Privacy notice

Who we are

The Gruffalo website is operated by Pan Macmillan. Pan Macmillan is a UK-based book publisher and 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 UK 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 Gruffalo 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 business activities and 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 collect and how we collect it

We collect certain personal information when you choose to provide it 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 responses to our surveys and other market research.
Your entries into our competitions and promotions.
Your preferences in receiving marketing from us.
Information you provide when you attend an event or purchase a ticket to one of our events.
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. For example, if you sign up to one of our newsletters via the website of one of our promotional partners, they will provide us with your contact details and newsletter sign up preferences if you have agreed to this.
If you have purchased a ticket or signed up to attend one of our events we may be provided with your name and contact details by the ticketing company or by a third party which we are running the event in partnership with.
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.

We also collect some information about you automatically, for example:

When you visit our website we use technology such as cookies, pixel tags and web beacons to collect information about how you interact with our site. This information includes details about the date and times of your visits, the pages you have viewed, how long you have spent on those pages and the links you have clicked (including if you have “clicked to buy” one of our books from a third party retailer or have clicked from our site on to a social networking site).
When you sign up to our e-mail newsletters, we use similar technology to collect information about how you interact with our emails, including whether our emails are delivered to you and whether you open them, unsubscribe from them or click on any of the links which they contain.
We also use analytics tools on our website to collect anonymised and aggregated information about website visitors. This includes information about how our visitors navigate the site (including mouse movements and key presses) details of our visitor’s browsers, operating systems, device screen resolutions and screen sizes, internet protocol (IP) addresses, geographic locations, time zone settings and other technology on the devices they use to access our website. We use this information for analysis purposes and, unlike the other types of information we collect from our website visitors, it cannot be used to identify individuals.

How we use your personal information

We use the personal information we collect about you to:

To provide you with convenient and optimal access to this website.
To send you our email newsletters when you have opted-in to receiving them.
To enable you to participate in prize draws, competitions and other promotions.
To provide you with advertising about our books.
To carry out surveys and other market and consumer research, including aggregating and anonymising personal information for this purpose.
To administer, test, support and maintain this website, deal with enquiries or complaints about the website and provide customer support.
To communicate with you in connection with your requests and enquiries and about changes to our policies.
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, process any claims we receive in connection with our products, services or the website and enforce the usage terms of the website.

We use the information which we collect about how you interact with the website and our emails for the following purposes:

To provide you with personalised website content, marketing materials and advertisements. We do this by using methods which analyse the information which we hold about you and your activity on our site so that we can show you content which we think is most likely to be relevant to you. You can change your personalisation settings here. [Insert link to personalisation page]
To assess what website content is popular and perform analytics and analysis on how people are using our website and to evaluate people’s experience of our website.
To monitor the performance and effectiveness of our email marketing.
To assess whether you are still interested in receiving our email newsletters.
To assist us in diagnosing technical problems.
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.

Direct email marketing – how to unsubscribe

We will send you consumer marketing emails about our news, books and authors only where you have consented to receive them. You are free to withdraw this consent at any time and we will not send you our emails if you have withdrawn your consent. 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.

Advertising on social media sites

Where you have subscribed to our email newsletters, we may share your email address with social media sites in a secure format so that we can display adverts about our products on your social media pages and on the social media pages of other users who share common qualities (such as demographics and interests) with you. No data we hold about you is retained by the third party sites for this purpose.

Please note that the personalised advertising which you receive on social media sites is subject to the privacy choices that you have elected to make on those sites. If you don’t wish to be shown our adverts you can stop seeing them by updating your preferences on the relevant social media site.

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 Cookie Policy.

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 over time. It is anticipated that your personal information will be disclosed to the following categories of third parties:

Third parties with whom you have consented to us sharing your information, for example, if you consent to our sharing your information with specific third parties for marketing purposes.
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.
Our partners with whom we co-organise competitions, events and promotions.
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 is where we have obtained your specific consent to use your personal information, such as when our newsletter subscribers consent to receiving email marketing communications from us.

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, authors and illustrators and growing our business. An example of this is when we share data with social media sites for advertising purposes, provide personalised content on our website and in our marketing emails and enable participation in prize draws, competitions and promotions.
Evaluating and improving our business, products and service. For example when we carry out surveys and other market research and collect information about how users interact with our website and emails.
Protecting against fraud and other risks to our business.
Ensuring network and information security.

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

Pan Macmillan 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. For full details about how to get in touch with us see the “How to contact us” section below.

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. For full details about how to get in touch with us see the “How to contact us” section below.

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 contains 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.

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. We generally only process personal information on the basis of consent in the context of our consumer e-mail newsletters. 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.
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. For full details about how to get in touch with us see the “How to contact us” section below.

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.

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 (trading as Pan Macmillan) 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 Pan Macmillan office:

Pan Macmillan
The Smithson
6 Briset Street
London
EC1M 5NR
FAO: The Legal Team

or send an email to [email protected]

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 on 27th November 2023.

(Version 2.3)