Terms of Use

1. Who we are

StoryStepper is a serialised-fiction service operated by StoryStepper Limited ("StoryStepper," "we," "us"), a company incorporated in Hong Kong. When you use the website, the mobile app, or any related service (the "Service"), you agree to these Terms. If you do not agree, please do not use the Service.

2. Your account

• You must be at least 18 years old to create an account.
• You are responsible for keeping your login credentials safe. You are responsible for activity on your account.
• One account per person. You may not share accounts, sell accounts, or impersonate someone else.
• You confirm you are not located in a country subject to a comprehensive trade embargo, and that you are not on a government list of prohibited or restricted parties. If that stops being true, you must stop using the Service.
• We may suspend or close an account that violates these Terms, harms other readers, or is used to abuse the Service.

3. Your story, your prompts, your choices

Everything you enter into StoryStepper — the kind of story you ask for, the name you give the protagonist, the choices you make in each chapter — belongs to you. We do not sell it. We do not show it to other readers unless you publish a story to the Library (section 11). We do not use it to train third-party models.

We do need a limited, non-exclusive licence to your inputs so we can actually run the Service for you: store your story, generate the next chapter, send the morning email, surface your reading circle to the people you invited. That licence ends when you delete the content.

Generated chapters and posters

The chapters and posters StoryStepper generates from your prompts are yours: to the extent we hold any rights in them, we assign those rights to you when the content is created. You may use generated content however you like — read it, save it, print it, share it, edit it, publish it, sell it, adapt it — commercially or not, with no obligation to credit StoryStepper. The only thing you may not do is use the StoryStepper name or logo, or imply that we endorse your publication, without our written permission (see section 4).

What you do with generated content is your responsibility alone. Copyright law for AI-generated works is unsettled and varies by country — we cannot promise that generated content is protectable, that it is unique (the model may produce similar text for other readers), or that it does not resemble existing works, especially if your prompts reference existing characters, brands, or people. If you distribute or sell generated content, you do so at your own risk, you are responsible for complying with the law that applies to you (including any rules on disclosing AI-generated works), and you agree to indemnify us against third-party claims arising from your use of it or from your breach of section 12.

4. Our intellectual property

The Service itself belongs to us. The StoryStepper name and logo, the apps and the website, our editorial and writing system, the design, and all software and content we created are the property of StoryStepper Limited or its licensors, protected by copyright, trademark, and other intellectual-property laws. These Terms give you a personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable, revocable licence to use the app and website to enjoy the Service — nothing more. They do not give you the right to copy, modify, distribute, sell, or lease any part of the Service, or to use the StoryStepper name or logo, without our written permission.

If you send us feedback or suggestions, we may use them to improve the Service without any obligation to you — though we will probably say thank you.

5. AI disclosure

StoryStepper's prose is written by a large language model, guided by editorial rules and a writing system our team built — pacing, continuity, voice, style. We do not hide this. We try to make it the kind of AI writing that's actually worth reading.

Because the model is statistical, chapters may occasionally contain factual mistakes, plot inconsistencies, or sentences you wouldn't have chosen. The character poster, when you generate one, is also model-produced. Treat all generated content as fiction.

Stories are works of fiction. Names, characters, places, and events are invented or used fictitiously; any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, or to actual events is coincidental and unintended.

6. Subscriptions

• Every story starts with free chapters. The current number of free chapters is shown in the app (at the time of writing, the first two).
• After that, the daily chapter is unlocked by a monthly or yearly subscription. The exact price is shown to you before you confirm.
• Subscriptions auto-renew at the end of each billing period unless you cancel beforehand. You can cancel at any time from the account settings (web), from link.com, or from your platform's subscription manager (App Store, Google Play). Cancelling stops the next renewal; you keep access until the end of the period you paid for.
• Refunds and withdrawal rights are described in section 8.

7. Payments and merchant of record

How your payment is handled depends on where you subscribe or buy:

• On the web, payments are handled by Stripe Managed Payments, and Link (a Stripe service) acts as the merchant of record for those purchases. Your purchase appears as Sold through Link, and your bank statement shows LINK.COM* followed by our descriptor. This means Link completes the sale to you: it processes your payment and is responsible for calculating, collecting, and remitting applicable indirect taxes (such as VAT, GST, or sales tax) in the countries it covers, and for payment-related compliance. Stripe's and Link's own payment terms apply to the transaction alongside these Terms. We never see your full card number.
• In the iOS app, purchases go through Apple's App Store, and Apple is the merchant of record.
• In the Android app, purchases go through Google Play, and Google is the merchant of record.

Prices shown in the app are exclusive of tax. Any VAT, GST, or sales tax that applies to your location is calculated and added at checkout, and the full price, currency, and billing period are always shown to you before you confirm. Checkout may also present the price converted into your local currency.

Web purchases are not available in every country. Link does not currently support customers in China, Russia, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Syria, Kosovo, Ascension Island, or Tristan da Cunha.

8. Refunds

• Purchases through Apple: refunds are handled by Apple under Apple's refund policy — request one at reportaproblem.apple.com.
• Purchases through Google Play: refunds are handled by Google under the Google Play refund policy.
• Purchases on the web (Link): because Link is the merchant of record, refund requests go to Link support, which can issue refunds within 60 days of the original transaction. You can also write to [email protected] and we will arrange it. Approved refunds are returned to your original payment method and include any tax you paid.
• EU/UK right of withdrawal: if you are a consumer in the European Union or the United Kingdom, you have a 14-day right to withdraw from a purchase made on the web. As merchant of record, Link applies the statutory cooling-off rules that apply where you live. For subscriptions, you may withdraw within 14 days of purchase and receive a refund, less a proportionate amount for the service already supplied.
• Managing web purchases: your order history, subscription, payment method, and billing address for web purchases are managed at link.com. Receipts, invoices, and renewal reminders are sent to you directly by Link.
• Ember refunds are covered in section 9. Ember refund requests go to [email protected], which is a monitored inbox; we aim to respond within 5 working days.

Nothing in this section limits the statutory consumer-protection rights you have in your country. If local law gives you a stronger refund right than this section, local law wins.

9. Embers

Embers are a small in-app currency used for optional rituals — generating a character poster, lighting an episode early, and a few other things we may add. Embers are not money: they have no cash value, cannot be exchanged for real currency, and cannot be transferred between accounts.

• You receive a welcome grant of embers when you sign up, and we may grant more from time to time. Current amounts are shown in the app.
• You can also buy embers. The price is shown before you confirm, and payment is handled by the payment provider shown at checkout.
• Embers do not expire while your account is open.
• Granted (free) embers are not refundable.
• Purchased embers: unspent purchased embers are refundable where consumer law requires it (see section 8, Refunds); spent embers are not.
• If we close your account for a serious Terms violation, granted embers are forfeited. We will refund unspent purchased embers unless the law permits us not to.
• If you delete your account, any remaining granted embers are forfeited — you paid nothing for them — and cannot be restored or transferred.
• Unspent purchased embers are refunded when you delete your account, at the price you actually paid for them, to your original payment method. Where embers were bought in several purchases at different prices, each unspent ember is refunded at the rate recorded for the purchase it came from. Write to [email protected] and we will arrange it. The deletion screen reminds you of this before you confirm.
• Embers are not a payment instrument and have no cash value except as stated in this section. Refunds are available on account deletion and on request with cause — they are not a standing right to convert your balance back into money on demand.

10. Reading circles

A Reading Circle is a private group of up to six people you choose to read along with your story. The host (you) controls who is in the circle and what choice is made each chapter. Members can read the chapters you have unlocked, but cannot edit your story or take it with them when they leave.

Anyone you invite must be at least 18 and must accept the invitation. You are responsible for who you invite. We may remove members who are abusive, or close a circle that is being misused.

11. Publishing to the Library

The Library is a catalogue of finished stories that signed-in readers can browse and read. Nobody without an account can see it, and we do not let search engines index it.

Publishing is your choice, and it is free

You can publish a finished story under a pen name, with a blurb you write. Publishing costs nothing and pays nothing: we do not pay you, share revenue with you, or grant embers or any other reward for publishing. Before you confirm, we tell you that publishing is permanent: once a story is published, you cannot unpublish it.

What can be published

Only a finished story. A book can always be published. A serial story can be published only if, in the brief before it was written, you chose to leave out explicit sexual content; a serial written without that choice cannot be published. This is a property of how the story was generated, not a judgement about its text, and it cannot be changed afterwards. Every published story must also comply with section 12 (Acceptable use), and you are responsible for what you publish.

The licence you give us

When you publish, you grant us a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free licence to store, display, and distribute the story, its cover, your pen name, and your blurb to readers through the Service. You keep every right described in section 3: publishing to the Library does not stop you from publishing or selling the same story anywhere else.

Pen names

A pen name must not be the name of a real person you are not, and must not be misleading, offensive, or contain contact details or links. A pen name belongs to one author: two authors cannot use the same pen name. It also must not be "StoryStepper" or look like it. The name "StoryStepper" and variants of it are reserved for the stories we publish ourselves. Every pen name is attached to an account, so every published story can be traced to an account we can suspend.

Permanence and account deletion

A published story leaves the Library in only two cases: we remove it under section 12 (see "Reporting, removal, and appeal" below), or you delete your account. If you delete your account, your published stories are deleted with it (see section 13) and leave the Library and every reader's shelf. If we remove a story, readers who had added it keep a locked entry on their shelf, as described below. Otherwise, readers who have added the story to their shelf keep it, and the licence above continues for that purpose.

Reading together

If a book is on your shelf, you can start a reading circle for it. Its members read that book without using their own monthly allowance, for as long as the book stays in the Library. A circle closes when its host removes the book from their own library; its members see a notice on their Reading Circles page. A circle has six seats in total over its life, counting members who were removed: a seat freed by removing a member is not given back. Posters you make of a public book are private to you: they are not shown to other readers or to the author.

House-published stories

Some stories in the Library are published by StoryStepper itself. They are labelled as house-published and are held to the same rules as everything else in the Library.

Reporting, removal, and appeal

An automated check runs on every story before it is published and blocks content listed in section 12. Every published story has a Report button. We aim to review each report within 3 working days, and removal of a published story is decided by a person. When the check blocks a publication, or we remove a story, we tell the author which rule applied; after a removal we also email how to appeal. A removed story stays in your own library and you can still read it, but it leaves the Library. Readers who had added it to their shelf keep a locked entry for it, showing only its title and cover, and cannot read it unless an appeal succeeds. You can appeal a removal once, from your library. We answer appeals within 14 days.

Blocking authors

You can block an author from their book page or from your shelf. Their books then disappear for you everywhere: the catalogue, search, your shelf, Home, My World, and reading circles on their books, until you unblock them in Account.

Reading published stories

A story you open from the Library belongs to its author. To read one, you add it to your shelf. How many books you can add each month depends on your plan, and this monthly allowance renews with your plan's monthly period (or on the first of the month without a plan). You may read a book on your shelf in the Service and download its cover; you may not copy, export, redistribute, or sell the story.

12. Acceptable use

Do not use StoryStepper to:

• Generate sexual content involving minors, or any depiction of a minor in a sexualised context.
• Generate depictions of non-consensual sexual acts, sexual coercion, incest, bestiality, or necrophilia.
• Generate extreme fetish content involving serious physical harm, mutilation, or death.
• Generate non-consensual intimate imagery of a real, identifiable person, including sexual deepfakes.
• Generate real-world violence against identifiable people, or material that is illegal in your country.
• Impersonate a real, identifiable person without their consent.
• Infringe someone else's intellectual-property or privacy rights — for example, by feeding in someone else's unpublished work as your own story input.
• Attempt to extract, copy, or reverse-engineer the underlying model or our editorial system.
• Probe the Service for vulnerabilities, scrape it, upload malicious code, or run automated requests at a rate that affects other readers.
• Circumvent payment, free-chapter limits, or ember accounting, or buy, sell, or transfer accounts or embers outside the Service.
• Send spam or unsolicited advertising through reading-circle invitations or messages.
• Use the Service to harass, threaten, or harm another person.

Reporting content

If you can see a story — because it is yours, or because it was shared with you in a reading circle — you can report it for anything listed above. Use the Report button on the story. A person reads every report; none is closed automatically. We may remove content, close a circle, or suspend an account. Tell us as much as you can, because we act on what the report says and a report with no detail is harder to act on. Do not use reporting to harass another reader — a report made in bad faith is itself a breach of this section.

We may remove content, including published stories, suspend accounts, or close circles that break these rules; section 11 describes removal and appeal for published stories, and section 13 explains how termination works.

If you find a security issue, please write to [email protected] — we will thank you, not sue you.

13. Termination

You can close your account at any time from settings. When you do, your stories, chapters, posters, and circles are deleted from active systems within 30 days. Backups are purged within a further 30 days. Any remaining granted embers are forfeited when your account is deleted; unspent purchased embers are refunded at the price you paid for them (see section 9). Stories you had published are handled as described in section 11.

We may suspend or terminate access if you materially breach these Terms, if your account is used fraudulently, or if we are required to by law. Where possible, we will tell you what happened and give you a chance to respond.

14. Service availability and disclaimers

We work hard to keep StoryStepper running reliably, but we offer the Service "as is". We do not promise that the Service will be uninterrupted, that every chapter will arrive precisely at dawn, or that the prose will please every reader on every morning.

StoryStepper runs on services we do not control: language-model and image-generation providers, cloud hosting, email delivery, and payment processors. We choose them with care, but we cannot guarantee their availability, performance, or security. If one of them is slow, unreachable, rate-limits us, changes its terms, or retires a model we depend on, your chapter may be late or a feature may stop working. We are not liable for that, or for anything else outside our reasonable control.

To the maximum extent permitted by law, StoryStepper is not liable for indirect, incidental, or consequential damages. Our total liability to you for any claim arising from the Service is capped at the amount you have paid us in the twelve months before the claim arose.

Nothing in these Terms limits liability that cannot be limited by law — for example, liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, or for fraud.

Beta and experimental features

Some features are labelled beta, experimental, or preview. They are offered as is, may behave unpredictably, and may change or be withdrawn at any time without notice. Please do not rely on them for anything that matters to you.

15. Changes to these Terms

We may update these Terms when the Service changes, the law changes, or we find a clearer way to say something. If a change is material — for example, affecting subscriptions or your rights — we will tell you by email and inside the app at least 30 days before it takes effect. If you do not agree, you can cancel and close your account before the change applies.

16. Governing law

These Terms are governed by the laws of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China. If you are a consumer resident in the European Union, the United Kingdom, or another jurisdiction with mandatory consumer-protection rules, you also have the protections of those rules — these Terms do not take them away.

Disputes that cannot be resolved by writing to us first will be heard by the competent courts of your country of residence (where local law requires) or, otherwise, by the courts of Hong Kong.

17. General

• Severability: if part of these Terms turns out to be unenforceable, the rest still applies.
• Events outside our control: neither of us is responsible for failing to perform because of something neither of us could reasonably control — a network or provider outage, a natural event, war, industrial action, or an act of government.
• Survival: sections 3 (your story and generated content), 4 (our intellectual property), 12 (acceptable use), 14 (availability and disclaimers), 16 (governing law) and this section remain in force after your account closes or these Terms end.
• Entire agreement: these Terms, together with the Privacy Policy and the Cookie Policy, are the whole agreement between you and us about the Service.
• Assignment: you may not transfer your rights under these Terms to someone else. We may transfer ours to a successor of the business, who must honour them.
• No waiver: if we do not enforce a clause today, we can still enforce it tomorrow.
• App stores: if you downloaded the app from the Apple App Store or Google Play, these Terms are between you and us — not with Apple or Google. Apple and its subsidiaries are third-party beneficiaries of these Terms and may enforce them against you; Apple has no obligation to provide maintenance or support for the app.

18. Contact

Write to us at [email protected]. We read every message. We answer the ones that need answering.