Privacy notice

This notice explains what happens to your information when you visit whisperingverse.com or subscribe to our newsletter, The Quiet Letter. We keep it short because we collect very little.

Who we are

Whispering Verse is an independent publishing house and literary site, and is responsible for the information described here. For anything about your data, write to info@whisperingverse.com.

What we collect, and why

When you subscribe to The Quiet Letter we store your email address, the date you subscribed, which form you used and, if you arrived from a link that carries one, the campaign label in that link (for example "utm_source=newsletter"). We use it for one thing: sending you the newsletter, about once a month, which includes news about Whispering Verse Studio (the writing workroom we are building) and an invitation when it opens, and knowing which pages bring readers to it. We do not sell it, rent it, or share it for anyone else's marketing.

When you write to us (for example to submit your work) we keep your email and what you send so we can reply and, for a manuscript, decide on it. Manuscripts are read only by the people deciding on them.

When you use one of our forms, Cloudflare Turnstile checks that a person, not a bot, is sending it. To do that it processes your IP address and signals from your browser.

When you browse the site our host keeps short-lived technical logs, such as your IP address and browser type, to deliver the pages and protect the site from abuse. We also use Cloudflare Web Analytics, which counts visits without cookies and without identifying you. None of this is used to identify you or to advertise to you.

Our legal basis

• The newsletter: your consent (GDPR Article 6(1)(a)). You can withdraw it at any time, and withdrawing does not affect what happened before.
• Replies, submissions and manuscripts: steps you ask us to take before a possible contract, and our legitimate interest in answering the people who write to us (Article 6(1)(b) and (f)).
• Technical logs, the anti-bot check and visit counts: our legitimate interest in running a secure, working website and knowing roughly how many people read it (Article 6(1)(f)). You can object to this; write to us.

Who helps us

• Cloudflare hosts the site, stores the subscriber list, runs the anti-bot check on our forms (Turnstile), counts visits (Web Analytics) and delivers our email.
• Google (Gmail) is the inbox where our email arrives.

Both act on our instructions under their data processing terms. If we start using a dedicated newsletter service, we will name it here before your address moves to it.

These providers may process data outside the UK and the European Economic Area, including in the United States. Where they do, the transfer relies on the EU–US Data Privacy Framework (and its UK extension), in which both companies take part, or on the European Commission's standard contractual clauses.

Cookies

This site does not set cookies for tracking or advertising. Turnstile may store what it needs to tell people from bots, only when you use a form. The fonts are hosted on our own site, so loading a page does not tell a font company about your visit.

How long we keep it

• Your newsletter address stays on our list until you unsubscribe or ask us to delete it. After an unsubscribe we keep only the address and the date, so that we never write to you again.
• Emails and manuscripts are kept only as long as we need them to reply, to decide, or to work with you.
• Hosting logs are kept by Cloudflare for a short time under its own retention rules, then deleted.

Your rights

You can ask us to show you what we hold about you, give you a copy, correct it, delete it, limit how we use it, or stop using it (including objecting to anything we do on the basis of legitimate interest). Every issue of The Quiet Letter will include an unsubscribe link, and you can also simply write to info@whisperingverse.com. We answer within one month. If you are unhappy with our reply, you may complain to the data protection authority where you live or work (in the UK, the Information Commissioner's Office).

Children

The Quiet Letter is meant for adults. We publish books for young readers, but we do not knowingly collect information from children under 16.

Changes

If this notice changes, we will update the date at the top of this page. Significant changes will also be mentioned in the newsletter.