Terms of Service

These Terms of Service (the “Terms”) govern your access to and use of Letteropolis, including our website, mobile apps, RSS feeds and related services (together, the “Service”). “Letteropolis”, “we”, “us” and “our” refer to the operators of the Service.

By creating an account, or by browsing or reading on the Service, you agree to these Terms and to our Privacy Policy. If you do not agree, please do not use the Service.

Age. You must be at least 13 years old to create an account. We ask for your birth month and year at sign-up to confirm this. If you are under the age of majority where you live, you may use the Service only with the involvement of a parent or guardian who agrees to these Terms.

Accurate information. Provide accurate details when you register and keep your email address up to date — we use it to verify your account and to reset your password. You must verify your email address before publishing.

Security. You are responsible for activity on your account. Keep your password confidential, and consider turning on two-factor authentication in Settings → Account. You can review and sign out active sessions in Settings → Sessions. Tell us promptly at [email protected] if you suspect unauthorised access.

Usernames. Usernames must not impersonate another person or organisation, infringe a trademark, or be offensive. We may reclaim or change a username that breaks these rules.

Third-party sign-in. If you sign in with a third-party provider (such as Google), your use of that provider is also governed by its own terms.

You own what you write.Stories, chapters, articles, series, comments, images and anything else you post (“Your Content”) remain yours. We do not claim ownership of Your Content, and you keep your copyright.

The licence you give us. So that we can run the Service, you grant Letteropolis a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free licence to host, store, reproduce, format, display and distribute Your Content on and through the Service — for example, rendering it on story and article pages, in search results and listings, in RSS feeds, and in our apps. This includes making technical adaptations such as re-encoding uploaded images or reformatting text for different screens. The licence exists only to operate, improve and promote the Service; we will never sell Your Content or license it to third parties for their own publication.

When the licence ends.The licence ends when you delete Your Content or your account, except that (a) copies may persist for a limited time in backups and caches, and (b) content you contributed to shared spaces — such as comments on other people’s work — may remain where removing it would disrupt the conversation.

Your responsibilities.You confirm that you have all the rights needed to post Your Content and to grant this licence, and that it does not infringe anyone else’s copyright, trademark, privacy or other rights. If you publish with co-authors, you are responsible for agreeing ownership between yourselves.

Drafts and visibility. Drafts are visible only to you and any co-authors you add. Published work, your public profile, and bookmarks you mark as public can be seen by anyone.

Letteropolis welcomes a wide range of fiction and non-fiction, including work that explores difficult themes. To keep the Service usable for everyone:

• Rate honestly. Give each story an accurate content rating (General, Teen, Mature or Explicit) and use tags that describe what readers will find. Deliberately misleading ratings may be changed or the work removed.
• Fiction is not a loophole. Depicting something in a story is not the same as endorsing it, but content that crosses the lines in Section 5 is not allowed regardless of framing.
• Be constructive. Comments should engage with the work. Critique is welcome; personal attacks are not.
• Credit your sources.Fan fiction and work inspired by others is welcome when it is transformative and credited. Copying someone else’s writing and presenting it as your own is not.

You agree not to use the Service to post or do any of the following:

• Sexual content involving minors, in any form, including fiction and drawn imagery. We remove it and may report it to the relevant authorities.
• Harassment, threats, bullying, or encouraging others to target a person.
• Hate speech that attacks people based on a protected characteristic.
• Content that promotes or glorifies self-harm or suicide (as distinct from thoughtful fiction or discussion of these topics), or gratuitous real-world violence and gore.
• Sharing another person’s private information (such as their address, phone number or identity documents) without consent.
• Plagiarism, or content that infringes copyright or other intellectual property.
• Spam, including repetitive or automated posting, deceptive links, and artificial inflation of follows, views or other counts.
• Impersonating another person, writer or organisation.
• Malware, phishing, or attempts to probe, disrupt, overload or gain unauthorised access to the Service or other users’ accounts.
• Scraping or bulk-downloading the Service by automated means other than our published RSS feeds, or using the Service in violation of any applicable law.

Alongside original writing, Letteropolis hosts classic literature whose copyright has expired. Many of these texts come from Project Gutenberg, which makes public-domain books freely available.

• These works are presented because we believe they are in the public domain in the United States. Copyright terms differ between countries, so a work may still be protected where you live. You are responsible for checking the law that applies to you before copying or redistributing it.
• We may reformat, split into chapters, or add metadata to these texts. We claim no copyright in the underlying public-domain text.
• Letteropolis is not affiliated with or endorsed by Project Gutenberg, and its name is used only to credit the source.
• If you believe a work we host is not in the public domain, please tell us using the process in Section 7 and we will review it promptly.

We respect intellectual property and respond to clear notices of alleged infringement. If you believe content on Letteropolis infringes your copyright, email [email protected] with:

1. Identification of the copyrighted work you believe has been infringed.
2. The URL(s) of the material on Letteropolis you want removed, with enough detail for us to locate it.
3. Your name, postal address, telephone number and email address.
4. A statement that you have a good-faith belief that the use is not authorised by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law.
5. A statement that the information in your notice is accurate and, under penalty of perjury, that you are the owner or are authorised to act on the owner’s behalf.
6. Your physical or electronic signature.

Counter-notices. If your content was removed and you believe that was a mistake or that you have the right to use the material, you may send a counter-notice to the same address explaining why, including your contact details and a statement made under penalty of perjury. We may share the notice and counter-notice with the other party.

Repeat infringers.We may suspend or close the accounts of people who repeatedly infringe others’ rights.

Knowingly submitting a false notice may expose you to liability. For suspected plagiarism of your own work on Letteropolis, you can also use the Report control on the content itself.

Anyone signed in can report a story, chapter, article or comment using the Report control on that content, choosing the reason that fits best. Reports are reviewed by our moderation team, and we may also use automated checks to flag content for review.

Depending on the severity and history of a violation, we may:

• ask you to change a rating or tags, or edit the content;
• limit the visibility of, or remove, specific content;
• temporarily restrict features such as publishing or commenting; or
• suspend or permanently close your account.

We aim to act consistently and proportionately, but we are not obliged to monitor all content and we may act on content that we reasonably believe breaks these Terms or the law. If you think we made a mistake, write to [email protected] and we will take another look.

You can delete your account at any time from Settings → Account. Deleting your account removes your profile details (username, display name, bio and avatar), signs you out on every device, and prevents further sign-in. If you also want your published work taken down, we recommend deleting it before you delete your account. See our Privacy Policy for how long remaining data is kept.

We may suspend or terminate your access if you breach these Terms, if required by law, or if we discontinue the Service. Sections that by their nature should survive termination — including ownership, the licence for content already shared in conversations, disclaimers and limitation of liability — will survive.

The Letteropolis name, logos, site design, themes and software are owned by us or our licensors and are protected by intellectual-property law. These Terms do not grant you any right to use them except as needed to use the Service normally.

We are continually improving Letteropolis and may add, change or remove features at any time. Links to third-party websites are provided for convenience; we are not responsible for their content or practices.

The Service is provided “as is” and “as available”. To the fullest extent permitted by law, we disclaim all warranties, express or implied, including warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, and non-infringement. We do not guarantee that the Service will be uninterrupted, secure or error-free, or that content will be preserved. Please keep your own copies of work that matters to you.

Content on Letteropolis is created by its members and represents their views, not ours. We do not endorse user content and are not responsible for its accuracy.

To the fullest extent permitted by law, Letteropolis and its operators will not be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential or punitive damages, or for any loss of data, profits, goodwill or content, arising out of or relating to your use of (or inability to use) the Service.

Our total liability for any claim relating to the Service is limited to the greater of the amount you paid us to use the Service in the twelve months before the claim, or USD $50. Some jurisdictions do not allow certain limitations, so some of the above may not apply to you; nothing in these Terms limits liability that cannot be limited by law.

You agree to indemnify us against claims arising from Your Content or your breach of these Terms, to the extent permitted by law.

We may update these Terms from time to time. When we do, we will change the “Last updated” date above, and for material changes we will give reasonable notice — for example, by a notice on the site or by email. If you keep using the Service after changes take effect, you accept the updated Terms.

Questions about these Terms? Email [email protected] for legal matters, or [email protected] for help with your account. You can find every way to reach us on our contact page.