Terms of Service

Who we are and how to contact us

Novelo.com (“the Site) is a self-publishing site operated by Novelo Limited ("We"). We are registered in England and Wales under company number 14910505.

To contact us, please email hello@novelo.com.

These terms apply to both Authors (those who contribute Content to our Site) and Customers (those who access the Content).

Acceptance of these terms

By using our Site, you confirm that you accept these terms of use and that you agree to comply with them.

If you do not agree to these terms, you must not use our service.

We recommend that you print a copy of these terms for future reference.

There are other terms that may apply to you

These terms of use refer to the following additional terms, which also apply to your use of our Site:

• Our Privacy and Cookie Policy. See further under "How we may use your personal information".
• Our Acceptable Use Terms noted below, which sets out the permitted uses and prohibited uses of our Site. When using our Site, you must comply with the Acceptable Use Terms.

If you purchase goods or services from our Site, our terms and conditions of supply will apply to the sales.

Acceptable Use Terms

You may not use our Site:

• In any way that breaches any applicable local, national or international law or regulation.
• In any way that is unlawful or fraudulent or has any unlawful or fraudulent purpose or effect.
• For the purpose of harming or attempting to harm minors in any way.
• To bully, insult, intimidate or humiliate any person.
• To send, knowingly receive, upload, download, use or re-use any material which does not comply with these Terms and Conditions.
• To transmit, or procure the sending of, any unsolicited or unauthorised advertising or promotional material or any other form of similar solicitation (spam).
• To knowingly transmit any data, send or upload any material that contains viruses, Trojan horses, worms, time-bombs, keystroke loggers, spyware, adware or any other harmful programs or similar computer code designed to adversely affect the operation of any computer software or hardware.
• In any way that promotes or encourages child sexual exploitation or abuse.
• In any way that promotes or encourages terrorist activity.

Content standards

Our Content Standards can be found in the Content Guidelines page.

Paid Stories

Paid Stories are stories sold by authors to readers for a fee. Please read this section carefully, as it will contain important information regarding your rights as an Author or Customer of Paid Stories:

• Only registered users may purchase Paid Stories.
• Authors may only sell their stories once they have completed their seller's account.
• As an author selling Paid Stories, you are not considered an employee of Novelo. Authors are responsible for paying any direct or indirect taxes, including any GST, VAT or income tax, which may apply to them depending on residency, location or otherwise, under provisions of their jurisdiction. Authors represent and warrant that they comply, and will comply at all times, with their obligations under income tax provisions in their jurisdiction.
• The seller's account form requires authors to fill in key information about themselves and the company in which they operate as well as your bank account details. This information is never stored on Novelo servers, instead they are stored on the servers of Stripe, Inc (the "Payment Service Provider").
• If Novelo, for any reason, suspects the information entered into your seller's account is not factually correct or if the Payment Service Provider requires more information from you, Novelo will reach out to the email address associated with your account to acquire the relevant information. If you do not comply with these requests, your seller's account will be rejected and you will not be allowed to attempt to create another seller's account.
• Once filled in, the author will then be able to choose the story they want to convert into a Paid Story and will be required to select preview chapters (if any) and a listing price.
• Novelo offers two levels of royalties: authors will receive 35% royalty for stories priced between $0.99 and $1.99 and 80% for stories priced above $1.99.
• The final price presented to users is the listing price the author set and a service fee of 5% + 23¢ if the story is priced at under $5 and over $1.99.
• After a Paid Story has been purchased, the author will be credited 80% (or 35% if priced between $0.99 and $1.99) of the listing price to their seller's account after seven calendar days of the sale and Novelo will keep 20% (or 65% if priced between $0.99 and $1.99) of the listing price. This balance can be viewed on the payouts page.
• Payouts from your seller's account to your bank account are conducted by Stripe, Inc. Payouts are initiated once every month at the end of each month if your balance is equal to or above the threshold required. Listed below is the threshold required for all currencies supported by Novelo:
  • 30 United States Dollars
  • 25 Great British Pounds
  • 30 Euros
  • 42 Canadian Dollars
  • 47 Australian Dollars
  • 50 New Zealand Dollars
  • 56 Bulgarian Leva
  • 710 Czech Koruny
  • 220 Danish Kroner
  • 250 Hong Kong Dollars
  • 11,200 Hungarian Forints
  • 28 Swiss Francs
  • 150 Malaysian Ringgits
  • 550 Mexican Pesos
  • 330 Norwegian Kroner
  • 125 Polish Zlotych
  • 144 Romanian Lei
  • 125 Swedish Kronor
• Your balance will continue to be carried over to the next month until it meets the threshold, outlined above, required.
• For more information about receiving payments, please visit the Payment Terms page.
• For security concerns, Novelo may temporarily disable a author's ability to withdraw revenue to prevent fraudulent or illicit activity. This may come as a result of security issues or improper/illegal behavior reported by other users.
• As a buyer, you have the right to request a refund for any Paid Story you have purchased so long as it is within 14 calendar days of the purchase and you have not accessed or read any chapter that has not been marked as a free preview chapter. This will be verified by a Novelo admin before processing the refund. You can request a refund by emailing hello@novelo.com.

Challenges

Challenges are Novelo-run competitions where authors can win prizes and exposure for their stories. Authors are free to submit new or existing stories to a challenge, however Novelo reserves the right to disqualify any entry under any of the following conditions:

• The entry breaks any rule outlined in the challenge's Rules section.
• The entry is not categorised correctly. For example, if the challenge accepts only Horror stories and the story submitted was clearly not Horror but was categorised as such then it will be disqualified.
• The entry is over or under the word count if the challenge has a word count requirement.
• The entry breaches any condition laid out in the Content Guidelines.

While most challenges will not cost anything to enter, some will cost authors money to enter. If any entry has been disqualified in a challenge that is not free, the author will be refunded through our Payment Provider or Paypal.

Some challenges are won by acquiring the most votes and the winners of these challenges are automatically chosen. If any prize-winning entry has been disqualified in such a challenge then we will manually pick the entry with the next most votes as a winner.

Instructions on collecting prizes will be outlined in the Prize section of the challenge. If, for whatever reason, any challenge winner cannot comply with the instructions (such as not responding to attempts by Novelo to contact the prize winner), then we will manually pick another entry to receive the prize.

We may make changes to these terms

We amend these terms from time to time. Every time you wish to use our Site, please check these terms to ensure you understand the terms that apply at that time. [These terms were most recently updated on 29th June 2023.

We may make changes to our Site

We may update and change our Site from time to time to reflect changes to our products, our users' needs and our business priorities. We will try to give you reasonable notice of any major changes.

User Accounts

To use certain features of the Service, you may be required to register for an account. When you register for an account, you must provide accurate and complete information, and you must keep your account information up-to-date. You are responsible for maintaining the confidentiality of your account information and for all activities that occur under your account.

We may suspend or withdraw our Site

We do not guarantee that our Site, or any content on it, will always be available or be uninterrupted. We may suspend or withdraw or restrict the availability of all or any part of our Site for business and operational reasons. We will try to give you reasonable notice of any suspension or withdrawal.

You are also responsible for ensuring that all persons who access our Site through your internet connection are aware of these terms of use and other applicable terms and conditions, and that they comply with them.

We may transfer this agreement to someone else

We may transfer our rights and obligations under these terms to another organisation. We will always tell you in writing if this happens and we will ensure that the transfer will not affect your rights under the contract.

You must keep your account details safe

When you register to use our Site you confirm that you are over 18 years of age and have provided accurate and complete registration details.

If you choose, or you are provided with, a user identification code, password or any other piece of information as part of our security procedures, you must treat such information as confidential. You must not disclose it to any third party. You are responsible for maintaining the confidentiality of your information and all the information which may pass through our Site as part of the services we provide.

We have the right to disable any user identification code or password, whether chosen by you or allocated by us, at any time, if in our reasonable opinion you have failed to comply with any of the provisions of these terms of use.

If you know or suspect that anyone other than you knows your user identification code or password, you must promptly notify us at hello@novelo.com.

How you may use material on our Site

We are the owner or the licensee of all intellectual property rights in our Site (but not the Content accessible on the Site). The Content is protected by copyright laws and treaties around the world. All such rights are reserved by the Authors of the Content.

You must not attempt to modify digital copies of any materials in any way, and you must not use any illustrations, photographs, or any graphics separately from any accompanying text other than in accordance with these terms.

You must not use any part of the Content on our Site for commercial purposes without obtaining a licence to do so from us or our licensors.

If you print off, copy, download, share or repost any part of our Site in breach of these terms of use, your right to use our Site will cease immediately and you must, at our option, return or destroy any copies of the materials you have made.

No text or data mining, or web scraping

You shall not conduct, facilitate, authorise or permit any text or data mining or web scraping in relation to our Site or any services provided via, or in relation to, our Site. This includes using (or permitting, authorising or attempting the use of):

• Any "robot", "bot", "spider", "scraper" or other automated device, program, tool, algorithm, code, process or methodology to access, obtain, copy, monitor or republish any portion of the Site or any data, content, information or services accessed via the same.
• Any automated analytical technique aimed at analysing text and data in digital form to generate information which includes but is not limited to patterns, trends and correlations.

The provisions in this clause should be treated as an express reservation of our rights in this regard, including for the purposes of Article 4(3) of Digital Copyright Directive ((EU) 2019/790).

This clause shall not apply insofar as (but only to the extent that) we are unable to exclude or limit text or data mining or web scraping activity by contract under the laws which are applicable to us.

Do not rely on information on this Site

The content on our Site is provided for general information and entertainment purposes only. It is not intended to amount to advice on which you should rely. You must obtain professional or specialist advice before taking, or refraining from, any action on the basis of the content on our Site.

Although we make reasonable efforts to update the information on our Site, we make no representations, warranties or guarantees, whether express or implied, that the content on our Site is accurate, complete or up to date.

We are not responsible for Websites we link to

Where our Site contains links to other sites and resources provided by third parties, these links are provided for your information only. Such links should not be interpreted as approval by us of those linked websites or information you may obtain from them.

We have no control over the contents of those sites or resources.

User-generated content is not approved by us

This website includes content, works, books, information, and materials uploaded by other users of the Site. This information and these materials have not been verified or approved by us. The views expressed by contributors or Authors on our Site do not represent our views or values.

We are not responsible for any errors or omissions present in Content. Novelo its directors, officers, employees, consultants or any of our representatives are not liable for any loss or damage caused by your reliance on any Content obtained through our Site.

How to complain about or report content

If you become aware of any material that could comprise or be connected to child sexual abuse or exploitation or that could comprise terrorist content or be connected to terrorism, please contact us immediately on hello@novelo.com.

If you wish to complain about any other content, please contact us on hello@novelo.com.

Our responsibility for loss or damage suffered by you

Whether you are a consumer or a business user:

• We do not exclude or limit in any way our liability to you where it would be unlawful to do so. This includes liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence or the negligence of our employees, agents or subcontractors and for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation.

If you are a business user (including Authors):

• Our payment terms for Authors who wish to upload their Content to our Site may be accessed here.
• Our payment terms for Customers who wish to purchase Content from our Site may be accessed here.
• We exclude all implied conditions, warranties, representations or other terms that may apply to our Site or any content on it.
• We will not be liable to you for any loss or damage, whether in contract, tort (including negligence), breach of statutory duty, or otherwise, even if foreseeable, arising under or in connection with:
  • use of, or inability to use, our Site; or
  • use of or reliance on any content displayed on our Site.
• In particular, we will not be liable for:
  • loss of profits, sales, business, or revenue;
  • business interruption;
  • loss of anticipated savings;
  • loss of business opportunity, goodwill or reputation; or
  • any indirect or consequential loss or damage.

If you are a consumer user (Customers or Readers):

• If you wish to purchase any Content we may make available on the Site our terms of payment may be accessed here.
• Please note that we only provide our Site for domestic and private use. You agree not to use our Site for any commercial or business purposes, and we have no liability to you for any loss of profit, loss of business, business interruption, or loss of business opportunity.
• If defective digital content that we have supplied, damages a device or digital content belonging to you and this is caused by our failure to use reasonable care and skill, we will either repair the damage or pay you compensation. However, we will not be liable for damage that you could have avoided by following our advice to apply an update offered to you free of charge or for damage that was caused by you failing to correctly follow instructions or to have in place the minimum system requirements advised by us.
• Novelo, its directors, officers, employees nor any of our representatives are liable for any loss or damage caused by any consumer’s reliance on the Content generated by our Site. We may, but we are not obligated to, monitor any Content, displayed or made available on our Site.

Your legal right to change your mind.

For most of our services bought online, you have 14 days after the date we confirm your order to change your mind about a purchase, but:

• You lose the right to cancel any service, when it's been completed or if you begin to access the services (and you must pay for any services provided up the time you cancel).

How to let us know and what happens next.

If you change your mind contact us on hello@novelo.com. We refund you as soon as possible and within 14 days of you telling us you've changed your mind. We refund you by the method you used for payment. We don't charge a fee for the refund.

How we may use your personal information

We will only use your personal information as set out in our Privacy Policy.

Uploading content to our Site

Whenever you make use of a feature that allows you to upload content to our Site, or to make contact with other users of our Site, you must comply with the content standards set out in our Acceptable Use Terms.

You warrant that any Content complies with those standards, and you will be liable to us and indemnify us for any breach of that warranty. This means you will be responsible for any loss or damage we suffer as a result of your breach of warranty.

Any Content you upload to our Site will be considered non-confidential and non-proprietary. You retain all of your ownership rights in your Content, but you are required to grant us and other users of our Site a limited licence to use, store and copy that Content.

We also have the right to disclose your identity to any third party who is claiming that any Content posted or uploaded by you to our Site constitutes a violation of their intellectual property rights or of their right to privacy.

We have the right to remove any posting or Content you make on our Site if, in our opinion, your post does not comply with the Content standards set out in our Acceptable Use Terms.

If you wish to contact us in relation to Content you have uploaded to our Site and that we have taken down, please contact hello@novelo.com.

You are solely responsible for securing and backing up your Content.

You must not upload any material that could incite a terrorist offence, solicit any person to participate in terrorist activities, provide instruction on any method or technique for committing a terrorist offence or threaten to commit a terrorist offence.

Rights and warranties you are giving us when you upload Content to the Site

When you upload or post Content to our Site, you grant us the following rights to use that Content:

• a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, transferable licence to use, reproduce, distribute and display the Content in connection with the service provided by the website and across different media for the purposes of promoting the Site or the service. This will expire when the user deletes the Content from the Site.
• Please note that whilst you retain ownership of your Content, any assistance we may provide in providing templates or layout features made available through the Site are not proprietary to you and can be used by Novelo and others for such purposes, You acknowledge and agree that you have not rights in any template and/or layout, and such template or layout shall be sole and exclusive property of Novelo.
• You represent, warrant and agree that you own or otherwise possess all necessary rights to the Content you upload to the Site and that your Content does not and will not infringe, misappropriate, or use or disclose without authorisation, or otherwise violate any intellectual property or proprietary right of any third party and that all Content is lawful.
• You acknowledge and agree that we may monitor, amend or filter any Content and refuse to upload any Content which does not comply with our acceptable use terms. Whilst we may have access to such Content, Novelo accepts no responsibility for, nor does it have any control over the Content made available on the Site and all Content is the sole responsibility of the Author.

Indemnification

You will indemnify, defend and hold us, our directors, partners, licensors, advertisers and sponsors, officers, employees, consultants, agents, and other representatives, harmless from and against any and all claims, damages, losses, costs (including reasonable legal fees) and other expenses that arise directly or indirectly out of or from (a) your breach of these Terms, (b) your Content; (c) your activities in connection with the Site (including, without limitation, any and all purchases); and/or (d) any taxes, fees or penalties associated with your receipt of any fee or the sale of your Content.

You will not do anything to intentionally prejudice the rights granted hereunder, but in the event that you lose any rights or other licenses, consents, or permissions relating to specific Content that is necessary for you to grant the rights you grant to us hereunder, or you receive notice of a third-party claim relating to Content which you reasonably deem to be of concern, you will immediately retire or delete such Content from our Site. Notwithstanding the foregoing, you will use commercially reasonable efforts to maintain the rights to the Content that you provide to us under these terms. Without limiting our rights or remedies under these terms, you will reimburse us for any refunds we make to Customers as a result of the withdrawal of Content under this section. For the avoidance of doubt, nothing in this paragraph is intended to relieve you of your indemnification obligation above.

Disclaimer of Warranties

The Site, including, but not limited to, all materials incorporated therein and all features and functionality of the Site, is provided "as is, and without warranties of any kind, either express or implied. To the fullest extent permissible by applicable law, Novelo and our directors, officers, employees, consultants, agents and other representatives disclaim all warranties, express or implied, including, without limitation, implied warranties of title, non-infringement, accuracy, merchantability, and fitness for a particular purpose.

Novelo does not warrant that your use of the Site will be uninterrupted, timely, error-free, or secure, that defects will be corrected, or that the Site, the server(s) on which the Site is offered or any software incorporated into the Site are free of viruses or other harmful components. You assume all responsibility and risk for your use of the site and your reliance thereon. No opinion, advice, or statement of Novelo shall create any warranty.

Limitation of Liability

To the fullest extent permissible by applicable law, neither Novelo or our directors, officers, employees, consultants, agents, or other representatives, are responsible or liable for any indirect, incidental, consequential, special, exemplary, or punitive damages (including, without limitation, damages for loss of business, loss of data, or lost profits), under any contract, negligence, strict liability or other theory arising out of or relating in any way to the Site (including, but not limited to, all materials incorporated therein and all features and functionality of the Site). Your sole and exclusive remedy for any issues with the Site is to stop using the site. To the fullest extent permissible by applicable law, the sole, exclusive, and maximum liability of Novelo arising out of or in connection with these terms or the Site, whether in contract, tort (including, without limitation, negligence), or otherwise, shall be $50.

Intellectual Property

Novelo is the owner of all intellectual property rights, including all copyright, patents, and trademarks, associated with the Site, with all rights reserved, exclusive of Content provided by Authors, which is owned by the Authors of such Content.

All trademarks and service marks on the Site not owned by us are the property of their respective owners.

The trade names and trademarks owned by us, whether registered or unregistered, may not be used in connection with any product or service that is not ours, in any manner that is likely to cause confusion.

You may not use any of our trade names, trademarks without our express prior written consent.

If you believe in good faith that Content used or displayed on the Site infringes any copyright or any other intellectual property right, you must Novelo a notice in writing requesting that the material be removed, or access to it blocked. The notice must include the following information: (a) a physical or electronic signature of a person authorised to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed; (b) identification of the work claimed to have been infringed (or if multiple works are covered by a single notification, a representative list of such works); (c) identification of the material that is claimed to be infringing or the subject of infringing activity, and information reasonably sufficient to allow us to locate the material on the Site; (d) the name, address, telephone number and email address of the complaining party; (e) a statement that the complaining party has a good faith belief that use of the material in the manner complained of is not authorised by the intellectual property owner, its agent or the law; and (f) a statement that the information in the notification is accurate and that the complaining party is authorised to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed. 

We are not responsible for viruses and you must not introduce them

We do not guarantee that our Site will be secure or free from bugs or viruses.

You are responsible for configuring your information technology, computer programmes and platform to access our Site. You should use your own virus protection software.

You must not misuse our Site by knowingly introducing viruses, trojans, worms, logic bombs or other material that is malicious or technologically harmful. You must not attempt to gain unauthorised access to our Site, the server on which our Site is stored or any server, computer or database connected to our Site. You must not attack our Site via a denial-of-service attack or a distributed denial-of service attack. By breaching this provision, you would commit a criminal offence under the Computer Misuse Act 1990. We will report any such breach to the relevant law enforcement authorities and we will co-operate with those authorities by disclosing your identity to them. In the event of such a breach, your right to use our Site will cease immediately.

Rules about linking to our Site

You may link to our home page, provided you do so in a way that is fair and legal and does not damage our reputation or take advantage of it.

You must not establish a link in such a way as to suggest any form of association, approval or endorsement on our part where none exists.

You must not establish a link to our Site in any Website that is not owned by you.

Our Site must not be framed on any other Site, nor may you create a link to any part of our Site other than the home page.

We reserve the right to withdraw linking permission without notice.

The website in which you are linking must comply in all respects with the content standards set out in our Acceptable Use Terms.

If you wish to link to or make any use of Content on our Site other than that set out above, please contact hello@novelo.com.

Termination

These terms will remain effective until either party terminates them as follows:

• Novelo may terminate these terms immediately and/or your access our Site at our discretion including where we believe you have breached any of the terms herein.
• We may provide you with a notice of termination but we are not obliged to do so. Once terminated your rights of access to our Site will cease.
• You accept that Novelo will not be liable to you or any third party for an loss attributable to Novelo terminating your access to our Site.
• We will delete all Content attributable to you to you as soon as possible following such termination.
• Novelo will retain your personal data for as long as is required under relevant data protection legislation.

Which country's laws apply to any disputes?

If you are a consumer, please note that these terms of use, their subject matter and their formation, are governed by English law. You and we both agree that the courts of England and Wales will have exclusive jurisdiction except that if you are a resident of Northern Ireland you may also bring proceedings in Northern Ireland, and if you are resident of Scotland, you may also bring proceedings in Scotland.

If you are a business, these terms of use, their subject matter and their formation (and any non-contractual disputes or claims) are governed by English law. We both agree to the exclusive jurisdiction of the courts of England and Wales.

Advertisements

We make the Services available without charge. To be able to continue to do so, we may display third party advertisements and promotions on or in connection with the Service. Since the advertising we provide is based upon information provided by third parties, we will not be responsible or liable for any loss or damage of any sort incurred by you as a result of any advertisements. Your interactions with advertisers found on or through the Service, including, without limitation, all reliance upon advertising, all commercial transactions and legal obligations associated with such advertisements, are solely between you and the advertisers.

This document was last updated on the 1st April, 2024.