HMD Publishing
Effective Date: November 2024 | Last Updated: October 2026
At HMD Publishing ("we," "us," or "our"), we are committed to protecting your privacy. This Privacy Policy explains how we collect, use, disclose, and safeguard your information when you visit our website hmdpublishing.com, use our services, or interact with us. Please read this Privacy Policy carefully. If you do not agree with the terms of this Privacy Policy, please do not access or use our services.
We may collect personal information that you voluntarily provide to us when you:
This information may include:
When you visit our website, we automatically collect certain information about your device and usage, including:
Our cookie banner offers three choices: Accept all cookies, Reject optional cookies and Manage preferences, where analytics and advertising can be allowed separately. Nothing optional runs until you choose. Your choice is stored on your device for up to 12 months (90 days for a choice made before 7 October 2026, which we then ask you to renew), after which we ask again. You can change it at any time from the Cookie settings link in the footer of every page or the control below.
To understand how many advert clicks become loaded pages, we count paid arrivals per day and campaign (for example "Reddit, editing campaign, 12 arrivals, 5 accepted advertising cookies"). These counts contain no identifiers, no click IDs and no information about any individual, are kept for 120 days, and involve nothing stored on your device. Our standard per-connection rate limiting, which protects every form and endpoint on this site, applies to this counting too.
We provide free and paid online tools — including our EPUB Validator, EPUB Fixer, and related publishing utilities. When you submit a file to one of these tools, we retain the file you upload and, where the tool produces one, the processed output file, together with related technical information such as the file name, file size, validation and repair results, your IP address, and your email address where you choose to provide one.
We retain this data to operate the tools, provide support, and test and improve the accuracy of our validation and repair technology. Retained files and their associated records are kept for up to 12 months and then automatically deleted, unless a longer period is needed to fulfil and support a paid order or is required by law. You may request earlier deletion of your files at any time — see "Your Rights and Choices" below.
If you request a free Book Formatting sample, we process the chapter you upload or a fixed copy of the Google Doc you share, along with your email address, selected formatting style, and the technical information needed to validate and fulfil the request. We use this material only to prepare, deliver, and support your sample, protect the service from abuse, and maintain an auditable fulfilment record.
The accepted chapter folder remains in active Google Drive storage for 30 calendar days from acceptance. We then move the folder to Google Drive trash, where it may remain recoverable for up to a further 30 days before permanent deletion.
A chapter you upload is also copied to our Dropbox, where our production team prepares your sample. That working copy is retained as part of our fulfilment record and is not covered by the 30-day Google Drive schedule above. If you share a Google Docs link instead of uploading a file, we record that link in our internal job system so the team can open your document; the link is retained with the job record rather than deleted on the same schedule.
You may request deletion of your chapter, your uploaded copy, or your shared link at any time by contacting us, subject to the short period needed to complete your request and any legal obligation that requires us to retain a limited record.
We operate software applications registered with Meta (Facebook, Instagram and Threads), X, LinkedIn, TikTok, Google (YouTube), Pinterest, Bluesky and Mastodon. We use them only to publish content to, and read performance statistics for, accounts owned by HMD Publishing Limited. They are not offered to the public, and we do not use them to sign you in or to contact you.
Through these applications we access the name, ID and profile of our own business accounts and pages, the posts we publish, and aggregate statistics for those posts (such as impressions, reach, likes, comments, shares, saves, clicks and views). Where a platform returns public comments or usernames attached to our posts, we use them only to measure engagement. We do not build profiles of individuals, sell this data, or use it for ad targeting. Access tokens are kept in encrypted secret storage, and post statistics are kept for up to 24 months and then deleted or aggregated.
Our use of each service follows that platform's developer terms. Our YouTube integration uses YouTube API Services: by interacting with it you agree to the YouTube Terms of Service, and Google's handling of data is described in the Google Privacy Policy. You can revoke our access to a Google account at any time from Google security settings, and to other platforms from their connected-apps settings.
To ask us to delete any data we hold from these platforms, follow our data deletion instructions.
When you send us an enquiry (a quote request, contact or reach-out form, call booking, chat with our website assistant, free sample or tool request, or newsletter sign-up), we save it as an enquiry record. The record holds your name, email address and phone number if you gave them, the answers you gave with the questions they answer, any files you sent us, and the date and time. We link your enquiries together so we can see that they came from the same person.
The record also holds where the enquiry came from: the website that referred you, the first page you landed on, the page you submitted from, and any campaign details in the link you followed. It holds your approximate location (country, region and city), worked out by our web host from your connection, and your time zone, read from your device. We do not store your IP address or your precise (GPS) location in the enquiry record.
If you click Accept on our cookie banner, the record may also hold the advertising click identifier from the advert you clicked (for example a Google, Meta, X or Reddit click ID). We use it to see which advert led to your enquiry. We delete it from the record within 90 days after the enquiry, or sooner when the original campaign capture expires. If you click Reject, or never answer the banner, we do not save click identifiers in our server enquiry record or send them to advertising tools. The record notes which cookie choice you had made and which version of this policy was shown.
Separately, we keep campaign details from the link you followed, including advertising click identifiers, in first-party storage on your device only after you choose Accept, for up to 90 days from the original capture. Reject removes that saved campaign. Campaign tags still accompany forms regardless of your choice. Opaque withdrawal controls may remain until the server acknowledges the request or the original campaign expires; they contain no campaign tags, email address or click identifiers.
We use this information to respond to you, to keep track of your enquiry, to see which of our marketing works, and to keep our forms and tools secure and reliable.
If you are on our email marketing lists, we also use the approximate location from your enquiry to tailor the emails we send you, for example to send them at a sensible time where you are. For this we use only your country and your time zone (a time zone's standard name often includes a city or region, such as "Europe/London"); we never use the region or city recorded with your enquiry.
We use the information we collect to:
We may share your information with trusted third-party service providers who assist us in operating our business, including:
These service providers are contractually obligated to protect your information and use it only for the purposes we specify.
We may disclose your information if required by law, court order, or government regulation, or to protect our rights, property, or safety, or that of our clients or others.
In the event of a merger, acquisition, or sale of assets, your information may be transferred to the acquiring entity.
With your cookie consent, we use the Reddit Pixel and Reddit Conversions API to measure page visits, successful enquiries, confirmed bookings and purchases from Reddit adverts. The pixel receives browser and page information, advertising cookie identifiers, an event identifier and, where relevant, the conversion value and currency. Automatic email and phone matching in the browser pixel are disabled. Reddit may also collect public page and product metadata.
For consented successful enquiries, bookings and purchases, our server sends Reddit an event identifier, your email address converted into a one-way code ("hash"), your IP address and browser type where available, and Reddit's click identifier where present. Purchase events include the order value and currency. We do not send your manuscript, message, name or phone number in these server events. Hashed email can still be matched to an account by Reddit. Our legal basis is your consent.
The pixel does not load until you accept cookies. Choosing Essential only, or leaving the banner unanswered, prevents server advertising events. Use the cookie preferences control and choose Essential only to withdraw consent. We clear saved advertising identifiers on your device and request withdrawal of linked identifiers and unsent events held by our server. If you are offline, we retry when you return online. We clear Reddit cookies and reload the page if its pixel has started, which may discard unsaved form entries. This control cannot recall events already sent or cancel a request already being sent to Reddit. Learn more in Reddit's Privacy Policy.
If you click Accept on our cookie banner, we use Meta's advertising tools, the Meta Pixel and the Meta Conversions API, to measure how well our Facebook and Instagram adverts work and to show them to people likely to find them useful. If you click Reject, or never answer the banner, we do not send Meta any events or information about what you do on our website.
With your consent, when you request a quote or free sample, book a call, or buy one of our services, we share the following with Meta Platforms Ireland Limited:
_fbp and _fbc), which tell Meta which advert or earlier visit brought you to us;Our legal basis is your consent. For collecting and sending this information, we and Meta Platforms Ireland Limited act as joint controllers. Meta's use of the information after it receives it is covered by Meta's own Privacy Policy (https://www.facebook.com/privacy/policy), and Meta may transfer it to Meta Platforms, Inc. in the United States.
You can withdraw your consent at any time. Use the change-cookie-preferences control below and choose Reject. This clears the saved campaign and requests withdrawal of our linked advertising identifiers. If you are offline, we retry when you return online. Events already sent to advertising platforms cannot be recalled by this control. You can also email info@hmdpublishing.com.
We share enquiry records with the tools that manage enquiries for us: our customer relationship management system (Attio, and a self-hosted system we are moving to, run on servers provided by DigitalOcean and protected by Cloudflare) and our assistant agent, an automated assistant that we run to read new enquiries and keep our CRM up to date. They receive what is in the enquiry record, including your name, contact details and answers, but advertising click identifiers are shared only with your consent through dedicated CRM attribution fields, and are not included in submission notes or routine assistant notifications. Our systems notify the agent when an enquiry arrives, and every time the agent or another approved system reads an enquiry, we log which system read it and when.
These tools act on our instructions and only for handling your enquiry and our relationship with you. Your information may be processed outside the UK and EEA, as described in section 7.
We implement appropriate technical and organizational measures to protect your personal information against unauthorized access, alteration, disclosure, or destruction. These measures include:
However, no method of transmission over the Internet or electronic storage is 100% secure. While we strive to protect your information, we cannot guarantee absolute security.
Under applicable data protection laws (including GDPR if you are in the EU/UK), you have the right to:
To exercise these rights, please contact us at info@hmdpublishing.com. We will respond to your request within 30 days.
You can also unsubscribe from marketing communications by clicking the unsubscribe link in our emails or contacting us directly.
We retain your personal information only for as long as necessary to fulfill the purposes outlined in this Privacy Policy, unless a longer retention period is required or permitted by law. When we no longer need your information, we will securely delete or anonymize it.
Files submitted to our online tools (see "Files Submitted to Our Online Tools" above) and their associated records are retained for up to 12 months before automatic deletion. Files relating to a paid service may be retained longer where needed to fulfil and support your order.
A chapter accepted for the free Book Formatting sample follows the separate 30-day active-storage and further 30-day provider-trash recovery period described in section 1.5. As explained in that section, the working copy held in our Dropbox and any Google Docs link you share are retained with the fulfilment record beyond that period until you ask us to delete them.
Enquiry records (see section 1.7) follow the general rule above: we keep them only for as long as we need them to respond to you, to provide and support any service you order, and to meet our legal obligations, and you can ask us to delete them at any time. The advertising click identifier, where we hold one, is deleted within 90 days after the enquiry, or sooner when the original campaign capture expires. The logs of which systems read enquiries, and of our notifications to the assistant agent, are kept for 12 months and then deleted.
Your information may be transferred to and processed in countries other than your country of residence. These countries may have different data protection laws. We ensure appropriate safeguards are in place to protect your information in accordance with this Privacy Policy and applicable laws.
Our services are not directed to individuals under the age of 18. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children. If you believe we have collected information from a child, please contact us immediately, and we will take steps to delete such information.
Our website may contain links to third-party websites or services. We are not responsible for the privacy practices or content of these third-party sites. We encourage you to review the privacy policies of any third-party sites you visit.
We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time to reflect changes in our practices or legal requirements. We will notify you of any material changes by posting the new Privacy Policy on this page and updating the "Last Updated" date. Your continued use of our services after such changes constitutes acceptance of the updated Privacy Policy.
HMD Publishing
Email: info@hmdpublishing.com
Phone: +44 7888 862764
Website: www.hmdpublishing.com
Business Hours:
Monday - Friday: 9:00 AM - 5:00 PM GMT
QUESTIONS OR CONCERNS?
If you have any questions, concerns, or requests regarding this Privacy Policy or our data practices, please contact us using the information above. We are committed to addressing your privacy concerns promptly.
© 2025 HMD Publishing. All rights reserved.
This Privacy Policy is effective as of November 2024.