Terms of Service

These Terms of Service (the “Terms”) are an agreement between you and Ascrivia, the writing studio and community at ascrivia.com (“Ascrivia”, “we”, “us”). Ascrivia is run by an independent developer as a passion project, not by a large company.

By creating an account, or by using Ascrivia without one, you agree to these Terms, our Privacy Policy and our Cookie Policy. If you don’t agree, please don’t use Ascrivia.

Ascrivia’s source code is published under the MIT License. That license covers the code. These Terms cover the service we run at ascrivia.com.

You must be at least 13 years old to make an account. If the law where you live sets an older age for agreeing to use online services without a parent’s consent, you must be at least that age, or have a parent or guardian’s permission.

If you are under 18, a parent or guardian must read and agree to these Terms with you. Groups marked mature are for adults only. Don’t join them or turn on mature groups unless you are 18 or older.

You can’t use Ascrivia if we have closed your account before, or if the law forbids you from using it.

• Give us an email address you can receive mail at, and keep it current. We use it to confirm your account and help you get back in.
• Keep your password to yourself. You are responsible for what happens under your account.
• Tell us at hello@ascrivia.com if you think someone else is using your account.
• Your pen name and handle are yours to choose, but they must not pretend to be another person or organization, or mislead people about who you are.
• One person per account. Don’t sell, share or hand over your account.

You keep every right you have in what you write and upload to Ascrivia: manuscripts, notes, plans, posts, comments, images and anything else (“your content”). We don’t claim ownership of any of it.

To run Ascrivia, we need your permission to handle your content. You give Ascrivia a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license to store, copy, back up, format and display your content, only to the people you choose and only to provide Ascrivia to you and to them. For example: to save your manuscript, show a chapter to the friends you shared it with, show a post in the group you posted it in, or show a book you published to readers on Discover.

This license ends when you delete the content or your account, except that:

• copies can stay in our backups for a limited time until they are overwritten;
• things you posted in a shared space, such as replies inside someone else’s thread, may stay where they are so the conversation still makes sense, unless you delete them first; and
• we may keep what we need to deal with a report, a dispute or a legal requirement.

We don’t sell your writing, and we don’t use it to train artificial intelligence models, or let anyone else do so. We don’t read your private work. The rare exceptions, such as fixing a problem you asked us to look at, are described in our Privacy Policy.

You promise that you have the right to post what you post, and that it doesn’t break these Terms or the law. Keep your own copies of anything important. You can download any project as a backup whenever you like.

Everything you write starts private. You decide when to share a manuscript with friends, post in a group, invite someone to write with you, or publish a book.

• Reading a friend’s manuscript. When someone shares a manuscript with you, they can see how far you’ve read and what you react to. Ascrivia tells you this the first time you open it.
• Drafts shared with you stay with you. Don’t copy, repost, sell or pass on anyone else’s writing without their permission.
• Writing together. When you invite a co-writer, they can read and change the project. Choose people you trust.
• Publishing. A book or excerpt you publish can be read by anyone, including people without an account. You can unpublish it at any time, but we can’t stop someone from copying what they have already read. Posting a book free and in full may also affect exclusive programs such as KDP Select, so check before you publish.

Ascrivia works because writers trust each other with unfinished pages. Critique the page, never the person. When you use Ascrivia, don’t:

• harass, bully, threaten or intimidate anyone, or encourage others to;
• post hate speech, or attack people for who they are;
• post sexual content involving anyone under 18, or anything that sexualizes minors, ever, in any form, including fiction;
• post explicit sexual or graphic violent material outside groups marked mature, or share anyone’s intimate images without their consent;
• post someone else’s private information, or impersonate anyone;
• post work you don’t have the rights to, or pass off someone else’s writing as yours;
• spam, advertise in bulk, run scams, or use fake accounts or votes to boost anything;
• encourage self-harm, or help anyone break the law;
• upload viruses or harmful code, or try to get into accounts, data or parts of Ascrivia that aren’t yours;
• scrape, crawl or bulk-download Ascrivia or other people’s writing, including to train AI models; or
• overload, disrupt, or work around the limits and safety features of Ascrivia.

Fiction can go to dark places, and that’s fine. Use group rules and content warnings so readers know what they’re opening. Each group can add its own rules on top of these.

Group hosts and moderators look after their groups. Ascrivia’s team looks after the whole site. Either may hold, hide or remove content, remove or ban members from a group, or limit what an account can do, when we think something breaks these Terms or a group’s rules, or puts people at risk. Ascrivia’s team may also suspend or close accounts. We aren’t obliged to watch everything posted on Ascrivia, and we may not catch everything.

Use Report on anything that breaks the rules. If you think we got a decision wrong, write to Ascrivia’s team from Messages, or email hello@ascrivia.com.

Copyright complaints

If you believe something on Ascrivia copies your work without permission, email hello@ascrivia.com with:

1. your name and how to contact you;
2. the work you believe was copied;
3. the link to where it appears on Ascrivia;
4. a statement that you believe in good faith the use isn’t authorized by you, your agent or the law;
5. a statement, under penalty of perjury, that your notice is accurate and that you own the rights or may act for the owner; and
6. your physical or electronic signature.

We’ll remove or disable what the notice identifies when it’s appropriate, and tell the person who posted it, who can send a counter-notice. We close the accounts of people who repeatedly post work that isn’t theirs.

The Ascrivia name and logo, the look of the app, and the themes, companions, sounds and illustrations we make belong to us or the people we license them from. You may use them inside Ascrivia while these Terms apply. Fonts and other third-party pieces stay under their own licenses.

The packs in the Stationer are made by Ascrivia. Using one lets you use what’s in it inside Ascrivia; it doesn’t give you the right to copy or share its pieces elsewhere.

If you send us ideas or feedback, we may use them to improve Ascrivia without owing you anything for them. We’re grateful for every one.

Ascrivia is free to use. If we add paid features later, such as packs in the Stationer that cost money, we’ll show you the price and any extra terms before you pay, and you’ll never be charged without agreeing first.

Ink, which you earn by writing and spend in the Stationer, isn’t money. It can’t be bought, sold, transferred or exchanged for cash, it stays with your account, and it ends if your account is closed. We may change how ink is earned or what packs cost, but packs you’ve already got stay yours.

If you support the project through Buy Me a Coffee, that is a voluntary gift. It doesn’t buy any feature or service, and Buy Me a Coffee’s own terms cover the payment.

Ascrivia is still growing. We may add, change or remove features, and the service may sometimes be slow or unavailable. We do our best to keep your work safe, but please keep your own backups of anything you can’t afford to lose.

If we ever decide to shut Ascrivia down, we’ll tell you at least 30 days in advance where we reasonably can, so you have time to download your work.

You can stop using Ascrivia at any time. To delete your account and the content in it, email hello@ascrivia.com from the address on your account. Download backups of your projects first, because deleted work can’t be brought back.

We may suspend or close your account, with or without notice, if you break these Terms, if we must to protect other people or Ascrivia, or if the law requires it. Where it’s safe and reasonable, we’ll tell you why and give you a chance to download your writing.

The sections about your content’s license after deletion, our disclaimers, the limit on our liability, indemnity, and disputes keep applying after your account ends.

Ascrivia is provided “as is” and “as available”. To the fullest extent the law allows, we make no promises or warranties of any kind, express or implied, including that Ascrivia will be uninterrupted, secure or error-free, that your content will never be lost, or that Ascrivia is merchantable, fit for a particular purpose or non-infringing.

We don’t check or endorse what other writers post, and we aren’t responsible for it. Feedback, critiques and advice from other writers are their own opinions.

To the fullest extent the law allows, Ascrivia and the people who run it will not be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, exemplary or punitive damages, or for any loss of profits, revenue, data, writing, goodwill or opportunity, arising from or related to these Terms or your use of (or inability to use) Ascrivia, even if we were told such damages were possible.

Our total liability for all claims arising from or related to these Terms or Ascrivia is limited to the greater of (a) the amount you paid us for Ascrivia in the 12 months before the event that gave rise to the claim, or (b) fifty US dollars (US$50).

These limits apply whatever the legal theory, whether contract, tort (including negligence), statute or anything else, and even if a remedy fails of its essential purpose. They don’t limit liability that the law doesn’t allow to be limited, such as for fraud, gross negligence, willful misconduct, or death or personal injury caused by negligence. If you live somewhere that gives consumers rights these Terms can’t take away, those rights still apply.

To the extent the law allows, you agree to defend and compensate Ascrivia and the people who run it against claims, losses and reasonable legal costs that arise from your content, your breaking these Terms, or your breaking the law or someone else’s rights. We’ll tell you about any such claim and let you take part in responding to it.

If something goes wrong, please email hello@ascrivia.com first. Most problems can be sorted out that way, and we’ll try for at least 30 days before either of us goes to court.

These Terms are governed by the laws of the Commonwealth of Virginia, USA, without regard to its conflict of laws rules. Any dispute arising from these Terms or Ascrivia will be heard only in the state or federal courts located in Virginia, and you and we agree to those courts’ jurisdiction.

If you are a consumer living in the European Union, the United Kingdom or another place whose laws give you the right to bring claims in your home courts or under your home country’s laws, nothing here takes that right away.

We may update these Terms as Ascrivia changes. When a change matters, we’ll tell you in the app or by email at least 14 days before it takes effect, unless the change is needed sooner for legal or safety reasons. The date at the top shows the latest version. If you keep using Ascrivia after a change takes effect, you accept the new Terms. If you don’t accept them, stop using Ascrivia and ask us to delete your account.

• These Terms, the Privacy Policy, the Cookie Policy and any group’s own rules are the whole agreement between you and us about Ascrivia.
• If a court finds part of these Terms can’t be enforced, that part is limited as little as possible and the rest still applies.
• If we don’t enforce part of these Terms right away, we haven’t given up the right to enforce it later.
• You can’t transfer your rights under these Terms to anyone else. We may transfer ours if Ascrivia is passed to a new owner, who will have to keep this agreement with you.
• Nothing in these Terms makes either of us the other’s partner, employee or agent.

Questions about these Terms? Email hello@ascrivia.com.