Terms of Service

In these terms, “we” and “us” mean the operator named above, and “the site” means the Library of Akasha and everything it offers. By creating an account or using the site, you agree to these terms. If you do not agree, please do not use the site.

These terms work together with our Privacy Policy, Cookie Policy and Copyright & DMCA Policy.

Anyone may read the site without an account.

To create an account you must be at least 16 years old. If you are under 18 (or under the age of majority where you live), you need the permission of a parent or guardian, who accepts these terms for you.

Some chapters are marked by their authors as mature content. They are meant for adults only: by opening one, you confirm that you are an adult in your country.

You may not use the site if we have banned you, including through a new account.

• Give a real email address you can read: we send the link that activates your account there (it works for 24 hours).
• You can sign in with your email and password, or with Discord. When you use Discord, we receive your Discord id, name, email address and picture; we never keep Discord's access tokens.
• Keep your password to yourself. You are responsible for what is done with your account.
• Your username is public, and the usernames you had before stay visible on your profile, so a new name cannot hide an old one.
• One person per account. Do not share accounts or sell them.
• You can delete your account at any time in Settings → Your data. Section 4 explains what stays afterwards.

“Your content” means everything you put on the site: books, chapters, covers, glossary entries, announcements, comments, reviews, your profile's text and pictures, and reports.

You keep the rights to what you write. To run the site, you give us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free licence to host, store, copy, display and distribute your content, and to adapt it only as needed to show it on the site: for example resizing and re-encoding pictures, marking glossary terms and paragraphs, and showing excerpts in lists, notifications and the Discord announcements an author sets up for their own book. We do not sell your content or use it for anything else.

The licence ends when you delete the content or your account, with two exceptions:

• comments and reviews you left on other people's books stay when you delete your account, shown as written by “Deleted user”, so conversations keep making sense;
• copies in our backups disappear within 90 days.

You promise that you own your content or have the right to post it, and that it follows these terms. Authors decide what their chapters say, and must mark chapters with mature content as such.

Do not post or do any of the following:

• spam, advertising or links posted only to promote something;
• harassment, threats, hate against people or groups, or encouraging others to do these things;
• sexual content involving minors, in any form. It is removed, the account is closed, and we report it to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, as United States law requires;
• sexual or graphic content outside chapters marked as mature content, including in comments, reviews and pictures;
• spoilers that are not hidden with the spoiler marks (text between double bars, ||like this||);
• plagiarism, or work you do not own or may not share;
• pretending to be someone else, or usernames and pictures that are offensive;
• malware, phishing, or links to them;
• automated access beyond normal reading (scraping, bots), or anything that disrupts the site or its security;
• manipulating votes, ratings, reads or reports, or evading a ban;
• anything illegal.

Anyone signed in can report comments, reviews, books, chapters and accounts with the Report button. Our staff (moderators and administrators) review reports and may hide or remove content, hide books or chapters, and ban accounts for a time or for good. A banned account cannot sign in until its ban ends.

When staff hide your book or chapter, you are told why and can answer. When staff send you a notice about something you posted, you can reply to it for 30 days. Authors can also hide comments on their own books. We do not review everything that is posted and are not responsible for what users post, but we act on what we find or are told about.

If you think we made a mistake, answer the notice or write to [email protected].

We respect authors' rights. Our Copyright & DMCA Policy explains how to tell us about copied work, how to answer a notice, and that accounts which repeatedly post others' work are closed.

Premium adds perks: no ads, cosmetic effects for your name, picture and profile, extra reading settings and looks, in the reading game more starlight from the chapters you read and more of your sky's production while you are away, with looks for your sky, and early access to chapters their authors hold back for premium readers (for up to 30 days). Perks may change over time.

Prices and payment

Prices are shown in US dollars on the premium page and again before you pay. Today they are $3 a month or $30 a year for a subscription, and $3, $8 or $30 for a pass of 1, 3 or 12 months. Prices may change for future periods; a subscription's price never changes during a period you already paid. Premium is sold through Link, the merchant of record service of our payment provider Stripe: Link is the seller on your receipt and card statement (LINK.COM*), adds the sales tax or VAT due where you live, may show the price in your currency, sends your receipts and answers payment questions. Your card details go to Stripe and Link and never reach us.

Subscriptions

Subscriptions renew automatically at the end of each period until you cancel. You can cancel at any time in Settings → Premium (Stripe's billing portal): renewals stop, and premium lasts until the end of the period you paid for (plus 2 days of grace). Passes do not renew.

Refunds

You can ask for a refund within 14 days of a payment, from Settings → Premium. An administrator looks at every request and may refund all or part of it; premium that a refunded payment gave can be taken back, and a refunded subscription is cancelled. You are always told the decision. Refunds made outside the site (for example by Stripe or Link's support, which may refund a payment itself) are recorded as they are, and include any tax you paid. If a payment is disputed with your bank (a chargeback) while it was valid, the premium it gave may be removed.

Gifts and codes

A gift sends a single-use code to the email address you give. Codes have no cash value and cannot be exchanged for money; codes handed out by our administrators may have an end date. A gift that was not redeemed yet can be refunded like any payment, which disables its code.

Premium through Patreon

Members of the library's campaign on Patreon in the $5 tier or above (not on a free trial) get premium once they connect their Patreon account in Settings → Premium, for as long as their membership is paid: it ends with the period they paid for (plus 2 days of grace), whether they cancel, move to a lower tier or a payment fails. It counts toward the loyalty tiers from when it starts on this site, and it does not add to premium bought, given or redeemed: premium lasts until whichever ends later. One Patreon account gives premium to one account here. Payments and refunds on Patreon are between you and Patreon, under its terms. A ban stops premium through Patreon while it lasts; an administrator who takes your premium away suspends it too.

Bans and deleted accounts

A ban cancels your subscription, since you cannot sign in to do it: it stops renewing, premium lasts until the end of the period you paid for, and nothing you paid is refunded. Lifting the ban does not restart it; you can subscribe again. Deleting your account cancels your subscription, without a refund for the time left: if you are within 14 days of a payment, ask for a refund before deleting it.

Nothing in this section limits the refund or withdrawal rights that the law where you live gives you.

Chapters you read signed in earn rewards in Your sky: starlight, experience and levels, streaks, badges, titles and looks, stars and constellations, your sky's stardust and observatory, and the rewards of challenges and events. A chapter counts only when it was read: 90% of it, at a pace a person can read, a little faster while Listen reads aloud, while the page is in front of you, and once. A text you were already rewarded for earns nothing again, and the rewards of a read that looks automated wait for staff to check them.

Comments and reviews can earn rewards too, when they pass automatic checks of substance and repetition, and the judgment of an AI system when the site uses one, within limits, and only on chapters you read (a comment) or books you read (a review, once per book). Their rewards may wait while they are checked, and staff may look at any of them. Deleting a rewarded comment or review, or its removal or hiding by staff or the book's author, takes its reward back. When an account's activity looks like farming rewards, the site watches the account by itself (lower daily limits, every comment and review checked by the AI system when one is used) and, past that, holds its rewards for staff, who may approve, adjust or refuse each of them, keep watch on the account or restrict its rewards.

Your level, title, badges and sky show on your profile, your name and what you read on the leaderboards, to the readers of your weekly league, on the days-read board and on your Year in the sky page, and by your name on a book's comments and reviews how much of it you read and whether you were one of its first readers, unless you turn off Show my reading progress in Settings → Privacy. You can spend starlight to star a book you read, from the level How it works shows, once a week per book; stars are counted publicly, never sold, and cannot be taken back. You can spend starlight in the shop on looks for your sky and your title; a look bought is yours to keep: it is never refunded, sold back or taken back by a void. Authors see how their books are read, in numbers, never who read them, but for their first readers who show their reading progress.

Starlight, stardust, badges and everything else the game gives have no cash value: they cannot be sold, exchanged or refunded, and they belong to the account that earned them. Days of premium given as a reward are premium like any other, and cannot be refunded or exchanged. Reading made by a script or any other cheating is not reading: staff may void such reads, and may ban the account. A void takes back everything those reads earned or led to: their rewards, and the rewards of your comments on those chapters and of your reviews those reads made possible; the stars they dropped for your constellations, with their shards, and the constellations those stars completed; the copies of stars they gave, with the silver and gold masteries the copies left no longer reach; the books they helped finish, with those books' rewards; the challenges and events they completed; the badges they reached and the titles those badges gave, the readings badges of the books' authors included; the milestones they reached and the days of premium those gave; the streak repairs they paid for; the comets they brought; the Shared sky's bonus, paid again by the words left; a reading circle's bonus, paid again by the words left, and, when the circle no longer met its goal that week, every member's bonus of that week, though their starlight falls below zero (nothing of theirs is sold, and their later rewards repay it); the supernovas made while they were read, with their nebula; the chapter trains those reads made, for every reader of them (another reader's starlight may go below zero then, nothing of theirs is sold, and their later rewards repay it); and a number among a book's first readers they gave you, which stays empty. Then your buildings are sold at their price while your starlight is below zero. We may change the rewards and the numbers of the game.

The site works with other companies' services: Discord (signing in, and the announcements authors send to their own Discord servers), Stripe (payments), Google (Analytics and ads, with your consent where the law asks it) and the AI provider the administrators choose (checking comments and reviews, when one is set up). Their own terms and privacy policies apply to what they do. Links to other sites are not an endorsement, and we are not responsible for them.

The site is provided “as is” and “as available”, without warranties of any kind, as far as the law allows. We do our best to keep it running and your data safe, but we cannot promise that it will always be available, error-free or secure.

Stories, comments and reviews are written by their authors, not by us, and do not reflect our views. We may change, pause or end features of the site.

As far as the law allows, we are not liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential or punitive damages, or for lost data, profits or goodwill, arising from your use of the site. Our total liability for any claim is limited to the greater of US$50 or what you paid us in the 12 months before the claim. Some places do not allow these limits; where they do not, they apply only as far as allowed.

As far as the law allows, you agree to cover the costs of claims made against us because of your content or because you broke these terms, including reasonable legal costs.

You can delete your account at any time. We may suspend or close accounts that break these terms or the law (a ban cancels your subscription, without a refund: see Premium), and we may end the site with notice where we reasonably can. Sections 4 (for content that stays), 10, 11, 12 and 14 continue to apply after an account is closed.

These terms are governed by the laws of the United States and of the state where the operator lives, without regard to conflict-of-laws rules, and disputes go to the courts located there. If you are a consumer living in the European Union or the United Kingdom, you keep the protection of the mandatory law of your country and may bring claims in your local courts.

Before going to court, please write to [email protected]: most problems can be solved by talking.

We may update these terms; the date at the top of this page says when they last changed. For significant changes we tell signed-in readers on the site or by email before they apply. If you keep using the site after they apply, you accept them; if you do not accept them, you can delete your account.

Questions about these terms: [email protected]. To report something on the site, use the Report button next to it.