These terms govern use of BetaReadIt, operated by Diletta Micieli (ABN: 29 550 057 310), North Ward, QLD, Australia (“we”, “us”). You can reach us at support@betareadit.com. By creating an account or accepting an invitation to read on BetaReadIt, you agree to these terms and to our Privacy Policy.

1. What the service is

BetaReadIt hosts manuscripts on behalf of authors and publishers and manages access to them for the beta readers those authors and publishers invite. It is a hosting and access-management tool. It is not a publisher, editor, agent or rights-management service, and it does not review, endorse, or take any position on the content it hosts.

2. Who can use it

You must be at least 13 years old to use BetaReadIt. If you are under 18 (or under the age of majority where you live), you may use it only with the permission of a parent or guardian, who accepts these terms on your behalf.

To subscribe to a paid plan, or to show a profile in the Reading Room, you must be at least 18. If you use BetaReadIt for an organisation, you confirm you are allowed to accept these terms for it. You are responsible for keeping your sign-in details secure and for what happens under your account.

3. Plans, billing and cancellation

Author and publisher accounts start on the Free plan, which needs no payment details. Paid plans are billed in US dollars through Stripe, monthly or annually, at the prices shown on our pricing page when you subscribe; taxes are added where we are required to collect them. Each plan limits how many manuscripts, beta readers, team members and feedback rounds you can have. Beta readers never pay.

Paid plans renew automatically at the end of each billing period until cancelled. You can cancel at any time from your billing settings: the cancellation takes effect at the end of the period you have already paid for, and you keep your plan until then. If you switch plans part-way through a period, the difference is prorated. A promotion code applies only as described when you use it.

We don’t refund the unused part of a monthly or annual period when you cancel, except where the law requires it (see section 9). If a payment fails, you keep your plan for 7 days while the payment is retried; after that the account moves to the Free plan’s limits.

If you downgrade, cancel, or are over a plan’s limits, nothing you already have is deleted or hidden: you just can’t add more manuscripts, readers or team members until you are back under the limit or upgrade again. If we change our prices, the new price applies from your next billing period, and we’ll tell you before it does.

4. Acceptable use

You may only upload content you own or otherwise have the legal right to share for beta reading. You won’t use BetaReadIt to host or send anything illegal, infringing, harassing, or that you don’t have the right to share with the readers you invite, and you won’t try to break, overload, or get around the security of the service.

Beta readers agree not to get around the reading protections, and not to copy, redistribute, publish, or otherwise share manuscript content outside the app. Before opening a manuscript, beta readers also accept our Confidentiality Agreement, which sets out what may and may not be shared.

Messages, notes and feedback must be respectful. We may remove content, or suspend an account, that breaks these rules.

5. Ownership

You keep all rights to any manuscript you upload, and beta readers keep the rights to the feedback they write. Using BetaReadIt does not transfer any of those rights to us: you give us only the permission we need to host, display and process your content to provide the service to you and the people you share it with.

By leaving feedback (highlights, notes, ratings, survey answers), a beta reader lets the author or publisher who shared the manuscript read and use that feedback to improve their work. A beta reader is given a limited, personal, non-transferable right to read an assigned manuscript inside the app; nothing more.

6. The Reading Room and reader reliability

Author and beta reader profiles are private unless you choose to show them in the Reading Room, where other signed-in BetaReadIt users can find them; you can hide them again at any time. A shown author or publisher profile also gets a public page that anyone with the link can open. A beta reader profile there shows its reliability status: “New Reader”, or “Verified Reader” with a count of verified completions. That status is worked out automatically from completed reading projects; it is not a rating or a review, and it never shows the manuscripts you read or left.

An author or publisher may also list a Reading Opportunity for one of their manuscripts. It shows only the details they choose to publish, such as the title, cover, genre, synopsis, what they ask of readers and any reward, and never the manuscript itself. When you apply to read one, that author or publisher sees your Beta Reader profile and your message. Readers only ever get a manuscript when its author or publisher gives them access.

Any payment or reward offered for a read is arranged directly between the author or publisher and the reader. BetaReadIt does not process it, is not a party to that arrangement, and is not responsible if it isn’t honoured.

7. Content protection

The app includes deterrents against casual copying, such as disabled copy, print and right-click, a per-session watermark, and no manuscript download. These are access controls and deterrents, not unbreakable protection. We can’t guarantee they stop a determined reader from capturing content by other means (a photograph, for instance), and we aren’t responsible for what a reader does in breach of these terms or of the Confidentiality Agreement.

8. Availability and changes to the service

BetaReadIt is a young service. We work to keep it available and your data safe, but we don’t promise it will always be uninterrupted or error-free, and features may change. If we ever stop offering the service, we’ll give account holders reasonable notice and a way to get their manuscripts and feedback.

9. Your consumer rights and our liability

Nothing in these terms excludes, restricts or modifies any right or remedy you have under the Australian Consumer Law or any other law that cannot be excluded, including the consumer guarantees that services are supplied with due care and skill and are fit for their purpose.

Apart from those rights, the service is provided “as is”. Where the law allows us to limit our liability for failing to meet a consumer guarantee, it is limited to supplying the service again or paying the cost of having it supplied again. To the extent the law allows, we are not liable for indirect or consequential loss (such as lost profits or opportunities), and our total liability for any claim is limited to the amount you paid us in the twelve months before the claim arose.

10. Suspension and closing your account

You can stop using BetaReadIt and cancel your subscription at any time, and delete your account from Settings. We may suspend or close an account that breaks these terms, uses the service unlawfully, or puts other users or the service at risk; where reasonable, we’ll tell you why first. When an account is closed, its data is kept and then deleted or anonymised as described in our Privacy Policy.

11. Copyright complaints

If you believe content on BetaReadIt infringes your copyright, email support@betareadit.com with: your name and contact details; the work you own; where the content is on BetaReadIt (for example, the manuscript title and the account that shared it, if you know it); and a statement that you believe in good faith the use isn’t authorised, and that your notice is accurate.

We review every notice, usually within 5 business days. Where it is valid, we remove or disable access to the content and tell the account that uploaded it, which can reply with its side. We close the accounts of people who repeatedly infringe.

12. Changes to these terms

We may update these terms from time to time. If we make a material change, we’ll update the date above and let account holders know by email or in the app before it takes effect. Continuing to use BetaReadIt after that means you accept the new terms.

13. Governing law

These terms are governed by the laws of Queensland, Australia. If you are a consumer living elsewhere, you also keep the protections of the laws where you live that can’t be excluded.