Terms of Use

Last updated: October 5, 2026

LocalBooks (localbooks.app, our apps and our API) is a directory of books by local and independent authors, run by Belladrey LLC, a [state of formation] limited liability company (“LocalBooks”, “we”, “us”). These terms are an agreement between you and us. By using LocalBooks you agree to them. If you don’t agree, please don’t use LocalBooks.

1. Who can use LocalBooks

You can browse without an account. To sign in you must be at least 13 years old, and old enough to agree to these terms where you live (16 in some countries). If you use LocalBooks for a business or publisher, you agree to these terms on its behalf.

2. Your account

You sign in with a one-time link we email you; there’s no password. Keep access to your email account secure, because anyone who can read your email can sign in as you. You’re responsible for what happens under your account. Tell us at support@localbooks.app if you think someone else is using it.

3. Listing books (authors)

Authors create author profiles and list books with covers, descriptions, keywords, places and links to where the book is sold. You must only list books you wrote or have the right to list (for example as the publisher or with the author’s permission), and everything you submit must be accurate. One account may hold up to five author profiles (pen names). Don’t impersonate another author.

Your first book listing is free. Additional listings may require a one-time fee, shown before you pay. [Refund terms for paid listings, once payments launch.]

4. Ebooks, samples and reading

Authors may upload an EPUB so people can read the book in the LocalBooks reader. By uploading you confirm that you hold the rights to publish the text here and that the file has no DRM.

Free sample. The opening of every uploaded book (the first three chapters or 10% of the book, whichever is shorter) is public: anyone can read it, search engines can index it, and it’s available through our API.
The rest. You choose whether signed-in readers can read past the sample for free, or whether only the sample is shown. You can change this or remove the ebook at any time.
Readers may read books for personal, non-commercial use only. Don’t copy, scrape, redistribute or republish the text, and don’t try to get around the sample limits.

5. Echoes

Readers can leave Echoes (one of six reactions) on paragraphs. Echoes are private: the reader sees their own, and the book’s author sees totals per chapter and per passage, never who left them. Don’t use Echoes to harass anyone or to manipulate an author’s numbers.

6. Trailers, trailer packs and earnings

Full books in the reader show a 10-second trailer for another LocalBooks book now and then. Trailers can’t be skipped; they’re what keeps reading free.

Trailer packs. Authors can buy a number of completed trailer views for their own book. The price is shown before you pay. A processing fee and, where it applies, sales tax are added, and Stripe processes the payment. A view counts only when the whole trailer has played to a reader we consider genuine. We don’t promise how fast a pack is delivered or any result such as sales. Packs don’t expire, you can pause them, and you can have the price of views not yet delivered refunded at any time (the processing fee isn’t refunded). Trailers must follow section 8; we may stop a pack that breaks these terms and refund what’s unspent.
Earnings. When a reader finishes a paid trailer while reading your book, you earn a share of the view price (shown on your Earnings page). Earnings are held for 30 days before you can cash them out. To cash out you must pass identity and tax checks with our payout provider, Dots, and connect a payout method; payout fees are taken from the amount. Free trailers, your own reading and views we consider fraudulent or artificial earn nothing. We may review a cash-out before paying it, and we may cancel earnings and close accounts involved in fraud, such as fake or automated reading, multiple accounts or paid readers. You’re responsible for your own taxes. [Lawyer: legal nature of earnings, minimum cash-out, unclaimed balances, rate changes.]
Buying ebooks. Authors can sell their ebooks at prices they set. The author is the seller: you pay the author through Stripe, on the author’s own Stripe account, and LocalBooks keeps a share of the price as a service fee. A bought ebook is read in LocalBooks (on the website and in our apps), without trailers, for as long as the book is on LocalBooks; you don’t get a file. Because you can read the free sample (and often the whole book with trailers) before buying, and you get the book immediately, ebook sales are final: no refunds, except where the law requires one. Before paying you agree to get the book right away and that you lose any right to cancel. If a payment is reversed (for example a chargeback), the book is removed from your account. LocalBooks doesn’t handle refund requests: any request goes to the author, who decides. Authors who choose to refund a buyer do it in their own Stripe account; the book is then removed from the buyer’s account, and LocalBooks’ service fee isn’t returned.[Lawyer: EU/UK 14-day withdrawal waiver wording (consent + acknowledgement, confirmation on a durable medium: Stripe’s receipt?), Australia/NZ consumer guarantees for faulty products, what happens if a book is removed (copyright, author deletes it), author-seller responsibilities (tax, support).]

7. Your content and the license you give us

You keep all rights to what you submit: profiles, book information, covers, photos and ebook files (“your content”). So that we can run LocalBooks, you give us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license to host, store, copy, format and convert (for example turning an EPUB into chapters and resizing covers), display and distribute your content on LocalBooks, in our apps and through our API, including the free sample described above. You also allow us to show your covers, descriptions and short excerpts to promote LocalBooks and your book.

This license ends when you delete the content or your account, except for copies in backups and caches that expire on their own, and content others have already received through the API.

AI and search. We let search engines and AI assistants read our public pages and API so people can find books (our robots.txt signals search=yes, ai-input=yes, ai-train=no). We don’t sell or license your content for training AI models, and we ask AI companies not to train on it. We can’t guarantee that every third party respects that signal.

8. What’s not allowed

Don’t use LocalBooks to post or do anything that:

is illegal, or infringes anyone’s copyright, trademark, privacy or other rights;
sexualizes minors in any way (we remove it and report it to the authorities);
is hateful, threatening or harassing toward people or groups;
is sexually explicit or graphically violent without the matching content rating on the listing;
is spam, a scam, misleading, or impersonates someone;
contains malware, or tries to break, overload, scrape at scale or get around the security of LocalBooks (including our bot checks and rate limits).

9. Reports and moderation

Anyone can report a book, author or chapter with the “Report” links. Our moderators may review, hide or remove content, remove an ebook, or suspend accounts that break these terms or the law. When we act on your content we’ll usually email you the reason, and you can reply if you think we got it wrong. Copyright complaints follow our Copyright Policy, including repeat-infringer rules.

10. Links and other sites

Listings link to stores and websites we don’t run. We’re not responsible for them or for anything you buy there; purchases are between you and that seller.

11. Ending things

You can stop using LocalBooks at any time, unpublish your books, and delete your account from Dashboard → Account (see the Privacy Policy). We may suspend or close accounts that break these terms, or stop offering LocalBooks, with notice where reasonable.

12. Disclaimers

LocalBooks is provided “as is” and “as available”. We don’t guarantee it will always be available or error-free, or that listings are accurate: authors provide them. To the extent the law allows, we disclaim all implied warranties, including merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose and non-infringement.

13. Limitation of liability

To the extent the law allows, LocalBooks and Belladrey LLC won’t be liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential or punitive damages, or lost profits, data or goodwill. Our total liability for any claim about LocalBooks is limited to the greater of what you paid us in the 12 months before the claim, or US $50. Some places don’t allow these limits, so they may not apply to you.

14. Indemnity

If you submit content that infringes someone’s rights or break these terms, and someone makes a claim against us because of it, you agree to cover our reasonable costs and losses from that claim.

15. Governing law

These terms are governed by the laws of the State of [Ohio], USA, without regard to conflict-of-law rules. Disputes go to the state or federal courts in [Franklin County, Ohio], unless the law where you live gives you the right to sue at home. [Lawyer: consider arbitration / class-action waiver.]

16. Changes

We may update these terms. For material changes we’ll tell signed-in users by email or on the site before they take effect. Continuing to use LocalBooks after that means you accept the new terms.

17. Contact

Belladrey LLC, [mailing address]. Email: support@localbooks.app.