Privacy notice
Last updated 3 November 2026
Book Countdown hosts advent calendars and countdowns for authors. This notice explains what happens to your details when you open a calendar, sign up to one, take part as an author, or run a calendar of your own.
Who we are
Book Countdown is run by The Author’s Bestiary Ltd, registered in Scotland, company no. SC906357. Registered office: The Old Library, Fort Road, Helensburgh, United Kingdom. Email [email protected].
Who is responsible for what
- Each calendar is run by its organiser. When you sign up to a calendar, you agree to join the newsletter of the organiser and of the authors named in the sign-up box (or, for some calendars, of the author whose door you open). They are responsible for how they use your email address in their newsletters. Their own privacy policy is linked at the bottom of the calendar.
- We run the service for them. We store sign-ups, show the calendar, send the reminder emails you ask for, and pass sign-ups on to the organiser and authors you agreed to. We only use your details to provide the calendar, never for our own marketing, and we never sell them.
- For organisers and authors who use Book Countdown, we are responsible for the details of your account. Purchases are covered by the Author’s Bestiary privacy notice.
What we store
If you open a calendar without signing up: nothing that identifies you. We count how often each door is opened and clicked, without linking that to a person.
If you sign up to a calendar:
- your email address and, if you give it, your first name
- your consent record: the exact wording you agreed to, the authors it names, and when you signed up (and when you confirmed your email, where that's needed)
- your IP address and browser type at the moment you signed up, as part of that consent record
- your reminder choice (none, daily or weekly) and time zone, so reminders arrive at a sensible hour
- which doors you opened, so the calendar can show them as opened
- if you came through an author's share link, which author brought you
If you take part as an author or run a calendar: your name, email address, website and privacy policy link (if you add them), what you put behind your doors, and the files you upload.
Who receives your details
- The organiser and the authors you agreed to can download their own new subscribers with the consent record, or have them added straight to their newsletter (Flodesk, Kit, Sender or EmailOctopus) if they connected one. Each author only ever gets the sign-ups that agreed to their newsletter.
- Cloudflare hosts Book Countdown (the database is kept in Western Europe) and checks sign-ups for bots (Turnstile).
- Resend sends the emails: reminders, sign-up confirmations and messages to authors and organisers.
Some of these providers are based in the United States, so your details may be processed outside the UK. They do so under contracts that protect your data to UK standards.
Why we're allowed to use your details
- Newsletter sign-ups and reminder emails: your consent, which you can withdraw at any time.
- Keeping the consent record: so the organiser and authors can show you agreed (a legal obligation and a legitimate interest).
- Running organiser and author accounts: to provide the service you asked for.
Cookies and storage
We use no advertising or tracking cookies and no analytics. We use a small cookie to keep you signed in to a calendar or to your organiser or author page. Your browser also remembers a few choices on your own device: a calendar's password if it has one, your 18+ confirmation, and your email address for door-by-door sign-ups.
How long we keep it
- Your sign-up is deleted automatically 15 months after the calendar’s last door (for most calendars, that’s 12 months after the calendar goes offline), or sooner if you delete it yourself or the organiser deletes the calendar. Door statistics are kept without your details.
- Copies of the emails we send are kept for 30 days, so we can look into problems, then deleted.
- On our demo calendars, sign-ups are pretend and deleted automatically within a day.
- Once you're on an organiser's or author's own newsletter list, their privacy policy applies to that list.
Your choices and rights
- Change your reminders or delete your sign-up at any time with Manage my sign-up at the bottom of the calendar, or the link in every reminder email. Deleting it removes your details from Book Countdown straight away.
- To leave an author's newsletter, use the unsubscribe link in their emails.
- You can ask us for a copy of your details, to correct them or to delete them: [email protected].
- If you're unhappy with how your details are handled, you can complain to the Information Commissioner's Office (ico.org.uk).