This privacy policy describes Tellwell Talent Inc.’s (“Tellwell”) policies and procedures on the collection, use, and disclosure of information when you use our services, and explains your privacy rights. We use your personal information to contact you about your interest in Tellwell services and to deliver and monitor the services you have purchased from Tellwell.
We collect personally identifying information so that we can identify and contact you to make you aware of Tellwell services and regarding your interest in Tellwell services. If you have purchased products or services from Tellwell, we use your personal information to deliver those products and services as per our contract with you, to pay you royalties that you have earned, and to learn about your experiences with Tellwell. Such collected-data items include:
This data may be collected when you register for a service, when you fill out an online form, when you sign up to receive a newsletter or other communications, or during telephone or email conversations with Tellwell staff members.
We periodically conduct customer surveys to help us improve our services. Participation in surveys is voluntary. Information submitted to customer surveys or to staff may be used in promotional materials unless explicitly requested by you that we not do so.
We may collect data on website pages visited, so that we can monitor and improve our services based on webpage traffic volumes and usage patterns. We may collect:
Tellwell’s websites use browser cookies to track visits to analyze and improve our services, to manage sessions (logins and logouts), and to customize information presented to you. Cookies are small files stored on your device and managed by your browser. You can configure your browser to alert you to the use of cookies. You can also configure your browser to refuse cookies, but this may prevent some essential aspects of our services from working correctly.
Cookies can be “session cookies,” which are deleted when you close your web browser, or “persistent cookies” that remain on your device until you delete them from your browser. We use both types of cookies for the purposes set out below:
In addition to cookies, we may also use “web beacons,” such as small or transparent images in webpages or email messages, as a mechanism for tracking which pages have been visited or which emails have been opened.
Telephone conversations and online meetings may be recorded for quality assurance, service improvement, and training purposes. Before recording of a call is initiated, you will be notified by automated announcement or by your conversation partner, and you can decline to have the call recorded by immediately stating your preference. You have the right to request the deletion of your call recordings.
Tellwell uses your personal information for the following purposes:
A book published and distributed to booksellers by Tellwell becomes, by definition, available to anyone in the general public who purchases the book. Your name is usually listed as the author of the book, unless you elect to use a fictional pen name instead. It is your responsibility as the author of a book to ensure that your book does not include private or sensitive personal information about yourself or others that could cause harm to yourself or others.
We may share or disclose your personal information to other parties in the following situations:
Outside of the above required purposes, we will not sell, trade, or otherwise transfer your personally identifiable information to other parties (for example: for promotional, marketing, or research purposes) without your explicit informed consent.
If the company is involved in a corporate merger, acquisition, or sale, we will provide notice before your personal information is transferred and becomes subject to a different privacy policy.
Tellwell employs staff in multiple countries, and during the course of a publishing project, your personal information may be accessed and processed by staff members in a country other than your own.
We also store and process personal information using applications that run on secure computer servers provided by our cloud services vendor. These servers are located in the United States and/or Canada, and these applications and servers communicate electronically with third-party service providers to facilitate operations such as processing credit card payments, issuing royalty payments, or sending you automated email or SMS messages. These third-party service providers may operate computing infrastructure located in different countries.
All information processed by us may be transferred, processed, and stored anywhere in the world, including but not limited to, Canada, the United States, Australia, England, Ireland, the Philippines, and other countries which may have data-protection laws that are different from the laws where you live. Your consent to this privacy policy represents your agreement to such transfers, processing, and storage of data.
We endeavor to safeguard your information consistent with the requirements of applicable laws. Tellwell will not transfer your personal data to an organization or a country unless there are adequate controls in place, including contractual means where appropriate, for the security of your data.
Under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), personal information may be transferred from the European Economic Area (EEA) to outside the EEA if adequate data protection laws are in place. Tellwell’s headquarters are located in Canada. The European Commission (EC) considers Canada to be a country with adequate data protection laws. Your personal information may therefore be transferred from the EEA to Canada. We rely on the GDPR standard contractual clauses for transfers of data to third parties in the United States and other countries not currently included in the EC’s list of “secure third countries”.
Tellwell will retain your personal data only for as long as you use our services or as necessary for the purposes set out in this privacy policy. We will retain and use your personal data to the extent necessary to comply with our legal obligations, to resolve disputes, and enforce our legal agreements and policies.
Tellwell will also retain usage data for internal purposes. Usage data is generally retained for a shorter period of time, except when this is used to strengthen the security or to improve the functionality of our services, or we are legally obligated to retain this data for longer time periods.
Our websites and systems implement industry-standard security measures, including encrypted data communications and storage.
Your personal information is contained behind secured networks and is intended to only be accessible by a limited number of authorized persons who have special access rights and are required to keep the information confidential.
All payment transactions are processed securely through a payment processor. Tellwell does not store or process credit card numbers in its systems.
The security of your personal data is extremely important to us, but no method of electronic storage or transmission of data is 100% secure. While we strive to use every commercially acceptable means to protect your personal data, we cannot guarantee its absolute security.
Having correct and up-to-date data on file is important for us to be able to contact you, deliver your services, and issue timely royalty payments.
You are welcome to notify your Tellwell Project Manager, Publishing Consultant, or any other Tellwell staff member in writing if you would like to make any changes to your personal information (including your name, address, contact information, payment preferences, and any other details), and we will be happy to update our records. You can also update this information yourself in Tellwell’s Octavo self-service portal and we encourage you to periodically check and update your information.
If we become aware of any personal information that appears to be incorrect in Tellwell’s records while you are under an active publishing agreement with Tellwell, we will make our best efforts to contact you to correct the situation.
We may process personal data under the following conditions:
Tellwell undertakes to respect the confidentiality of your personal data and to guarantee that you can exercise your rights.
You have the right to:
You may exercise your rights by contacting us with your request. We may ask you to verify your identity before responding to such requests. If you make a request, we will make our best efforts to respond to you as soon as possible, and no later than 30 days after you submit the request. Our Privacy Officer, or an assigned delegate if the Privacy Officer is not available, will review your request and assign it to an appropriate staff member.
If you are located in the European Economic Area, Switzerland, or the United Kingdom, you have the right to lodge a complaint with your jurisdiction’s Data Protection Authority about our collection and use of your personal data.
In Canada, you have the right to contact the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada if you believe your personal data has been mishandled and if we have not responded adequately to your requests.
Some internet browsers include an option to set a Do Not Track (DNT) signal. Uniform standards for DNT signals have not been established and adopted, so while some of our online services may make efforts to suppress advertisements or omit registering cookies in the presence of a DNT signal, we do not make any guarantees that all of our online services respond to DNT signals. We are continuing to monitor developments towards the establishment of a standard.
A link to this privacy policy is prominently visible on the front page of Tellwell’s websites. Upon purchasing services from Tellwell, customers are required to explicitly agree to the Terms of Service, of which this privacy policy is a constituent part. Acceptance of the Terms of Service is required to receive access to the Octavo portal and before Tellwell will begin work on the deliverables of a publishing project.
We may collect your email address in order to:
We agree to:
If at any time you would like to unsubscribe from receiving newsletters or promotional emails, you can follow the instructions at the bottom of any such email to opt out, or you can contact us.
If you have purchased services from Tellwell, the use of email communication will be necessary to complete your publishing project and to notify you of royalties earned. If you have concerns about such email communications, please contact us.
Tellwell does not market its services to minors, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from minors without consent of a parent or guardian. If you are under the age of 18, you may only purchase and use Tellwell’s services with the consent and under the supervision of a responsible adult.
Our service may contain links that redirect you to third-party websites that are not operated by us. We have no control over and assume no responsibility for the content, privacy policies, or practices of any third-party sites or services.
In the event of a data breach event involving the inappropriate disclosure or misuse of any personal information stored by Tellwell, we will notify affected customers and users via email, and additionally by other means if appropriate, within 7 business days of Tellwell becoming aware of the breach.
We may revise this privacy policy from time to time. Whenever we materially update this policy, we will notify you by email and/or in-application notifications in the Octavo portal, and we will ask again for your explicit consent.
If you have any questions about our this privacy policy or our privacy practices, or if you wish to submit a request to exercise any of your rights as detailed in this privacy policy, please contact us:
| Email: | [email protected] |
| Postal mail: |
Tellwell Talent, Inc. c/o Privacy Officer #201 1028 Fort St. Victoria, BC, Canada V8V 3K4 |
If you are a Tellwell customer and you simply wish to update or correct any personal information Tellwell has on file (such as a change of your name or address), you are also welcome to contact your Project Manager or Publishing Consultant.