These Terms of Service (“Terms”) are an agreement between you and One Big Media Company (“OBMC”, “we”, “us”), which operates Author Out Loud (the “Service”) at authoroutloud.com and in our mobile apps. By creating an account or using the Service, you agree to these Terms and to our Privacy Policy.
1. Who we are
One Big Media Company, [legal entity type], [Company address]. You can reach us through our contact page or at [legal contact email].
2. Your account
- You must be at least [18] years old, or the age of majority where you live, to create an account.
- Keep your sign-in details secure. You are responsible for activity on your account.
- Give us accurate information, including for shipping printed copies and receiving payouts.
- For co-authored books, each author must have their own account and agree to these Terms.
3. Plans, billing and cancellation
- Paid plans are billed in advance, monthly or yearly, through our payment processor, Stripe. Prices are shown on our pricing page before you buy.
- Plans renew automatically until you cancel. You can cancel at any time from your account; your plan stays active until the end of the period you paid for.
- [Refund policy — to be decided.]
- Printed copies, shipping and taxes are charged separately for each order and shown before you pay.
- Purchases made inside our iOS or Android apps may be billed by Apple or Google under their terms.
4. The free plan
The free plan lets you set up one book, review its outline and receive your first chapter. On the free plan, you can read that chapter in the Service, but downloading, printing, copying, exporting and publishing are not included. We may limit free accounts to prevent abuse.
5. Your content
“Your content” means what you give us — answers, recordings, uploads, photos, edits and settings — and the chapters and book files we create from it for you.
- You confirm you have the right to share your content with us, and that it doesn't infringe anyone else's rights or violate the law.
- You give OBMC a license to store, process, transcribe, format, typeset, print and display your content as needed to run the Service for you, and — for books you choose to publish — to reproduce, distribute and sell them as described in Section 8. [Scope and duration of license to be finalized by counsel.]
- We do not use your content to train AI models. [Confirm with AI vendor terms before launch.]
- You are responsible for what your book says about real people. Use the off-limits and “change names” settings where appropriate.
6. How chapters are written
The Service uses artificial intelligence to suggest outlines and questions and to draft chapters. Drafts are written only from the answers you provide. Where a draft needs a detail you did not give, we mark it for you to check rather than inventing it, and an additional check flags statements not supported by your answers.
AI can still make mistakes. You are responsible for reviewing and approving every chapter before you publish, and for the accuracy of your finished book.
7. Publishing, ISBNs and printing
- Books printed only for you and your family need no ISBN. When you publish a printed edition for sale in stores, it receives an ISBN (an add-on on some plans). Ebooks do not receive one. ISBNs we provide are registered to Author Out Loud / OBMC as publisher of record. [Confirm what happens to OBMC-issued ISBNs if a book is moved elsewhere.]
- You may use your own ISBN instead, in which case you are the publisher of record for that edition.
- Printed copies are produced on demand by our print partner (currently Lulu Press, Inc.) and shipped to the address you give. Delivery dates are estimates.
- Before printing, files are checked by our print partner. We may decline to print content that fails those checks or breaks Section 10.
- [Policy for damaged or misprinted copies — to be decided.]
8. Sales, distribution and earnings
When you choose to sell your book through the Service, OBMC acts as the distributor. For each sale, OBMC keeps a distributor share, and you earn the remaining amount after printing, payment processing and applicable taxes. The exact split is [to be decided] and is shown to you before you publish.
- Earnings are paid to your bank account through Stripe Connect on a [monthly] schedule once you complete payout setup.
- You are responsible for taxes on your earnings. We may ask for tax information required by law.
- [Terms for removing a book from sale and for existing orders — to be decided.]
9. Content protection
To protect content generated for free accounts, the Service limits copying, printing, screenshots and screen recording where the platform allows, and may watermark or hide content when it may be captured. You agree not to work around these protections.
10. Acceptable use
You agree not to use the Service to:
- create content that is unlawful, defamatory, harassing, hateful, or that sexually exploits anyone;
- infringe copyright, trademark, privacy or other rights;
- impersonate another person or misrepresent who wrote a book;
- attempt to access other people's accounts or data, or disrupt the Service;
- copy, resell or scrape the Service or its content except as these Terms allow.
We may remove content or suspend accounts that break these rules. You can report concerns through our contact page.
11. Ending your account
- You can delete your account at any time from Account → Your data. This permanently deletes your books, answers, recordings and files.
- On a paid plan, you can download your content before deleting your account.
- We keep records we must keep by law — such as orders, payments and tax records — after deletion, without your book content.
- We may suspend or close accounts that break these Terms, with notice where reasonable.
12. Disclaimers and liability
[Warranty disclaimer, limitation of liability, indemnity, governing law ([State]) and dispute resolution — to be drafted by counsel.]
13. Changes and contact
We may update these Terms. If a change is significant, we'll tell you by email or in the Service before it takes effect. Questions? Contact us.