Affiliate Programme Terms

These terms govern the cooperation between the website operator and a partner who recommends Hero of the Book personalized children's books and earns a commission for doing so.

1. Introductory provisions

The affiliate programme is operated by:

• Name: Lukáš Kantor, a self-employed person doing business under the Czech Trade Licensing Act
• Company ID: 03177009, VAT ID: CZ9109235410
• Registered address: Milíkov 244, 739 81 Milíkov
• Contact e-mail: contact@heroofthebook.nz

(hereinafter the „operator"). A person whose application to the programme has been approved by the operator is hereinafter referred to as the „partner".

By accepting these terms and having the application approved, a brokerage agreement is concluded between the operator and the partner pursuant to Section 2445 et seq. of the Civil Code (Act No. 89/2012 Coll.). The partner carries out activities aimed at enabling the operator to conclude a purchase contract with a customer and is entitled to a commission for each brokered and paid order.

These terms concern exclusively the relationship between the operator and the partner. The relationship between the operator and a customer introduced by the partner is governed by the terms and conditions — the partner is not a party to the purchase contract and does not act as the operator's representative.

2. Who can become a partner

A partner may be a natural or legal person who:

• is over 18 years of age and has full legal capacity,
• operates a business under an authorisation required for this activity by the state of their establishment and holds an identification number under which they do business there (a Company ID in the Czech Republic, or its local equivalent elsewhere) — commissions are paid against an invoice, so without a business authorisation they cannot be properly paid out,
• if established outside the Czech Republic, also states their identification number for value added tax. In New Zealand the number the operator needs is your New Zealand Business Number (NZBN) or, if you have none, your IRD number, together with your GST number if you are registered. The operator needs it before a commission can be invoiced and paid.

How the taxes fall out: brokerage is a service, and for Czech value added tax the place of supply of a service to a business customer is where that customer is established, the Czech Republic (Section 9(1) of Act No. 235/2004 Coll., on value added tax). You therefore invoice without Czech tax and the operator self-assesses it. On the New Zealand side, a service supplied to a non-resident who is outside New Zealand when it is performed is zero-rated under section 11A(1)(k) of the Goods and Services Tax Act 1985, so a registered partner charges GST at 0 % on the commission. If your taxable supplies stay under NZD 60,000 in any 12 months you need not register for GST at all (section 51(1) of that Act).

You are responsible for the accuracy of the numbers you give us. Without a valid identification number the commission cannot be paid out; you can then take the reward as credit under the credit programme, which requires no invoice.

• has provided true and complete identification details in the application,
• has their own channel for recommendations (website, blog, social media, newsletter, offline community).

Not a business? You can still recommend us — in the credit programme, where the reward is not a commission in money but credit towards your own future purchase. The application is shared; you choose the branch in the form. Taking part in both branches at the same time is not possible and only one reward is ever due for one referral.

3. Start and duration of the cooperation

The cooperation begins when the operator approves the application. The programme is approval-based: the operator is not obliged to accept an application and may reject it without giving a reason. There is no legal entitlement to take part in the programme.

Once approved, the partner receives their referral code and link by e-mail. The code is personal and non-transferable.

The cooperation is agreed for an indefinite period. Termination is covered in Art. 11.

4. Referral link, code and attribution

Referrals are recorded as follows:

• When a visitor clicks the partner's referral link, the partner's code is stored in a cookie in the visitor's browser.
• The cookie is valid for 30 days from the last click (the attribution window).
• An order is assigned to the partner whose code is in the cookie at the moment of ordering. The last click rule applies — if the visitor arrives via another partner's link in the meantime, the commission belongs to that other partner.
• If the visitor deletes their cookies, uses a different device or browser, or has cookies blocked by their browser settings, the referral may not be recorded. No entitlement to a commission arises from an unrecorded order and the operator is not liable for technical limitations on the visitor's side.
• The partner may use their own code for their own purchases; self-purchases are not prohibited.

5. Discount for the referred customer

A customer who arrives via a partner's referral link receives a 10% discount off the price of the book and the audiobook add-on. The discount does not apply to shipping.

Discounts cannot be combined: if the customer applies a separate discount coupon, the coupon replaces the automatic referral discount. This has no effect on the recording of the referral or on the partner's entitlement to a commission.

The discount and commission rates are stated as at the moment this document is displayed and the operator may change them in the future in accordance with Art. 12.

6. Commission

Unless agreed otherwise in writing with the partner, the commission is 10% of the commission base.

The commission base is the price of the book actually paid excluding value added tax, i.e. after deducting any discounts and coupons. The base does not include:

• shipping of the printed book,
• the audiobook add-on,
• value added tax at the rate applicable in the relevant country.

The commission is recorded in the currency of the order. If payment in a different currency is agreed, it is converted at the Czech National Bank exchange rate applicable on the date the brokered order is paid.

7. Origin, approval and expiry of the commission entitlement

The entitlement to a commission arises upon payment of the brokered order, and the commission is thereby approved for payout at the same time. Approval does not wait for the order to be fulfilled or for the period for requesting a refund or filing a complaint to expire.

The entitlement to a commission expires if:

• the order was cancelled or the amount paid was refunded to the customer (including partially — in which case the entitlement expires to the corresponding extent),
• the order was placed fraudulently, by misuse of payment instruments, or in breach of Art. 9 of these terms,
• the order was placed only for show, in order to obtain a commission.

If the customer disputes the payment with their bank or with the card issuer (a so-called chargeback), the entitlement is treated as having expired for the duration of those proceedings. If the proceedings end in the operator's favour and the entitlement has not expired in the meantime for another reason, it is restored.

If the commission has already been paid out in such a case, the partner is obliged to return it; the operator is entitled to unilaterally set it off against the partner's further commissions. The partner can see the amount to be set off in their account, and it is deducted from their next payouts.

8. Commission payout, invoicing and taxes

• The operator pays commissions against an invoice issued by the partner. The supporting documentation (an overview of approved commissions after deduction of amounts set off under Art. 7) is available in the partner's account in the affiliate programme section.
• The partner sends the invoice to the operator's contact e-mail. Invoices are payable within 14 days of delivery, unless agreed otherwise.
• Commissions are paid by bank transfer to the account stated on the invoice. The operator verifies any change of account number — this protects both parties against fraud.
• The operator is not obliged to pay out a commission until the partner supplies the details required to properly issue and record the accounting document.
• The VAT regime follows from the place of supply. Brokerage is a service supplied to a business customer, so the place of supply is where the operator is established — the Czech Republic (Article 44 of Directive 2006/112/EC; Section 9(1) of Act No. 235/2004 Coll., on value added tax). A partner established in another Member State therefore invoices without tax and the operator declares the tax under the reverse charge mechanism; a partner established outside the European Union invoices without EU VAT and the operator self-assesses the Czech tax; a Czech partner registered for VAT charges Czech tax. The partner is responsible for the accuracy of their tax identification number. A partner in New Zealand charges GST at 0 % on the commission, because a service supplied to a non-resident who is outside New Zealand is zero-rated under section 11A(1)(k) of the Goods and Services Tax Act 1985.
• The commission is the partner's income from their business activity. The partner is solely responsible for taxing it, for any levies and for any tax registration. The partner carries out the promotion in the state of their own tax residence, so for a partner established abroad the commission is not income from sources in the territory of the Czech Republic (Section 22 of Act No. 586/1992 Coll., on income taxes) and the operator therefore neither withholds nor secures any tax from it. If the law requires otherwise, the operator withholds tax at the statutory rate and issues the partner with a confirmation of the tax withheld; it applies the rate under a double taxation treaty if the partner provides a certificate of tax residence before payment. A partner in New Zealand promotes the books from New Zealand, so no Czech tax is withheld from the commission and nothing is withheld in New Zealand either, because the operator is not a New Zealand payer; the partner declares the commission in their own return under the Income Tax Act 2007.

9. Promotion rules

The partner may promote the operator's products on their own website, blog, social media, in a newsletter and offline, provided they observe the following rules.

The partner is obliged to:

• present the product truthfully and in line with the information stated on the operator's website; not to promise features, prices, deadlines or guarantees that the operator does not provide,
• label advertising messages as advertising or paid partnership wherever the law requires it, including on social media,
• comply with the rules on sending commercial communications (the recipient's consent and the option to unsubscribe at any time),
• act in good faith and inform the operator without undue delay upon discovering an error in the recording of referrals or in the technical functioning of the link.

Advertising must be recognisable as advertising. In New Zealand the rule comes from the Fair Trading Act 1986: section 9 prohibits conduct in trade that is misleading or deceptive or likely to mislead or deceive, and section 13(e) and (f) prohibit a false or misleading representation that goods or services have any sponsorship, approval or endorsement, or that a person has any sponsorship, approval or affiliation. A post that hides the fact that it was paid for misleads in exactly that way, even if every sentence in it is true. The Advertising Standards Authority's codes, which bind advertisers and media in New Zealand, require the same: an advertisement, including influencer content, must be obviously identifiable as an advertisement in the publication itself, not only in a profile description or behind a link. Advertising aimed at children is held to a stricter standard under the ASA's Children and Young People's Advertising Code, and we do not want any promotion addressed to children at all.

For commercial messages sent by e-mail, SMS or instant message, the Unsolicited Electronic Messages Act 2007 applies. Section 9 prohibits sending a commercial electronic message without the recipient's consent, and the burden of proving consent is on the sender (section 9(3)); section 10 requires accurate sender information and section 11 a functional unsubscribe facility, and an unsubscribe request must be honoured within 5 working days. Civil penalties under section 45 reach NZD 200,000 for an individual and NZD 500,000 for an organisation, and the Act is enforced by the Department of Internal Affairs. Bulk unsolicited messages are not permitted under this cooperation in any case.

The partner is prohibited in particular from:

• forced or hidden cookie placement (so-called cookie stuffing), automatic redirects, loading the link in a hidden frame, iframe or pixel, click bots and any other artificial generation of clicks,
• sending unsolicited commercial communications (spam), including bulk messages, comment spam and off-topic forum posts,
• bidding in search engines and PPC systems on the operator's brand name or its obvious variants and misspellings (in particular "Hero of the Book" with and without diacritics, "heroofthebook.nz" and similar expressions in the language of the given version), whether as a keyword or in the ad copy,
• impersonating the operator, its employees or official representatives, using domain names or profiles confusable with the operator, or entering into any obligations in its name,
• publishing false reviews or ratings and presenting their own content as independent customer experiences,
• placing the link on sites with unlawful content, adult content, hateful, violent or discriminatory content, or on sites that infringe the rights of third parties,
• placing the code on discount aggregators, coupon and cashback portals without the operator's prior written consent,
• modifying, reselling or publishing the referral code in a way that makes it impossible to attribute a referral to a specific customer.

10. Trade mark and marketing materials

The operator grants the partner a non-exclusive, non-transferable licence, revocable at any time, to use its name, logo and the promotional materials provided (banners, book samples) solely to promote the operator's products for the duration of the cooperation.

The partner must not modify these materials in a way that changes their meaning or damages the operator's good name, nor use them after the cooperation ends. The illustrations and texts of sample books are copyrighted works; any use other than promotional use is not permitted.

11. Breach of terms and termination of the cooperation

If the partner breaches these terms, the operator may, depending on the severity of the breach:

• suspend the partner's account and temporarily stop recording referrals,
• cancel any as yet unpaid commissions that arose in connection with the breach,
• terminate the cooperation with immediate effect and deactivate the referral code.

Either party may terminate the cooperation at any time and without giving a reason, by notice sent to the other party's contact e-mail, effective upon delivery of the notice.

Termination of the cooperation does not extinguish the entitlement to commissions already accrued and duly approved from orders paid before termination; the partner shall invoice these within 30 days of termination. This does not apply to termination for breach of these terms to the extent set out in the first paragraph.

The partner may request cancellation of their participation in the programme at any time via the contact e-mail.

12. Changes to these terms

The operator may unilaterally change these terms, the commission rate and the discount for referred customers. The partner will be notified of any change by e-mail at least 14 days in advance.

If the partner disagrees with a change, they may terminate the cooperation under Art. 11 before the change takes effect. If they continue promoting after the effective date, the change is deemed accepted. A change does not affect commissions from orders paid before it took effect — those are settled under the previous wording.

13. Personal data protection

If the partner is a natural person, the operator processes their identification, billing and payment details (name, e-mail, registration number, VAT ID, billing address, bank account number, details of commissions and invoices) as a controller.

The legal basis is performance of a contract under Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR and compliance with legal obligations under point (c) — in particular accounting and tax obligations. Consent is not required for these purposes and cannot be withdrawn separately without terminating the cooperation; data on tax documents is retained for the period laid down by law.

Further details, including the partner's rights, are set out in the privacy policy.

14. Liability

The operator is not liable for the partner's lost profit, for website downtime, or for referrals not recorded due to the visitor's browser settings. The operator does not guarantee any minimum number of orders or any minimum commission amount.

The partner is responsible for the content they publish and for the compliance of their promotion with the law. If the operator suffers harm as a result of the partner's breach of these terms, or if a third-party claim is brought against the operator, the partner is obliged to compensate it.

15. Final provisions

The relationship between the operator and the partner is governed by the law of the Czech Republic, in particular Act No. 89/2012 Coll., the Civil Code. If the partner is an entrepreneur, the courts of the Czech Republic have jurisdiction over any disputes. If the partner is not an entrepreneur and is a consumer with their habitual residence in another country, the choice of Czech law does not deprive them of the protection afforded by the mandatory provisions of the law of their own country (Article 6(2) of Regulation (EC) No 593/2008).

The partner is not an employee, commercial agent or business associate of the operator; this is an independent business activity carried out on the partner's own account and responsibility. The partner has no continuing authority to negotiate or conclude business on the operator's behalf and is allotted no territory or group of customers — the provisions on commercial agency therefore do not apply to this relationship. New Zealand has no statute on commercial agents comparable to the European rules (Council Directive 86/653/EEC), and no statutory indemnity or compensation when the relationship ends. The relationship is governed by these terms and by the general law of agency. The partner acts in their own name and does not conclude contracts on the operator's behalf, and the notice period for ending the cooperation is stated in these terms expressly so that neither side has to argue about what would be reasonable. If the relationship were nevertheless found to be an agency in the European sense, the mandatory provisions of Czech law that implement that Directive (Section 2483 et seq. of Act No. 89/2012 Coll., the Civil Code) would apply regardless of these terms.

If any provision of these terms is invalid or ineffective, this does not affect the validity of the remaining provisions.

The current wording of these terms is always available on this page. Please send any questions about the programme to contact@heroofthebook.nz.