Welcome to The Book Givers!
The Book Givers is a yearly book exchange aimed to inspire and help spread knowledge.
By accessing or using the website, you are agreeing to the following Terms of Service, which also include our Privacy Policy.
Acceptance of Terms of Service
By using or accessing the Services, you represent and warrant that you have read and understood our Terms of Service, which includes our Privacy Policy, and that you will abide by them.
You also represent and warrant that you are either 18 years of age or more, or the applicable age of majority in your jurisdiction, or if you’re under 18 years of age or the age of majority in your jurisdiction, that you are 16 years of age or more if you are a resident in the European Union or that you are 13 years of age or more if you are resident in the United States or anywhere else in the world.
Use of the Services
Subject to your strict and ongoing compliance with these Terms of Service at any and all times, you are granted a limited, non-exclusive, revocable, non-assignable and non-transferable permission to access and use the website, for your personal and non-commercial use only and solely as intended and enabled by the website.
If registrations are open and you fill out and submit the form provided on the website, you agree to participate to the current edition of The Book Givers. By participating you commit to send a book to the person that will be assigned to you.
The above permissions are conditional upon your strict and ongoing compliance with these Terms of Service at any and all times, including, without limitation, the following:
a) you must not, and you must not attempt to, use any personal information of any other person which has been given to you through the use of the website, other than to send a book to this person.
Disclaimer
The website and all content and services accessed through or via the website or otherwise, are provided “as is”, “as available”, “with all faults” and without warranty of any kind.
Participating and sending a book does not guarantee that you will receive a book. It is up to the person that got assigned your address and to their commitment to abide by these Terms of Service to send you a book.
Participants who do not send a book will be banned to participate in future editions.
Limitation of liability
In no event shall we be liable for any damages, regardless of the nature of the claim, including but not limited to
1. Any damage or loss arising from:
a. Your failure to provide complete and accurate information
b. Any misconduct by other participants using the website, especially in breach of any of these Terms of Service
2. Any loss or damage to any software or computer hardware, any loss of data or any loss or damage from any security breach
3. Any loss of profits, any loss of business and any indirect losses such as loss of opportunity
4. Any delays or failure in performance of any part of the website from any cause beyond our control
Some jurisdictions do not allow the exclusion of the limitation or exclusion of liability for incidental or consequential damages. Accordingly, some of the above limitations may not apply to you.
Indemnification
You hereby agree to indemnify, defend and hold us harmless from and against any and all claims, incidents, liabilities, procedures, obligations, damages, losses, expenses and costs, including legal and accounting fees, resulting from:
1. Any violation by you, or by a third party, of these Terms of Service
2. Any third party claim of infringement of any third party rights or invasion of privacy due to your misconduct
3. Any violation by you of any law
Termination
We may exclude you from participating to the book exchange at our sole discretion, including:
1. If you are in breach of any provisions of these Terms of Service, or if we determine at our sole discretion that you have repeatedly breached these Terms of Service, or if we believe that your behavior violates our Terms of Service
2. If you do not send a book to the person you have been assigned to
Applicable law and jurisdiction
These Terms of Service are subject to the laws of the Federal Republic of Germany and you hereby agree to submit to the exclusive jurisdiction of the courts in Berlin, Germany for resolution of any action, dispute or proceeding arising in connection with these Terms of Service.
We care about your privacy and in this privacy policy we explain which kind of personal information we process and for which reasons.
This privacy policy applies whenever you visit our website or interact with us for example by sending us an email.
When you use our website, you may encounter links to external services. Please note that we are not responsible for the privacy policies of such other external services and we advise to review their privacy policies before you share any personal data or data with them.
Who is the data controller?
The data controller is the person responsible for your personal data. The contact details can be found in the Impressum of this website.
Which kind of personal information is collected?
When you decide to participate to The Book Givers yearly round of book exchange, you will need to fill out a form and provide us with your email address.
Furthermore you will need to provide the physical address where you want to receive your book.
Analytics: when you use the Website, basic analytics information such as type of browser, referring/exit pages and anonymised IP address is automatically collected. This information is aggregate and non-identifying information, and it will not be linked to any information that is personally identifiable nor combined with data from other sources.
For which purpose do we use your personal information?
To operate and make the book exchange happen: we use your email address to contact you and share with you the physical address of the person to which you have to send your book.
We will share your physical address with another person who was randomly assigned to send to you a book.
The lawful basis we rely on for this is Article 6(1)(b) of the GDPR which allows us to process personal data when it’s necessary to perform our contract with you.
To communicate with you: we use your email address to notify you if you signed up to our email list in order to get notified when registrations for the yearly book exchange are open again. We also use your email address if you participated in the past year’s edition and you gave permission to send you an email notification to inform you that registrations are open again. If you are a participant we communicate with you should there be any issues with the book exchange or to reply to you if you contact us.
The lawful basis we rely on for this is either Article 6(1)(a) of the GDPR, for example when we require your consent to use your personal information in correlation with a promotional activity, or Article 6(1)(f) of the GDPR which allows us to process personal data for our legitimate interests.
To analyze, evaluate and understand the use of the Website: in order to improve the Website and develop new features, products or services or to be able to discover bugs. This includes analysing aggregate usage data, conducting surveys, researches and tests or by receiving your feedback.
The lawful basis we rely on for this is either Article 6(1)(f) of the GDPR which allows us to process personal data for our legitimate interests.
To meet legal requirements: we will share your personal information if we are required to do so by a lawful request by public authorities or to meet any other legal requirements.
The lawful basis we rely on for this is Article 6(1)(c) of the GDPR which allows us to process personal data when it’s necessary to comply with a legal obligation.
Is personal information shared?
Yes, in order to operate
a) your name and physical address will be shared with another participant so that this person can send a book to your address.
b) we may share your personal information with service providers that help us with hosting, storage, development, task managing, virtual infrastructure or communication.
If a service provider needs to access any personal information, they do so to the extent necessary to perform services on our behalf, and under instruction from us, including abiding by policies and procedures designed to protect your personal information. Such service providers may be located outside of the European Economic Area (EEA).
We use Google Analytics (a web analytics service operated by Google Inc.) with IP anonymization turned on, NO Demographic data collection and NO Cookies. See the Google Privacy Policy: https://policies.google.com/privacy
We may also share personal information in order to meet legal requirements.
Is personal information secure?
Data is encrypted in transit using industry standard Transport Layer Security (TLS). We have a data progressing agreement in place with the services we use.
Please note that, while we take data protection precautions and security measures, no method of transmission over the internet or method of electronic storage is ever completely secure and error-free, and we can not guarantee the absolute security of user information. Keep in mind that when you use our website and when you provide us with information you do so at your own risk and discretion.
How long is personal information retained?
We retain your personal information as long as we need it in order to operate and make the book exchange happen and to solve any issues regarding it.
Which rights do you have in regards to your personal information?
The right to data access and portability: you may be entitled to access the personal data we hold about you. You may also be entitled to request a copy of the personal data you have provided to us in a machine-readable format.
The right to rectification: we use your email address to notify you if you signed up to our email list in order to get notified when registrations for the yearly book exchange are open again. We also use your email address if you participated in the past year’s edition and you gave permission to send you an email notification to inform you that registrations are open again. If you are a participant we communicate with you should there be any issues with the book exchange or to reply to you if you contact us.
The right to erasure: if you request to delete all or some of your personal data we hold about you, we will delete or anonymise it so that it no longer identifies you.
The right to object: you may object to processing your personal data if we do not need to process such information for contractual or legal requirements and if our legitimate interest does not outweigh your right to objection. You also have the right to object where we are processing your personal data for direct marketing purposes.
The right to restrict processing: you may have the right to limit the ways of processing of your personal data, under certain circumstances.
The right to lodge a complaint: you have the right to lodge complaints about our data processing activities before a competent data protection authority.
If you want to exercise any of the above mentioned rights, please contact us in english at hello@thebookgivers.com. Please state clearly whether this is a request to access, correct, delete or any other of the above mentioned points.
We try to respond to all legitimate requests within one month. Occasionally it may take us longer than a month, e.g. if your request is particularly complex or you have made a number of requests.
If your request is clearly unfounded, repetitive or excessive, we may charge a reasonable fee or refuse to deal with the request. We may request proof of your identity or other additional information before taking any further action on your request.
Children
The website is not intended for the use by children. You can only participate to The Book Givers if you are either 18 years of age or more, or the applicable age of majority in your jurisdiction, or if you’re under 18 years of age or the age of majority in your jurisdiction, that you are 16 years of age or more if you are a resident in the European Union or that you are 13 years of age or more if you are resident in the United States or anywhere else in the world.
Contact
Sabine Staggl
℅ Factory Berlin Mitte
Rheinsberger Str. 76/77
10115 Berlin
Email: hello@thebookgivers.com
Last updated: Nov 19, 2025