights

Under UK GDPR you have the right to access the personal data we hold about you, to request correction of inaccurate data, and to request deletion of your data at any time. To exercise any of these rights please contact us at the address below and we will respond within 30 days.

This policy was last updated October 2026. We may update it from time to time and will publish any changes on this page.