Terms of Service & Privacy Policy

1. What LiveBook is

LiveBook is a platform for writing, publishing, and reading books online. Reading and publishing a book on LiveBook is free — nothing on the platform is sold. Authors may optionally accept voluntary donations from readers; LiveBook is not a bookstore and does not sell access to any book or chapter.

2. Your account

You may create an account with an email address and password, or by signing in with Google. You are responsible for keeping your credentials secure and for the activity that happens under your account. You must provide accurate information when you register and keep it up to date.

You may delete your account at any time by contacting us. Deleting your account does not delete content that other people’s activity depends on (for example, a comment thread on a book you no longer control), the same way the platform already treats deletion of books, chapters, and comments elsewhere.

3. Content you provide

You keep ownership of the books, chapters, comments, and other content you write. By publishing content on LiveBook, you grant us the license we need to store it, display it to the readers you choose to share it with, and provide the platform’s features (for example, machine translation, where you request it). You are responsible for making sure you have the right to publish what you upload, and for the accuracy and legality of your own content.

4. Donations and payouts

Readers may send a voluntary donation to an author through Stripe (card), Mercado Pago (Pix), PayPal, or a manual bank transfer reconciled by an operator. LiveBook is not a party to the payment itself — each donation is processed by the payment provider the reader chooses, under that provider’s own terms. A donation is not a purchase, an investment, or a guarantee of future content, and is non-refundable except where the payment provider’s own policies, or the law, require otherwise.

LiveBook deducts a platform fee from the author’s share of each donation before it is available to withdraw; the reader’s checkout total is never affected by that fee. An author who wants to receive their balance provides payout details (a Pix key, or full bank account details) which are encrypted at rest and are only ever decrypted by an operator at the moment a withdrawal is actually being paid out.

5. Information we collect

Account information you give us directly: your name, email address, and (for a credential account) a password, which we store as a salted hash, never in plain text. For payouts, an author’s Pix key or bank details, stored encrypted. Content you create: books, chapters, comments, ratings, and messages. Usage information needed to run the service: sign-in sessions, reading progress, and error/event logs kept for a limited time to diagnose problems.

6. Cookies and local storage

LiveBook uses cookies and browser storage only to run the product, not to track you across other sites and not for advertising: your sign-in session, your chosen theme and interface language, and small reading/writing preferences such as focus mode or a collapsed chapter list. Declining these where your browser allows it may make parts of the interface behave less conveniently, but will not block you from reading or publishing a book.

7. How we share information

We do not sell your personal information. We share it only where the service requires it: with the payment processor a reader or author actually chooses (Stripe, Mercado Pago, or PayPal), with our email delivery provider to send account and donation emails, and with our cloud hosting and storage providers to run the platform. Each of those providers is bound by its own privacy terms for the data it processes on our behalf.

8. Marketing emails

We only send you marketing or promotional email if you opt in — at registration, or later from your account settings. Account, security, and transactional emails (email verification, donation receipts, withdrawal status) are sent regardless of that choice, since they are not marketing and are necessary to operate the service you asked for.

9. Your rights

Depending on where you live, you may have the right to access, correct, export, or delete the personal information we hold about you, and to withdraw a consent (such as marketing email) at any time. Contact us to exercise any of these rights; see the contact form linked from the site footer.

10. Children

LiveBook is not directed at children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from them. If you believe a child has created an account, contact us and we will remove it.

11. Changes to this policy

We may update this policy as the platform changes. We will change the “last updated” date above when we do; continuing to use LiveBook after an update means you accept the revised terms.

12. Contact

Questions about this policy, or a request about your data, can be sent through the contact form.