Cookie Policy

What’s a Cookie?

A cookie is a small text file that a website saves on your computer or mobile device when you visit the site. It enables the website to remember your actions and preferences (such as login, language, font size and other display preferences, or items in online shopping carts) over a period of time, so you don’t have to keep re-entering that information whenever you come back to the site or browse from page to page. Not all cookies collect information that identifies you, though. Some just collect general information such as how users arrive at and use a website, which helps website owners evaluate and find ways to improve features and content.

Types of Cookies

There are four kinds of cookies:

  • Session cookies.These cookies last only for the session and are erased when the user closes the web browser.
  • Persistent cookies. These cookies remain even after the internet browser session is closed. These cookies are stored on a user’s computer or mobile device until they expire or until the user deletes the cookie. Persistent cookies are used to collect identifying information about the user, such as web surfing behaviour or user preferences for a specific website. They have expiration dates which may vary from cookie to cookie.
  • First-party cookies.These cookies are placed by the website a user is visiting. For example, if you visit Amazon.com, then Amazon.com generates cookies for direct interaction with their website.
  • Third-party cookies.These cookies are placed by a site other than the one a visitor is using. These types of cookies are most often related to online advertising and marketing, social media networks like Twitter and Facebook, and content from embedded media services such as Vimeo, YouTube, and SoundCloud.

The majority of modern web browsers support cookies and most have settings that can be customized to decline some cookies and the abliity for a user to delete the cookies at will.

For more information about cookies, see http://www.allaboutcookies.org

Cookie Categories

There are four main categories of cookies:

Strictly Necessary Cookies
These cookies are essential to a user’s ability to navigate a website and use its features. Example: Without these cookies, a user would not be able to log into their account at the website or complete a purchase at an online store. Another “strictly necessary” example is a cookie that retains a user’s preference on whether or not to accept cookies from a website they visit.

Performance Cookies
These cookies collect information about how a visitor uses a website. These cookies do not collect personally idenitifying information but allow website owners to evaluate the site’s performance in order to improve user experience and content. Example: Cookies related to Google Analytics.

Functionality
These cookies remember user preferences in order to provide a more personalized experience of a website. They may store things such as your user name, language or the region preference, or even text size. These cookies may also be used to provide services a user has asked for, such as watching a video or commenting on a blog, or logging into a website. Example: When you visit a weather reporting website, you might enter your postal code so you see weather specific to your region.

Targeting or Advertising
These cookies are used to deliver advertisements that are more relevant and suited to a user and their interests. They are also used to limit the number of times a user might see an advertisement, as well as help measure the effectiveness of an advertising campaign. They are usually placed by advertising networks with the website owner’s permission. They remember what websites a user has visited and the information is shared with other organisations such as advertisers. Sometimes these cookies are linked to site functionality.
 

How This Site Uses Cookies

This website uses cookies essential to the efficient and consistent operation of the site and to offer a personalized experience for users, as well as to: 

  • Enable user interactions with blog comments
  • Improve site speed and content through usage of anonymized analytics.

This site also uses some third-party services that may place cookies on your computer when you interact with the service or third-party content. For example:

  • When you watch a video from YouTube
  • Listen to an audio sample from SoundCloud
  • Share a blog post using the social media icons at the bottom of a post.

Additionally, we do engage in online marketing that uses cookies that may track you beyond this website.

First-Party Cookies

First-party cookies are cookies that relate to the functions and features of this website specifically, and are set by this website, not a third party.  These may include:

  • Cookie Consent preference
  • Mobile Theme preference
  • Blog Comments 
  • Newsletter Popup Window  
  • E-commerce Store or Shop
  • Analytics 

Third-Party Cookies

This website uses third-party services for some site features and functionality, as well as advertisting and marketing services. These third-party services may place cookies in your internet browser when you visit this site. Third-party cookies are specific to the third-party’s domain (example: Google Analytics and google.com), or service. The owner of this website does not have control over the cookies themselves or what personal data they may gather. The website owner cannot view or manage the data related to any third-party’s cookies.

Google Analytics

Some third-party services used on this website may place Google Analytics cookies in your browser. This website has no control over those cookies or any data they may collect.

Affiliate Cookies

This site uses affiliate codes in some, but not, all of the buy links. Affiliate codes use persistent cookies (see category descriptions above) that allow a cookie to remain on the user's browser after the user has left this site. Examples include Amazon and iBooks affiliate codes that allow these third party sites to know what site a user was on when they clicked on a buy link specific to that third party site.

Socia Media Buttons

This website provides ways to share our pages and blog posts to social media websites such as Facebook and Twitter. If you choose to share content from this site through any of the social media buttons on this site, be aware that these sites are likely to collect information about your online activities. This site has no control over placement of those cookies and how they function, therefore it is recommended that you review the official privacy policy of the respective social network to find out more about their use of your information and/or how to opt out or delete such information.

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/about/privacy/ 
Twitter: http://twitter.com/privacy 
YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/static?hl=en&template=privacy 
Pinterest: https://policy.pinterest.com/en/privacy-policy 

SoundCloud

This website uses SoundCloud to enable visitors to listen to samples of audiobooks. SoundCloud is a service that delivers audio content managed by SoundCloud Limited. If you visit a page on this website with embedded SoundCloud audio content, SoundCloud.com will place a cookie (sc_anonymous_id) to enable the SoundCloud player. It may also place others, so please review SoundCloud’s privacy and cookie policies for more information.

SoundCloud Cookie Policy: https://soundcloud.com/pages/cookies
SoundCloud Privacy Policy: https://soundcloud.com/pages/privacy 

Advertising and Marketing

If you arrived at this site by clicking on an ad while on a third party site, such as Facebook, Amazon, BookBub, or any other site, that third-party site most likely placed a cookie on your browser. Return to that site to review their cookie and privacy policies. 

Other Cookies

This website may cease usage of some cookies and introduce others from time to time to improve user’s experience. Any changes will be reflected on this Cookie Policy page.

Managing Cookies

Most browsers (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, Safari, Opera, etc.) are configured to accept cookies but allow users to manage those cookie settings and provide ways to delete cookies. These are official instructions for major browsers:

For more information about cookies, see http://www.allaboutcookies.org