Novellea's privacy policy

About this policy

This policy explains who we are, what personal data we collect when you use Novellea, why we collect it, the legal basis we rely on for each use, and your rights. Please read it alongside our Terms of Service.

Where we rely on your consent, for example for marketing emails or personalised ads, you can withdraw it at any time in the App's settings or by emailing contact@novellea.com. Withdrawing consent doesn't affect anything we did with your data before you withdrew it.

Introduction

Short Content Ltd, trading as Novellea ("we"), is committed to protecting your personal data and respecting your privacy.

This policy (together with our Terms of Service) applies to your use of:

The Novellea mobile app (App), available on Google Play and the Apple App Store, and our website at www.novellea.com (App Site), once you have downloaded a copy of the App onto your mobile phone or handheld device (Device) or opened the App Site.
Any of the services accessible through the App (Services) that are available on the App Site or other sites of ours (Services Sites).

This policy sets out the basis on which any personal data we collect from you, or that you provide to us, will be processed by us. This App is not intended for children and we do not knowingly collect data relating to children. Please read the following carefully to understand our practices regarding your personal data and how we will treat it.

Important information and who we are

Short Content Ltd (trading as Novellea) is the controller and is responsible for your personal data (referred to as "Novellea", "we", "us" or "our" in this policy).

Contact details

Our full details are:

Full name of legal entity: Short Content Ltd (company number 13129780, whose registered office is at 50 Fairwater Avenue, London, DA16 2HY)
Name of data privacy manager: Joey Griffin
Email address: contact@novellea.com

You have the right to make a complaint at any time to the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), the UK regulator for data protection issues.

Changes to the privacy policy and your duty to inform us of changes

We keep our privacy policy under regular review. This version was last updated on 4 October 2026. It may change, and if it does, the changes will be posted on this page and, where appropriate, we will tell you about them by email or when you next open the App. The new policy may be displayed on-screen and you may be required to read and accept the changes to continue using the App or the Services.

It is important that the personal data we hold about you is accurate and current. Please keep us informed if your personal data changes during our relationship with you.

Third party links

Our Sites may, from time to time, contain links to and from the websites of our partner networks, advertisers, sponsors and affiliates. Please note that these websites, and any services that may be accessible through them, have their own privacy policies, and we do not accept any responsibility or liability for those policies or for any personal data that may be collected through those websites or services. Please check these policies before you submit any personal data to these websites or use these services.

The data we collect about you

We may collect, use, store and transfer different kinds of personal data about you as follows:

Identity Data.
Contact Data.
Financial Data.
Transaction Data.
Device Data.
Content Data.
Profile Data.
Usage Data.
Marketing and Communications Data.
Location Data (approximate only, worked out from your IP address).

We also collect, use and share Aggregated Data such as statistical or demographic data for any purpose. Aggregated Data could be derived from your personal data but is not considered personal data in law, as this data will not directly or indirectly reveal your identity. For example, we may aggregate your Usage Data to calculate the percentage of users accessing a specific App feature. However, if we combine or connect Aggregated Data with your personal data so that it can directly or indirectly identify you, we treat the combined data as personal data, which will be used in accordance with this privacy policy.

We do not collect any Special Categories of Personal Data about you (this includes details about your race or ethnicity, religious or philosophical beliefs, sex life, sexual orientation, political opinions, trade union membership, information about your health, and genetic and biometric data). Nor do we collect any information about criminal convictions and offences.

How is your personal data collected?

We will collect and process the following data about you:

Information you give us. This is information (including Identity, Contact, Financial, and Marketing and Communications Data) you consent to giving us about you by filling in forms on the App Site and the Services Sites (together Our Sites), or by corresponding with us (for example, by email or chat). It includes information you provide when you register to use the App Site, download or register the App, subscribe to any of our Services, search for a story or author, make an in-App purchase, share a story, publish a story or comment, set up author payouts, take part in a writing prompt, poll or competition, and when you report a problem with the App, our Services, or any of Our Sites. If you contact us, we will keep a record of that correspondence.
Information we collect about you and your device. Each time you visit one of Our Sites or use the App, we will automatically collect personal data including Device, Content and Usage Data. This includes your reading history in the App: which stories you read, the date, and the hour and day of the week you started reading, using your device's clock. We only record this once you've been reading for about a minute. If you read a story on our website from a shared link without signing in, we record only the hour and day you started, and nothing that identifies you.
Information we receive from other sources, including third parties and publicly available sources. We will receive personal data about you from the following third parties:
- Identity and Contact Data (your name and email address) from Facebook, Apple or Google, if you choose to sign in with one of them.
- Device Data in crash reports from Firebase Crashlytics, provided by Google, based outside the UK.
- Device, Usage and Location Data about visits to our website from Wix, which hosts our website, based outside the UK.
- Device, Usage and Location Data about the ads you see in the App from Google AdMob, based outside the UK.
- Contact, Financial and Transaction Data from providers of payment services: Apple, Google and PayPal, based outside the UK.

Our website uses cookies and similar technologies, set by us and by Wix, which hosts it, to remember your preferences and to understand how visitors use the site. Where these cookies are not strictly necessary, we ask for your agreement before setting them, and you can change your choice at any time. In the App, Google AdMob and Firebase use similar technologies, such as your Device's advertising identifier, to show and measure ads and to report crashes. You can reset or limit your advertising identifier in your Device's settings.

How we use your personal data

We will only use your personal data when the law allows us to do so. Most commonly, we will use your personal data in the following circumstances:

Where you have consented before the processing.
Where we need to perform a contract we are about to enter into or have entered into with you.
Where it is necessary for our legitimate interests (or those of a third party) and your interests and fundamental rights do not override those interests.

We will only send you direct marketing communications by email or text if we have your consent. You can withdraw that consent at any time by turning off marketing emails in the App's settings or by contacting us.

We will get your express opt-in consent before we share your personal data with any third party for marketing purposes.

Purposes for which we will use your personal data

Purpose/activity: To register you as a new App user and let you sign in, including with Facebook, Apple or Google.
Type of data:

Identity
Contact
Device

Lawful basis for processing:

Performance of a contract with you

Purpose/activity: To process in-App purchases and deliver Services, including managing payments, paying authors and collecting money owed to us.
Type of data:

Identity
Contact
Financial
Transaction
Device
Marketing and Communications

Lawful basis for processing:

Performance of a contract with you
Necessary for our legitimate interests (to recover debts due to us)

Purpose/activity: To manage our relationship with you, including sending you account emails and notifying you of changes to the App or any Services.
Type of data:

Identity
Contact
Profile
Marketing and Communications

Lawful basis for processing:

Performance of a contract with you
Necessary for our legitimate interests (to keep records updated and to analyse how customers use our products and Services)
Necessary to comply with legal obligations (to inform you of any changes to our terms and conditions)

Purpose/activity: To enable you to take part in a prize draw, competition, writing prompt or poll, or to complete a survey.
Type of data:

Identity
Contact
Financial
Profile
Marketing and Communications

Lawful basis for processing:

Your consent
Performance of a contract with you
Necessary for our legitimate interests (to analyse how customers use our products and Services, to develop them and to grow our business)

Purpose/activity: To administer and protect our business and the App, including troubleshooting, crash reporting, data analysis and system testing.
Type of data:

Identity
Contact
Device

Lawful basis for processing:

Necessary for our legitimate interests (for running our business, provision of administration and IT services, network security, and finding and fixing crashes)

Purpose/activity: To understand when and how you read, for example on the way to work or before bed, and whether your habits change over time, so we can decide what to build and improve in the App.
Type of data:

Identity
Usage

Lawful basis for processing:

Necessary for our legitimate interests (to understand how our App is used so we can develop and improve it)

We don't use your reading history for advertising, and we don't sell it or share it with other companies.

Purpose/activity: To show ads to users on our free plan, and to measure how well those ads work.
Type of data:

Device
Usage
Location

Lawful basis for processing:

Your consent (for personalised ads, which you can decline or change at any time)
Necessary for our legitimate interests (to show non-personalised ads that fund the free version of the App)

Ads in the App are provided by Google AdMob. AdMob collects information about your Device and the ads you see and tap. We don't give AdMob your name, your email address or your reading history. Subscribers don't see these ads.

When companies sponsor Novellea or advertise with us directly, for example by sponsoring a writing prompt, we don't share your personal data with them. We may tell them aggregated figures, such as how many people saw or entered a sponsored prompt.

Purpose/activity:

To recommend stories and authors you might like.
To monitor trends so we can improve the App and our website.

Type of data:

Identity
Device
Content
Profile
Usage
Location

Lawful basis for processing:

Necessary for our legitimate interests (to develop our products and Services and grow our business)

Disclosures of your personal data

We may share your personal data with the parties set out below, for the purposes set out in the table above:

The service providers and other third parties listed under Third parties below.
Third parties to whom we may choose to sell, transfer or merge parts of our business or our assets. Alternatively, we may seek to acquire other businesses or merge with them. If a change happens to our business, the new owners may use your personal data in the same way as set out in this privacy policy.

Some of our service providers are based outside the UK. Where they are, we make sure your personal data has the same protection it has in the UK. We do this by using providers in countries the UK has approved as giving adequate protection, such as EU countries, or by using contracts approved for use in the UK.

Please contact us if you want further information.

Data security

All information you provide to us is stored on secure servers. Payments are handled by Apple, Google or PayPal, and we never see or store your card details. All information sent between the App and our servers is encrypted using Transport Layer Security (TLS). Where we have given you, or you have chosen, a password that lets you access certain parts of Our Sites, you are responsible for keeping this password confidential. Please don't share your password with anyone. Once we have received your information, we use strict procedures and security features to try to prevent your personal data from being accidentally lost, used or accessed in an unauthorised way.

We store some personal data on your Device, using the App's local storage, the secure storage on your Device, and your browser's web storage.

We have procedures in place to deal with any suspected personal data breach, and we will notify you and any applicable regulator when we are legally required to do so.

Data retention

We keep your data only for as long as we need it for the purposes set out in this policy, or for as long as we are required to by law, for example for tax purposes. In some circumstances you can ask us to delete your data: see "Your legal rights" below for further information.

In some circumstances we will anonymise your personal data (so that it can no longer be associated with you) for research or statistical purposes, in which case we may use this information indefinitely without further notice to you.

We keep your reading history while you have an account, unless you turn it off. If you turn off Reading history in the App's settings, we delete the reading history we have for you straight away and stop keeping it until you turn it back on. If you delete your account, we remove anything that links your reading history to you, so what's left only counts towards totals, like how many people read at 10pm.

Your legal rights

Under certain circumstances, you have the following rights under data protection laws in relation to your personal data:

Request access to your personal data (commonly known as a "data subject access request"). This lets you receive a copy of the personal data we hold about you and check that we are lawfully processing it.
Request correction of the personal data that we hold about you. This lets you have any incomplete or inaccurate data we hold about you corrected, though we may need to verify the accuracy of the new data you provide to us.
Request erasure of your personal data. This lets you ask us to delete or remove personal data where there is no good reason for us to continue processing it. You also have the right to ask us to delete or remove your personal data where you have successfully exercised your right to object to processing (see below), where we may have processed your information unlawfully, or where we are required to erase your personal data to comply with local law. Note, however, that we may not always be able to comply with your request for erasure for specific legal reasons, which we will tell you about, if applicable, at the time of your request.
Object to processing of your personal data where we are relying on a legitimate interest (or that of a third party) and there is something about your particular situation which makes you want to object to processing on this ground, as you feel it impacts on your fundamental rights and freedoms. You also have the right to object where we are processing your personal data for direct marketing purposes. In some cases, we may demonstrate that we have compelling legitimate grounds to process your information which override your rights and freedoms. For your reading history, you don't need to contact us: turn off Reading history in the App's settings and we'll delete it and stop keeping it. You can also email us and we'll do it for you.
Request restriction of processing of your personal data. This lets you ask us to suspend the processing of your personal data in the following situations:
- (a) if you want us to establish the data's accuracy;
- (b) where our use of the data is unlawful but you do not want us to erase it;
- (c) where you need us to hold the data even if we no longer require it, as you need it to establish, exercise or defend legal claims; or
- (d) where you have objected to our use of your data but we need to verify whether we have overriding legitimate grounds to use it.
Request the transfer of your personal data to you or to a third party. We will provide to you, or a third party you have chosen, your personal data in a structured, commonly used, machine-readable format. Note that this right only applies to automated information which you initially gave us consent to use, or where we used the information to perform a contract with you.
Withdraw consent at any time where we are relying on consent to process your personal data. This will not affect the lawfulness of any processing carried out before you withdraw your consent. If you withdraw your consent, we may not be able to provide certain products or services to you. We will tell you if this is the case at the time you withdraw your consent.
You also have the right to ask us not to continue to process your personal data for marketing purposes.

You can exercise any of these rights at any time by contacting us at contact@novellea.com.

Glossary

Lawful basis

Consent means processing your personal data where you have signified your agreement by a statement or clear opt-in to processing for a specific purpose. Consent will only be valid if it is a freely given, specific, informed and unambiguous indication of what you want. You can withdraw your consent at any time by contacting us.

Legitimate interest means the interest of our business in conducting and managing our business to enable us to give you the best service and product and the best and most secure experience. We make sure we consider and balance any potential impact on you (both positive and negative) and your rights before we process your personal data for our legitimate interests. We do not use your personal data for activities where our interests are overridden by the impact on you (unless we have your consent or are otherwise required or permitted to by law). You can get further information about how we assess our legitimate interests against any potential impact on you for specific activities by contacting us.

Performance of contract means processing your data where it is necessary for the performance of a contract to which you are a party, or to take steps at your request before entering into such a contract.

Comply with a legal obligation means processing your personal data where it is necessary to comply with a legal obligation that we are subject to.

Third parties

External third parties

Amazon Web Services and Render, which host our servers and databases, in the EU.
Wix, which hosts our website and provides website visit statistics, based outside the UK.
Google, based in the US, which provides Firebase Cloud Messaging (push notifications to your Device), Firebase Crashlytics (crash reports) and AdMob (ads for users on our free plan).
Resend, based in the US, which sends our account and marketing emails.
Facebook (Meta), Apple and Google, if you choose to sign in with them.
Apple and Google, which process in-App purchases and subscriptions.
PayPal, based outside the UK, which processes payouts to authors.
Professional advisers, including lawyers, bankers, auditors and insurers, based in the UK, who provide services to us.
HM Revenue and Customs, regulators and other authorities based in the UK.

Description of categories of personal data

Identity Data: your name, username, date of birth and profile picture.
Contact Data: your email address, and any business email or social media links you add to your profile.
Financial Data: your PayPal account details if you receive author payouts. We don't store your card details.
Transaction Data: details about payments to and from you, including author payouts, and details of in-App purchases and subscriptions.
Device Data: the type of mobile device you use, your mobile operating system, the App version, a device identifier and push notification token used to send you notifications, your Device's advertising identifier (used by AdMob), crash reports, and the type of browser you use on Our Sites.
Content Data: the stories, chapters, comments and images you publish or upload, and the information stored on your Device to keep you signed in and remember your settings.
Profile Data: your username and password, your biography, the stories you like, bookmark and finish, the authors, series and genres you follow, the users you block, your reading and notification preferences, in-App purchase history, and your feedback, poll votes and survey responses.
Usage Data: details of your use of the App or your visits to any of Our Sites, including your reading history (which stories you read, the date, and the hour and day of the week you started reading), the pages and features you use, and the ads you see and tap.
Marketing and Communications Data: your preferences for receiving marketing from us and your communication preferences.
Location Data: your approximate location, such as your country or city, worked out from your IP address by Wix when you visit our website and by AdMob when ads are shown in the App. We don't collect your precise location.