Legal

Privacy & Cookies

Last updated 6 August 2026

This policy explains how Simms and Farrell Publishing Limited (“S&F Publishing”, “we”, “us”) collects and uses personal information when you visit simmsandfarrellpublishing.com, sign up to our newsletter, or get in touch. We are the data controller for that information, and we handle it in line with UK data-protection law (the UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018).

We are registered in England and Wales under company number 17384242,with our registered office at 128 City Road, London, EC1V 2NX, United Kingdom. For anything about your data, email privacy@simmsandfarrellpublishing.com — that reaches us faster than the post.

What we collect

Newsletter sign-ups: the email address you give us.
Contact enquiries: your name, email address, and whatever you write in your message.
If you create an account: your email address, your name if you give one, a scrambled version of your password (we never store the password itself, and cannot see it), whether you have confirmed your email address, and whether you asked us to send you marketing emails.
Things you save to your account: the books on your wishlist, and any delivery addresses you add — the recipient’s name, the address itself, and a phone number if you give one. You choose whether to add an address at all.
If you buy a book from us: what you ordered and what you paid, the email address for the order, and the delivery details you give us — the recipient’s name, the address, and a phone number if you add one. We never see your card details; see Who we share it with below.
Sign-in security records: we keep a short-lived record of failed sign-in attempts (the email address tried and the IP address it came from) so that we can stop someone repeatedly guessing at passwords.
Basic technical data: like any website, our hosting provider processes standard request information (such as your IP address and browser type) to serve pages and keep the site secure. We do not use this to build a profile of you.

How we use it

To send you our newsletter, if you have asked us to — and to let you unsubscribe whenever you like.
To read and reply to messages you send us.
To keep the website running, secure, and working properly.
If you have an account: to sign you in, to confirm your email address is really yours, to let you reset a forgotten password, and to remember the books and delivery addresses you have saved.
To send you news about new releases and offers, but only if you ticked that box when you signed up.
To take payment for an order, get it to you, and keep a record of the sale as we are required to.

Our lawful bases are your consent (for the newsletter and for marketing emails, both of which you can withdraw at any time), the performance of a contract with you (running your account, holding the details you save to it, and fulfilling any order you place), our legal obligations (keeping records of sales), and our legitimate interests in responding to enquiries and running a secure website — which includes the sign-in security records described above.

If you have an account, you can do most of this yourself from your account settings: change your name, turn marketing emails on or off, change the email address you sign in with, change your password, download a copy of your data, or delete your account. You do not need to ask us, and you do not need to give a reason.

Cookies & similar technologies

We do not use advertising or third-party tracking cookies. We use Cloudflare Web Analytics to count page visits — it is cookieless, does not track you across other websites, and does not build a profile of you; it only tells us in aggregate which pages are being read. We use a small amount of your browser’s local storage to remember whether you have already seen the site’s intro animation, so we don’t replay it every visit — and, if you save a book while signed out, to remember that wishlist on your device until you sign in.

Separately, we keep a first-party record of a few specific actions on the site — clicking through to a retailer, adding a book to your basket, asking for a stock alert, and signing up from a book page — together with the IP address they came from, for up to 90 days. This is not shared with or built from any third party; it exists so we can see what content and actions on the site are actually working, not to build a profile of you individually.

We set a strictly-necessary session cookie when you sign in — one for readers with an account, and a separate one for staff using the private admin area. They are what keep you signed in, they are not used for tracking or advertising, and neither is set for someone who is simply reading the site. Signing out clears yours immediately.

There is one more strictly-necessary cookie, and it is set without signing in: if you put a book in your basket, we set sf_cart_id so that the basket is still there when you come back. It holds nothing but a random identifier for that basket — no name, no email, nothing about you — and it lasts 90 days. It is not set unless you add something to a basket, and it is cleared when your order completes. Like the sign-in cookies, it is there to make something you asked for work, which is why none of these need a consent banner.

Who we share it with

We do not sell your personal information. We share it only with the trusted providers that help us run the site, and only so far as they need it to do so — principally our hosting and infrastructure provider (Cloudflare) and the email service we use to deliver the newsletter and handle enquiries. These providers act on our instructions as our processors.

Payments are taken by Stripe. When you pay, your card details are entered on Stripe’s own secure checkout — they never reach us, and we could not store your card number even if we wanted to. Stripe tells us that a payment succeeded and gives us a reference for it; we give Stripe the amount and the email address for the order. Stripe is an independent controller of the payment data it holds, and its own privacy policy covers that.

Where your data is held

Our database and uploaded media are configured to be stored within the European Union. Where any data is transferred outside the UK or EEA, it is protected by appropriate safeguards such as the UK International Data Transfer Agreement or equivalent standard contractual clauses.

How long we keep it

We keep newsletter sign-ups until you unsubscribe or ask us to remove you. We keep contact messages for as long as we need them to deal with your enquiry and for a reasonable period afterwards, then delete them. If you have an account, we keep it — and the wishlist and addresses saved to it — until you close it, and we delete it when you do. Links we email you for confirming an address or resetting a password stop working within hours, and sign-in security records are short-lived by design.

Past orders are the one exception, and we would rather say so plainly. A record of a sale is a financial record and UK tax and accounting law requires us to keep it, so deleting your account does not delete your orders — it anonymises them. Your name, email address, delivery address and phone number are overwritten on those records at the moment you delete the account, and what remains is which books were sold, for how much, and when. Nothing that is left points back to you.

Your rights

You have the right to ask us for a copy of the personal data we hold about you, to correct it, to have it deleted, and to object to or restrict how we use it. You can unsubscribe from the newsletter at any time using the link in any email or by contacting us. To make any of these requests, email us at privacy@simmsandfarrellpublishing.com.

For most of these you do not need to email at all: your account settings will download a copy of your data, correct your name or email address, change your marketing choice, and delete your account outright. Email us for anything that page does not cover, or if you would simply rather we did it.

If you are unhappy with how we have handled your data, you can complain to the UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) at ico.org.uk, though we’d appreciate the chance to put things right first.

Changes to this policy

We may update this policy from time to time. When we do, we’ll change the “last updated” date at the top of this page.

Contact

Questions about this policy or your data? Email privacy@simmsandfarrellpublishing.com, or use our contact page.