Privacy Policy
1. Who we are and what this policy covers
This Privacy Policy explains how Maurice Africh ("we," "us," or "our") collects, uses, stores and shares personal information when you:
- visit mauriceafrich.com or skypiratesofimperia.com (together, the "Sites");
- subscribe to our newsletter or email list;
- enter or take part in The Sky Pirates Treasure Hunt ("The Riddle of the Open Gate") or any other contest, sweepstakes, giveaway or promotion we run, alone or together with our publishers (each a "Promotion");
- join or interact with our reader community (the "Frens"), including our Discord server; or
- contact us by email, through a form on the Sites, or on social media.
For the purposes of the EU and UK General Data Protection Regulation ("GDPR"), Maurice Africh is the data controller of personal information collected through the Sites and our Promotions. Our contact details are in Section 15.
Where a Promotion is run jointly with a publisher and entries are collected on the publisher's own website (for example, a campaign hub or entry form hosted by Simon & Schuster), the publisher's privacy policy also applies to the information you provide there. We link to those policies in Section 6.
2. The information we collect
Information you give us directly
- Newsletter sign-up: your email address and, if you choose to give it, your first name.
- Promotion entries: your name, email address, and the Discord username and/or social media handle(s) you use to take part, plus any answers, riddle solutions, or task submissions you send in.
- Receipt uploads: if you choose to submit proof of a pre-order or purchase, we receive the receipt or order confirmation you upload. Please black out payment card numbers and anything else you don't want us to see before uploading. We only need the retailer, the book title/format, and the order date.
- Photos and creative submissions: if a task asks for a photo, video, artwork or written piece, we receive what you submit, which may include your likeness or the likeness of other people in it. Only submit images of other people with their permission.
- Prize fulfilment: if you win a physical prize, we will ask for your full name, postal address, phone number (for the carrier), and, where required by law or the retailer, confirmation of eligibility (such as age and country of residence).
- Correspondence: anything you include when you email us, fill in a contact form, or message us on social media or Discord.
Information collected automatically
Like most websites, the Sites collect limited technical information when you visit: IP address, browser type, device type, pages viewed, the site that referred you, and general (city-level) location inferred from your IP address. We collect this through cookies and similar technologies described in Section 7. Our email provider also records whether an email was opened and which links were clicked.
Information from other sources
- Discord and social platforms: when you take part in community events, votes, or challenges on Discord, TikTok, Instagram or similar platforms, we see the public profile information and activity those platforms show us. Those platforms have their own privacy policies.
- Publishers: where a Promotion is run jointly with a publisher and the publisher collects the entries, the publisher may pass entrant details to us so we can award prizes, verify eligibility, or deliver digital rewards (see Section 5).
We do not knowingly collect sensitive personal information (such as health, religion, or political opinions) and ask that you do not include it in anything you submit.
3. How we use your information and why we are allowed to
We use personal information for the purposes below. For readers in the EU, EEA and UK, the table also shows the legal basis we rely on under GDPR.
| What we do | Information used | Legal basis (GDPR) |
|---|---|---|
| Send our newsletter and marketing emails about books, releases, events, pre-orders and Promotions | Email, first name, email engagement data | Your consent (you can withdraw it at any time by unsubscribing) |
| Run Promotions: register entries, verify tasks and riddles, track points, display the scoreboard, pick and notify winners | Name, email, Discord/social handle, submissions, receipts | Performance of a contract (the Official Rules you accept when you enter); our legitimate interest in running the Promotion fairly |
| Deliver digital rewards (bonus chapters, wallpapers, etc.) | Performance of a contract | |
| Ship physical prizes and confirm eligibility | Name, postal address, phone, eligibility details | Performance of a contract; compliance with legal obligations (prize and sweepstakes law) |
| Feature entries, photos, artwork and winner names on the Sites, Discord, social media, or in publisher marketing | Name/handle, submitted content, likeness | Your consent, given when you submit (see Section 5) — you can withdraw it |
| Reply to your messages and provide support | Contact details, message content | Legitimate interest in responding to you |
| Operate, secure and improve the Sites; understand which pages and campaigns work | Technical and usage data | Legitimate interest in running a working, secure website; consent for non-essential cookies where required |
| Comply with law, resolve disputes, enforce Official Rules and prevent fraud (e.g. duplicate or automated entries) | Any of the above as needed | Legal obligation; legitimate interest |
We do not use your personal information for automated decision-making that produces legal or similarly significant effects, and we do not sell it.
4. Newsletter and marketing emails
We send our newsletter and marketing emails using Kit (formerly ConvertKit), an email service provider based in the United States. Kit stores subscriber data on our behalf and processes it only on our instructions. Kit's privacy policy is available at kit.com/privacy.
How you get on the list. You join when you subscribe on the website or through Kit, opt in while entering a Promotion, or sign up at an event. When you enter a Promotion or Sweepstakes or “The Hunt,” joining the newsletter is a condition of entry. For subscribers in the EU, EEA and UK, we use a confirmed (double) opt-in.
What we send. News about Maurice's books, release dates, pre-order campaigns, events and appearances, bonus content, and Promotions. From time to time we may include news from our publishers or retail partners that we think you will care about, but those messages come from us, not them; we do not give your email address to third parties so they can market to you.
How to stop. Every email has an unsubscribe link, and it works immediately. You can also email us at the address in Section 15. Unsubscribing from marketing does not stop transactional emails you have asked for, such as a prize notification or a link to a digital reward you earned.
Engagement tracking. Kit tells us whether an email was opened and which links were clicked, so we can see what readers find useful and clean out inactive subscribers. If you would rather we did not see this, most email clients let you block remote images, which disables open tracking.
5. The Sky Pirates Treasure Hunt and other Promotions
This section applies whenever you enter a Promotion. It works alongside that Promotion's Official Rules; if the two conflict about how a specific Promotion works, the Official Rules control. The Official Rules for The Sky Pirates Treasure Hunt are at mauriceafrich.com/the-hunt.
Where your entry goes
This website, Maurice’s newsletter, and all entries into the Hunt are run by Maurice Africh together with Saga Press, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, LLC (United States) and, for readers in the United Kingdom and Ireland, with Hodderscape, an imprint of Hodder & Stoughton Limited (Hachette UK). Depending on which part of the hunt you take part in, your information may be collected by us on skypiratesofimperia.com, by Simon & Schuster on its campaign hub and entry form, or on Discord.
What we share with our publishers, and why
We share entrant information with our publishers only as needed to run the Promotion. Specifically:
- Winner fulfilment. Physical prizes (including the Treasure Chest grand prize and runner-up loot boxes) are produced and shipped by Saga Press or its fulfilment vendor. To do that, we give Saga Press the winner's name, postal address, phone number and email address. For UK/Ireland prizes, the same details may go to Hodderscape.
- Eligibility and verification. We may share the details needed to confirm a winner is eligible under the Official Rules (for example, age, country of residence, and that a pre-order receipt is genuine) and to complete any affidavit, release or tax form the law requires for a prize.
- Promotion administration. Where the publisher's team helps administer the hunt (for example, the campaign hub, puzzle design, or point verification), it may see entry data, scoreboard data and submissions for that purpose.
- Publicity. If you win, or if your submission is selected to be featured, your first name, last initial, city/state or country, and handle may be announced, and your submission may be shared with the publisher for use in campaign marketing, as described below.
Our publishers act as independent controllers of the information we share with them for these purposes, and they handle it under their own privacy policies:
- Simon & Schuster: simonandschuster.com/about/privacy_policy
- Hachette UK / Hodder & Stoughton: hachette.co.uk/privacy-notice
We do not share the entrant list with our publishers for their own marketing, and we do not give them subscriber data from our newsletter.
Scoreboard and public display
The hunt has a live scoreboard on skypiratesofimperia.com and in our Discord server. The scoreboard shows the display name or handle you chose when you entered and your points. It does not show your email address or real name unless you chose that as your display name. If you would like to be removed from the public scoreboard, email us and we will do so; you can keep playing.
Photos, artwork and other submissions
By submitting a photo, video, artwork or written piece to a Promotion, you give us and our publishers permission to display it on the Sites, in our Discord server, on our social media accounts, in our newsletter, and in marketing for the book, credited to the display name or handle you provided, without payment. You keep ownership of what you make. You can withdraw this permission at any time by emailing us; we will take the item down from places we control within a reasonable time, though we cannot recall copies that other people have already shared.
Receipts
Receipts you upload are used only to award points and verify eligibility. We look at the retailer, title, format and date, and we delete receipt files within 90 days after the Promotion ends, or sooner once verification is complete, unless we need to keep one to resolve a dispute.
Winners' names
Sweepstakes laws in some places require us to make a winners' list available. If so, it will contain first name, last initial and state/country only, and it will be available for the period the law requires. Winners in the UK and EU may object to publication by emailing us; we will still comply with any legal obligation to share the winner's details with the relevant regulator if asked.
No purchase necessary
No purchase is required to enter or win any drawing in the hunt. Uploading a receipt is optional and earns points in the same way as the free entry methods described in the Official Rules. Your decision not to upload a receipt has no effect on how we treat your data.
6. Who else we share information with
Apart from our publishers (Section 5), we share personal information with:
- Service providers who process data on our behalf and under our instructions: Kit (email), Squarespace (hosting and forms), form and upload tool, Google Forms (Promotion entries and receipt uploads), Discord (community platform), Google (analytics), and Shopify. Where a provider is outside the EU/UK, Section 9 applies.
- Prize partners and retailers, such as partner bookstores or event organisers, where a prize must be redeemed through them. We share only what they need to hand over the prize.
- Professional advisers, such as our accountant or lawyer, when needed.
- Authorities, when we are required to by law, subpoena or court order, or when we reasonably believe it is necessary to protect our rights, your safety or the safety of others, or to investigate fraud.
- A successor, if the author business or the Sites are transferred to another person or company; your information would be transferred with it under the same protections.
We do not sell personal information, and we do not share it with third parties for their own direct marketing or for cross-context behavioural advertising.
7. Cookies and analytics
The Sites use a small number of cookies and similar technologies:
- Essential cookies that make the Sites work, such as remembering that you are logged in to the hunt or that you closed a banner.
- Analytics cookies from Google Analytics 4 that tell us how many people visit, which pages they read, and roughly where they are from, in aggregate.
- Embedded content such as YouTube videos, Discord widgets, or social media posts, which may set their own cookies when loaded.
Visitors in the EU, EEA and UK will see a cookie banner and can decline non-essential cookies. Everyone can also block or delete cookies through their browser settings; the Sites will still work, though some features may not. We honour the Global Privacy Control browser signal as an opt-out where the law requires it. We do not currently run retargeting or advertising pixels on the Sites; if that changes, we will update this policy and the cookie banner first.
8. How long we keep information
| Information | How long |
|---|---|
| Newsletter subscriber data | Until you unsubscribe, plus a suppression record (email address only) so we do not accidentally re-add you |
| Promotion entries, scoreboard data and submissions | 12 months after the Promotion ends, then deleted or anonymised, except items you have agreed we can keep featuring |
| Receipt uploads | Deleted within 90 days after the Promotion ends, or once verification is complete |
| Winner records (name, address, prize, any required forms) | Up to 7 years where needed for tax, sweepstakes-law and accounting records |
| Correspondence | Up to 2 years after our last exchange |
| Website analytics | Aggregated data retained by our analytics provider for 14 months; we do not keep raw logs longer than 90 days |
We may keep information longer if the law requires it or if it is needed to resolve a dispute or enforce the Official Rules.
9. International transfers
We are based in the United States, and most of our service providers store data there. If you are in the EU, EEA, UK or elsewhere outside the US, your information will be transferred to and processed in the United States, which has different data protection laws from your home country. When we transfer data out of the EU/EEA or UK, we rely on the European Commission's Standard Contractual Clauses (and the UK Addendum or International Data Transfer Agreement), on our providers' certification under the EU-US Data Privacy Framework and its UK Extension where they hold it, or on another lawful transfer mechanism. Prize information shared with Hodderscape is transferred from the US to the UK. You can ask us for more detail about the safeguards we use.
10. How we protect information
We use reasonable technical and organisational measures to protect personal information, including HTTPS on the Sites, access to entry and subscriber data limited to Maurice and the small team helping run the campaign, two-factor authentication on the accounts that hold data, and providers that maintain their own security programmes. No method of transmission or storage is completely secure, so we cannot guarantee absolute security. If we become aware of a breach affecting your personal information, we will notify you and any regulator as required by law.
11. Children
The Sites and newsletter are not directed to children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 13. You must be at least 18 years old to enter a Promotion, as set out in the Official Rules. If you believe a child has given us personal information, contact us and we will delete it. Readers in the EU/EEA and UK under 16 (or the lower age set by their country) may not subscribe to the newsletter without a parent or guardian's consent.
12. Your rights and choices
Everyone
Wherever you live, you can ask us to tell you what personal information we hold about you, correct it, delete it, or stop using it for marketing. Email us at the address in Section 15. We will respond within 30 days, or within the time the law in your location requires. We may need to verify your identity first, typically by replying to the email address we hold for you. We will never treat you differently for exercising a privacy right.
If you are in the EU, EEA or UK
Under GDPR and the UK GDPR you have the right to: access your personal data and receive a copy; have inaccurate data corrected; have your data erased in certain circumstances; restrict our processing; object to processing based on legitimate interests, and to direct marketing at any time; receive the data you gave us in a portable format; and withdraw consent at any time without affecting processing that happened before you withdrew it. To exercise any of these, email us. You also have the right to lodge a complaint with your data protection authority. In the UK that is the Information Commissioner's Office (ico.org.uk); in Ireland it is the Data Protection Commission (dataprotection.ie); a list of EU authorities is at edpb.europa.eu. We would appreciate the chance to resolve any concern directly first. We have not appointed an EU or UK representative under Article 27 GDPR on the basis that our processing of EU/UK data is occasional and low-risk.
If you are in California
We collect the categories of personal information described in Section 2 (identifiers, contact details, internet activity, and audio/visual information in submissions), for the purposes in Section 3, and we disclose them to the recipients in Sections 5 and 6. We do not sell personal information and we do not share it for cross-context behavioural advertising, and we have not done so in the preceding 12 months. We do not use or disclose sensitive personal information for purposes beyond those permitted by the CCPA. Under the California Consumer Privacy Act, as amended by the CPRA, California residents have the right to know what personal information we collect and how we use and disclose it; to delete it; to correct it; to opt out of sale or sharing (which we do not do); and not to be discriminated against for exercising these rights. You may designate an authorised agent to make a request for you; we will ask the agent for proof of your written permission. Note: the CCPA applies only to businesses that meet certain revenue or data-volume thresholds. We provide these rights to California residents regardless.
If you are in another US state with a privacy law
Residents of Virginia, Colorado, Connecticut, Utah, Texas, Oregon, Montana, Delaware, Iowa, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Tennessee, Minnesota, Maryland, Indiana, Kentucky, Rhode Island and other states with comprehensive privacy laws may have similar rights to access, correct, delete and port their data and to opt out of targeted advertising, sale, and profiling. We extend these rights to you on request. If we decline a request, you may appeal by replying to our decision, and we will respond to the appeal in writing.
Marketing choices
Unsubscribe from any email using the link in the footer, or email us. We comply with the US CAN-SPAM Act, the UK Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations, and the EU ePrivacy rules for marketing email.
13. Third-party sites and communities
The Sites link to retailers, our publishers, Discord, TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, Kickstarter, Goodreads and other third parties. Those sites collect data under their own policies, which we do not control. In particular, anything you post in our Discord server or on social media is visible to other members of that community and is governed by that platform's terms and privacy policy as well as our community rules.
14. Changes to this policy
We will update this policy when our practices change, for example when we launch a new Promotion with different data practices. The "last updated" date at the top shows when. For significant changes we will let newsletter subscribers know by email and post a notice on the Sites. Continuing to use the Sites or take part in a Promotion after a change means you accept the updated policy, except where the law requires us to get your fresh consent.
15. Contact us
Privacy questions, requests and complaints:
Maurice Africh
Email: africhmaurice@gmail.com
Postal: 1141 Tunnel Rd Ste C, Asheville, NC 28805
If you contact us about a Promotion run with a publisher, we may need to pass your request to the publisher so it can act on the information it holds; we will tell you if we do.