BOOK COACH & AUTHOR MENTOR
Privacy Policy for Portia Holdsworth, Book Coach and Author Mentor
contact details (02/03/2024)
Founder Name: Portia Holdsworth
Website: www.peholdsworth.com​
E-mail: peholdsworth@gmail.com
The processing of your data and sharing with other team members is essential for us to undertake our work to help you in your creative process and for us to help you support your own creative well-being. Portia and the team believe in the work we do to help writers, creative people and artists. As such, we use some of the data we collect to reach, help, support and inspire people through the work we do including on various online, audio recorded and in-print platforms. We keep your electronic data secure in a password protected file where possible, and any paper data in a locked area. When it comes to sharing any information for marketing, teaching or inspiration purposes we anonymise or give a pseudonym, where it is possible and reasonable to do so – however if you become a best-selling author or have other beautiful and happy successes after our work together you can assume we will be shouting your name from the roof tops and encouraging others to buy your books!
Rest assured though, that pre or post achieving your writerly dreams, we will always be governed by the understanding that it is a privilege that you are openly sharing your inner-world with us and will aim to never divulge information of a sensitive and identifiable nature.
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We also will never share the specific details of your unpublished plots and book ideas with anyone outside of our team!
The type of personal information we collect
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We currently collect and process the following information:
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Your full name, pen name (if applicable) and contact details (your phone number, address or location if given, email address, and phone number).
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Notes about the writing project/s you are working on (including plot), your relationship to it and the writing process, and your personal, professional and creative goals/dreams.
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Dates and times of your sessions.
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Financial and payment information regarding monies owed or paid to us.
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Any submitted materials from or pertaining to your writing project such as synopsis, blurb, summary, pages of your manuscript, query letter etc.
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Information pertaining to your personal situation, health and circumstances where it is relevant to your life as a writer, for instance your status as a single mother, or the name of the chronic health condition you live with, or your neurodivergence.
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Details about your writing history and career to date, as well as information about your other accolades and job roles both pertaining to writing, professional pursuits, non-professional pursuits and also information regarding other careers/job titles you may now hold or have previously held.
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Notes, made by us from sessions or conversations we have with you, that may pertain to your mental health, life experiences, thoughts and feelings surrounding your creative life, writing project, self and world views. This includes information collected on our client session documents which may be shared with other members of our team including those who are third-party contractors/self-employed to work alongside Portia.
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Your schema for creativity questionnaire results and answers.
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Any emails, voice messages, Whatsapp messages, or Instagram messages or other social media communication we receive from yourself.
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The information you submitted on your initial enquiry form and in our initial discussions to see if working together was right for you and your project/creative journey.
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Testimonials, reviews and feedback from you given directly to us or obtained indirectly via sources such as your social media pages.
How we get the personal information and why we have it
Most of the personal information we process is provided to us directly by you during the enquiry and sign-up stage, or during our work together. This is collected both within sessions and from any contact had with you in-between sessions.
We also receive personal information indirectly, from the following sources in the following scenarios:
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From your social media channels, personal webpage, and general web presence, as well as via podcasts, newsletters and blogs. Also newspapers and magazines (both in print and online) and other events you are involved in.
We use the information that you have given us or that we receive indirectly in order to help undertake our work with you and to ensure you are supported by our full team to the best of our abilities (sometimes this means sharing data we have about you between our team members or contractors).
We may also use the information that you have given us or that we receive indirectly, for our own promotional tools and marketing for Portia Holdsworth's services aimed at writers, creators, readers and other clients, and for our partner companies/freelance roles of all members of our team now and in the future, and as testimonial from yourself. Where this is the case we will always make reasonable effort to ask further permission from yourself to share this information if your name is attached to it, giving you the choice for it to be shared with a pseudonym.
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We may share this information with our social media following on Instagram, Twitter, Tiktok, podcasts, BeReal, Youtube, Facebook, Substack, other social media and media sites, and via our own website, newsletters, blogs and email lists for our own marketing and to share learning tools and discuss the subject of writing and its complexities with others including a wider audience. It may be used for teaching resources, talks, or case examples as part of Portia Holdsworth's current or future enterprises including the Centre for Novels in Progress, or in our individual work, talks and appearances. Where this is the case, we will do our best to anonymise the information so that it does not directly pertain to your personal information unless we have your express permission to share personal identifiers.
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We may also use the information that you have given us to contact you about other ways you can work with us, for direct marketing, or to follow up on our work together after some time has elapsed.
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Under the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR), the lawful bases we rely on for processing this information are:
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Contract. We need to process your data in order to fulfill our contract with you. It helps us to best help you on your writing journey and in your creative well-being.
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We have a legitimate interest as outlined in the details given above.
How we store your personal information
Your information is securely stored with the pertaining files password-protected where possible, and hard copies kept in a locked cupboard/cabinet/box or secure and private dwelling, where possible. Emails and web forms are stored via gmail and Wix.
We keep all of your personal information that we obtain for contract purposes for six years, to comply with UK law, before it will be deleted from our electronic files. Paper notes will be hand-shredded and disposed of into a bin collected by local authorities six years after the end of our time working together on the project we are contracted to help you with. Personal data held for legitimate interest reasons, such as our teaching of others and for marketing, will be kept for a minimum of six years and for as long as our interests remain legitimate. We will then dispose your information by deleting the data from electronic devices and removing it from our websites as far as is possible.
Your data protection rights
Under data protection law, you have rights including:
Your right of access - You have the right to ask us for copies of your personal information.
Your right to rectification - You have the right to ask us to rectify personal information you think is inaccurate. You also have the right to ask us to complete information you think is incomplete.
Your right to erasure - You have the right to ask us to erase your personal information in certain circumstances.
Your right to restriction of processing - You have the right to ask us to restrict the processing of your personal information in certain circumstances.
Your right to object to processing - You have the the right to object to the processing of your personal information in certain circumstances under the legitimate interest lawful basis we have outlined above.
Your right to data portability - You have the right to ask that we transfer the personal information you gave us to another organisation, or to you, in certain circumstances, regarding our processing of your data to fulfil our contract with yourself as outlined above.
You are not required to pay any charge for exercising your rights. If you make a request, we have one month to respond to you.
Please contact us at peholdsworth@gmail.com if you wish to make a request.
Finally,
We sincerely hope that we have provided you with a clear understanding of our Privacy Policy. If however you wish to explore any part of the policy in more detail, please do not hesitate to contact us, we will be happy to help.
How to complain
If you have any concerns about our use of your personal information, you can make a complaint to us at peholdsworth@gmail.com
You can also complain to the ICO if you are unhappy with how we have used your data.
The ICO’s address:
Information Commissioner’s Office
Wycliffe House
Water Lane
Wilmslow
Cheshire
SK9 5AF
Helpline number: 0303 123 1113
ICO website: https://www.ico.org.uk