1. Who we are
Blue Balloon Books ("Blue Balloon Books," "we," "us") is a children's-book publishing imprint of Ballast Books LLC, based in West Palm Beach, Florida. We provide guided, supportive publishing services to authors of children's books, who retain the rights to their work.
This Privacy Policy explains what information we collect through our website at www.blueballoonbooks.com and our inquiry forms, how we use it, who we share it with, and the choices you have. It applies to visitors and prospective authors who interact with us online.
Legal entity confirmed (Matt, 2026-09-03). Blue Balloon Books is a sub-imprint of Ballast Books; Ballast Books LLC is the parent legal entity for both brands.
2. Information we collect
Information you give us
When you submit our "Submit Your Book Idea" inquiry form, we collect:
- Your first and last name (required)
- Your email address (required)
- Your phone number (optional)
- The publishing services you think you'll need (required)
- A summary or synopsis of your book (required)
- How far along you are in the writing process (required)
- Whether your manuscript is written, and whether you need an illustrator (optional)
- Any notes you add for our acquisitions team (optional)
If you contact us directly, by email or otherwise, we collect the information you send us.
Information we collect automatically
When you visit our website, we may automatically collect standard technical information, such as your device and browser type, IP address, the pages you view, and how you arrived at and moved through the site. This is described further in Analytics & tracking technologies below.
Information from third parties
We may receive limited information about you from the advertising and analytics platforms we use, for example, when you reach our site by clicking one of our ads, so we can understand which campaigns are reaching the right audiences. See Advertising & conversion measurement.
3. How we use your information
We use the information we collect to:
- Respond to your inquiry and evaluate your book project;
- Communicate with you about our publishing services and your submission;
- Operate, maintain, and improve our website and forms;
- Understand how our website and marketing are performing, and improve which audiences our advertising reaches (see Advertising & conversion measurement);
- Keep records, and meet legal, tax, and security obligations.
4. Analytics & session recording
Shared infrastructure: Blue Balloon Books and Ballast Books use the same Google Tag Manager container (GTM-W9KHLFR). Confirmed 2026-07-31 by reading the live container directly: every tool named below fires from a trigger with no domain restriction visible, consistent with Matt's direct dashboard access showing Blue Balloon Books data in both Microsoft Clarity and Google Ads. If Blue Balloon ever moves to its own container, this section should be split from Ballast's.
We use the following tools to understand how visitors use our website:
| Tool | What it does |
|---|---|
| Google Analytics 4 | Aggregated website traffic and usage measurement. |
| Google Tag Manager | Manages the measurement tags that run on our site (shared with Ballast Books). |
| Microsoft Clarity | Records how visitors interact with pages (such as clicks, scrolling, and mouse movement) to show us how pages are used. We do not use it to identify you personally. |
These tools, and the advertising-measurement tags described in the next section, use cookies and similar device-storage technologies (such as local storage) to keep track of your activity on our site, measure how our website and campaigns are performing, and help us improve your experience. By submitting an inquiry through our website, you agree to this Privacy Policy, including this use of cookies and device storage. You can control these technologies through your browser settings at any time.
5. Advertising & conversion measurement
We advertise our publishing services online, and we measure which of those efforts actually reach authors who are a good fit. To do this, we share limited, protected information with advertising platforms, but we never sell your information.
When you submit an inquiry, we may share a limited set of your information, such as your name, email address, and phone number, in a hashed (scrambled) form, with advertising platforms. This helps those platforms confirm that our ads are reaching genuinely interested authors, and helps us focus our advertising on qualified prospects rather than on raw clicks.
We may also feed back a signal about whether an inquiry became a qualified opportunity (an "offline" or "enhanced" conversion), so the platforms' systems learn to reach people who resemble our real prospective authors, not just anyone who fills out a form.
The advertising platforms we currently work with, whose measurement tags run on our website (via the same shared Google Tag Manager container described in Analytics & session recording), are:
- Google Ads and YouTube (Google)
- Meta (Facebook and Instagram)
- OpenAI (advertising in ChatGPT)
Today, the hashed-information sharing described above happens with Google Ads and OpenAI; the other platforms listed receive measurement signals from their tags on our site. Blue Balloon Books runs its own Google Ads account (confirmed 2026-07-31 via Windsor.ai and this brand's own campaign-decision log, which shows live campaigns since at least 2026-07-16) — it is a distinct advertiser, not merely a recipient of Ballast Books' campaigns.
We do not sell your personal information, and we do not share it for cross-context behavioral advertising.
6. How we share your information
We share your information only as needed to run our business and provide our services. The service providers we currently work with are:
| Provider | Role |
|---|---|
| HubSpot | Customer-relationship and lead management. Stores your inquiry and our correspondence. |
| Webflow | Website hosting. |
| Analytics (Google Analytics 4, Google Tag Manager) and advertising (Google Ads, YouTube). | |
| Microsoft Clarity | Session recording (clicks, scrolling, mouse movement). |
| Meta | Advertising measurement (Facebook and Instagram). |
| Advertising measurement. | |
| Advertising measurement. | |
| OpenAI | Advertising and conversion measurement (advertising in ChatGPT). |
Text messages (SMS)
We do not sell or share mobile numbers, SMS consent, or message data with third parties or affiliates for their marketing or promotional purposes. We may share this information only with service providers (e.g., carriers, messaging platforms) to operate our SMS program. Message frequency may vary. Message & data rates may apply. Reply STOP to opt out; HELP for help.
We may also share information:
- With advertising platforms as described in Advertising & conversion measurement, in limited and hashed form;
- For legal and safety reasons, when required by law, or to protect our rights, users, or the public;
- In a business transfer, see Business transfers below.
We do not sell your personal information.
7. Your privacy choices
You can, at any time:
- Ask us what personal information we hold about you;
- Ask us to correct or delete your information;
- Unsubscribe from our emails using the link in any message, or by contacting us;
- Ask us to stop using your information for advertising measurement.
To make any of these requests, contact us using the details in Contact us. We will respond as required by applicable law.
Do Not Track & Global Privacy Control: our website does not currently respond to Do Not Track (DNT) browser signals. As soon as this policy is published, we will add a cookie-consent banner that lets you accept or reject non-essential cookies and manage your preferences directly, and that will honor applicable browser opt-out signals, including Global Privacy Control (GPC), once installed.
8. California privacy rights
If you are a California resident, the California Consumer Privacy Act (as amended by the CPRA) gives you the right to:
- Know what personal information we collect, use, and disclose;
- Request access to, or deletion of, your personal information;
- Correct inaccurate personal information;
- Opt out of the "sale" or "sharing" of personal information (note: we do not sell your personal information);
- Not be discriminated against for exercising these rights.
To exercise these rights, contact us using the details below. We will verify your request as required before acting on it.
9. Consent & withdrawal
By submitting an inquiry form, you agree to this Privacy Policy, including our use of cookies and analytics tools described above, and the advertising-measurement and conversion-tracking use described in Advertising & conversion measurement. You can withdraw that agreement at any time by contacting us; withdrawing does not affect anything we did before you asked us to stop.
10. Data retention
We keep different kinds of information for different lengths of time:
| Information | How long we keep it |
|---|---|
| Inquiry and contact records (form submissions, emails, CRM records) | For as long as they are relevant to your inquiry and our relationship with you. |
| Consent records | For as long as needed to demonstrate the consent choices you made. |
| Legal, tax, and accounting records | For the limited period required by applicable law. |
When information is no longer needed, we delete it, and we will delete it sooner on request (see Your privacy choices), except where we must keep a limited record to meet legal, tax, or accounting obligations.
11. Security
We take reasonable administrative, technical, and physical measures to protect your information, and we work with established providers (such as HubSpot and Webflow) that maintain their own security programs. No method of transmission or storage is completely secure, so while we work to protect your information, we cannot guarantee absolute security.
12. Data breach notification
If we become aware of a data breach affecting your personal information, we will notify affected individuals and the relevant authorities as required by applicable law.
13. Business transfers
If Blue Balloon Books is involved in a merger, acquisition, reorganization, financing, or sale of some or all of its assets, your information may be transferred as part of that transaction. We will notify you of any resulting material changes to this Privacy Policy as required by applicable law.
14. Children's privacy
A note on our name: Blue Balloon Books publishes books written for children, but our website, inquiry forms, and services are intended for adult authors, illustrators, and publishing professionals — not for use by children.
We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. If you believe a child has provided us information, please contact us and we will delete it.
15. Changes to this policy
We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. When we do, we will revise the "Last updated" date at the top of this page, and significant changes will be made clear. We encourage you to review this page periodically.
16. Contact us
If you have questions about this policy or your information, contact us:
- Email: info@ballastbooks.com
- Mail: Ballast Books LLC, West Palm Beach, Florida