Terms of Service

1. Your Content, Your Rights

You retain full ownership of every manuscript, chapter, note, and piece of writing you upload to BetaShelf. We do not claim any intellectual property rights over your content. By uploading, you grant us only the limited license necessary to operate the service: storing, displaying, and transmitting your work back to you and to beta readers you explicitly invite.

When you delete your manuscripts, they are removed from BetaShelf right away. Daily database backups keep a copy for up to 7 days, then expire automatically. You may export or delete your content at any time.

2. Analysis Tools (“As-Is”)

BetaShelf offers writing analysis tools with a Book Pass and with Unlimited. These tools are provided “as-is” without warranty of accuracy. Automated analysis is meant to supplement, not replace, human editorial judgment.

Tool outputs may contain errors, miss context, or produce unexpected results. You should always review automated feedback critically before making changes to your manuscript. We do not guarantee that tool suggestions will improve your writing or be factually correct.

3. Acceptable Use

You agree not to use BetaShelf to:

• Upload content that infringes on the intellectual property rights of others
• Distribute malware, spam, or harmful content
• Harass, threaten, or abuse other users, including beta readers and authors
• Solicit other users, including advertising prices or offering paid services. Authors set the terms of a read. If an author offers payment on their own listing, the author and reader may arrange that payment directly with each other.
• Copy, download, or reproduce a manuscript you were given access to read, beyond quoting it back to its author in your feedback. Access to a shared manuscript is permission to read it, not a copy of it.
• Provide a manuscript you were given access to read, in whole or in part, to any third-party AI or machine learning tool. This includes pasting it into a chatbot, uploading it to an analysis service, and using it to train, fine-tune, or prompt any model. Authors may use whatever tools they choose on their own work; a reader's access is to read the book, and nothing else. The tools on BetaShelf itself are covered by our Privacy Policy; anything outside BetaShelf is not.
• Submit beta-reading feedback that was generated, or substantially generated, by AI and present it as your own reading of the manuscript. Beta reading on BetaShelf is human beta reading: an author who asks for readers is asking for a person's response to their book. This is separate from the analysis tools BetaShelf offers authors for their own work, described in section 2.
• Circumvent, disable, or work around any measure protecting a manuscript, including copy restrictions, access controls, and per-reader share links. This covers browser extensions, developer tools, disabling scripts, and automated requests to our interfaces.
• Attempt to reverse-engineer, scrape, or exploit the platform or its analysis features
• Create multiple accounts to circumvent plan limits, or create, control, or use any additional account to evade a suspension, termination, restriction, or other enforcement action BetaShelf has taken
• Use the analysis tools to generate content that violates applicable laws
• Share contact details, or ask another user to continue a read, a conversation, or a payment outside BetaShelf, unless the author has arranged a paid read on their own listing

We may suspend, limit, or close accounts that violate these terms, or at our discretion to protect other users and their work. We may also refuse or limit access from VPNs, proxies, or certain regions.

Safety and Policy Enforcement

BetaShelf uses automated systems to help detect activity that may violate these Terms, including solicitation, attempts to move conversations or payments off the platform, spam, fraud, harassment, and other prohibited conduct.

Messages or other activity that trigger these systems may be flagged and held for review, and may not be delivered. When necessary to investigate a potential violation, protect users or manuscripts, respond to a report, or enforce these Terms, authorized BetaShelf personnel may review the relevant content.

We do not routinely read private messages between authors and readers. Human review is limited to content that has been flagged or reported, or that belongs to an account under review for safety, security, or enforcement reasons. Accounts that violate these rules may be limited, suspended, or closed.

4. Copyright & DMCA

BetaShelf respects the intellectual property rights of all authors. By accessing a shared manuscript on BetaShelf, beta readers agree that:

• The manuscript is the exclusive intellectual property of its author
• They will not copy, reproduce, distribute, or share the manuscript or any portion of it
• They will not use the manuscript or its ideas for their own commercial purposes
• Access is granted solely for the purpose of providing feedback to the author

If you believe your copyrighted work has been used on BetaShelf without your permission, please contact us through our contact page with a description of the copyrighted work and the location on BetaShelf where it appears. We will investigate and take appropriate action, including removal of infringing content.

5. Subscriptions, Billing & Refunds

BetaShelf offers a free tier, a Book Pass (a one-time purchase for a single book), an Unlimited subscription, and digital products such as ebooks. Payments are processed securely by our third-party payment provider. You may cancel a subscription at any time; cancellation takes effect at the end of your current billing period. A Book Pass is a one-time purchase rather than a subscription, so there is nothing to cancel, and it is non-refundable except as described in our Refund Policy. If you subscribed to a plan we no longer offer, it continues on its current terms until you cancel it.

Refunds: You can cancel a subscription at any time to stop future charges; we do not provide partial refunds for the unused portion of a billing period. Digital products such as ebooks are non-refundable once they have been delivered or downloaded, except where the file is faulty or was not delivered, or where a refund is required by law. To request a refund, please contact us through our Contact page and we will review your request.

We reserve the right to change pricing with 30 days' notice. Existing subscribers will be notified via email before any price change takes effect.

6. Limitation of Liability

To the maximum extent permitted by law, BetaShelf and its creators shall not be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive damages arising from your use of the service. This includes, but is not limited to, loss of data, loss of profits, or damages resulting from reliance on automated analysis output.

Our total liability for any claim arising from your use of BetaShelf is limited to the amount you paid us in the 12 months preceding the claim, or $100, whichever is greater.

BetaShelf is not responsible for payment disputes between users. Where an author has posted a paid read, the arrangement is between the author and the reader. If a reader does not deliver the feedback they agreed to, use the rating system so other authors can see it.

7. Changes to These Terms

We may update these terms from time to time. If we make material changes, we will notify you via email or a prominent notice on the platform. Continued use of BetaShelf after changes take effect constitutes acceptance of the updated terms.