Terms of Use

1.The short version

• Your work stays yours. Publishing on ZPubHouse does not give us ownership of your book, your cover, your artwork or your audio.
• But you must own it, or have permission. You promise that everything you upload is yours to upload — including cover art, photographs, music, and anything made for you by someone else. This is the most important promise in this document.
• You give us permission to show it. So that we can host your work, resize your images, display them on the site and promote them, you grant us a licence to do exactly that — and nothing more.
• You stay responsible for it. If someone says your content infringes their rights, that is yours to answer for, and you cover us if we are dragged into it.
• We curate. ZPubHouse is a family-friendly platform, and we can decline, restrict or remove content and accounts that do not fit.
• If you think we are hosting your copyrighted work without permission, tell us — there is a procedure below, and we will act on it.

2.Who may use ZPubHouse

3.Your account

• Give accurate information when you sign up, and keep it current.
• Keep your password to yourself. You are responsible for what happens under your account, so tell us straight away at zpubhouse@gmail.com if you think someone else has access to it.
• One person, one account, unless we agree otherwise in writing.
• You can close your account at any time by asking us.

4.Becoming an author on ZPubHouse

• The qualification questions are part of this agreement. You must answer yes to all of them, and we keep a dated record of the exact wording you agreed to. If any answer is no, the application stops there.
• Approval is ours to give and ours to withdraw. We may decline an application, and we may audit, suspend or revoke an author page, to keep the platform aligned with its values.
• We curate presentation. We may approve and curate author profile photos and the way work is presented, so that the site holds together as one publication.
• We are not your publisher unless we have signed something saying so. Using the platform to present and sell your work does not by itself make ZPubHouse your publisher, agent or distributor, and creates no royalty or publishing relationship between us.

5.Your content, and the promises you make about it

• You keep ownership. Nothing in these terms transfers copyright or any other ownership right in Your Content to us. It stays yours.
• You promise you have the rights. By uploading anything, you represent and warrant to us that: you own Your Content, or you hold every licence, permission, consent and release needed to provide it to us and to have us use it as described below; Your Content infringes nobody’s copyright, trademark, trade secret, privacy, publicity, moral or other rights; you have written permission from any illustrator, cover designer, photographer, editor, narrator, musician or other contributor whose work appears in it; you have releases from any identifiable person appearing in a photograph or recording; you hold the rights to any music or audio, including both the recording and the underlying composition; anything generated with an artificial-intelligence tool is yours to use under that tool’s terms and does not incorporate someone else’s protected work; and Your Content is not subject to any agreement — with a publisher, a client, an employer or anyone else — that would prevent you from publishing it here.
• You promise it is lawful, and that it fits the platform. Your Content must comply with the law and with the content standards below.
• These promises are continuing. They apply every time you upload something, and for as long as it stays on the platform. If any of them stops being true, take the content down or tell us immediately.

6.Content standards

• Keep it aligned with family-friendly narratives, as set out in the author qualification questions you agreed to.
• No sexually explicit material, no gratuitous violence, and nothing that sexualises or endangers minors.
• No hateful, harassing, defamatory or threatening content, and nothing that incites harm.
• No content that promotes illegal activity, deceives readers about who wrote it, or impersonates another person.
• No spam, no malware, and no attempts to manipulate our audience figures or reviews.

7.Things you must not do

• Copy, scrape, mirror or systematically download the site, or anyone’s work on it.
• Break, probe or circumvent our security, rate limits or access controls, or use anyone else’s account.
• Interfere with the site’s operation, or with other people’s use of it.
• Use the platform to infringe intellectual property, invade privacy, or break the law.
• Reverse-engineer or reuse our software, design or code, except as the law expressly permits.

8.Our brand, our site and our code

9.Copyright complaints

• Your physical or electronic signature.
• What work you say has been infringed.
• Where the infringing material is on our site, precisely enough for us to find it.
• How we can contact you — address, telephone number and email.
• A statement that you believe in good faith that the use is not authorised by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law.
• A statement, made under penalty of perjury, that your notice is accurate and that you are the owner or are authorised to act for the owner.

10.Author subscriptions, purchases and refunds

• Author subscription. Publishing as an author requires a paid subscription at the price shown when you subscribe. It renews automatically for the same period until you cancel, and you can cancel at any time from your Studio settings — access continues to the end of the period you have paid for.
• Payments. Billing is handled by Stripe. By subscribing or purchasing, you authorise us, through Stripe, to charge your chosen payment method.
• Prices can change. We will give notice before a change affects a renewal.
• Digital purchases and refunds. Items bought in our shop are digital and are made available to you immediately. If you are not happy with a purchase, ask us within 14 days and we will refund it — write to us through the contact form or by email. We may decline a repeated pattern of buy-and-refund, but otherwise we would rather give your money back than have you keep something you did not want.
• Taxes. Prices are stated exclusive of any tax that may apply; where we are required to collect tax, it is added at checkout.

11.Links, embedded players and other people’s services

12.Contests

• Entrants must be 18 or older. The stories are written for children — the people entering are adults. Entering means giving us a name, an email address and a file, and that is personal information we will not collect from a child. We do not knowingly accept an entry from anyone under 18.
• By entering you confirm that you have read these terms, and that everything in “Your content, and the promises you make about it” is true of your story — above all that it is your own original, unpublished work.
• No purchase is necessary to enter or to win, and buying anything does not improve anyone’s chance of winning.
• Judging is ours. We decide who wins, using the criteria published with the contest, and our decision is final. We may decline any entry that does not meet our content standards.
• Entering does not give us your story. You keep every right in it. We take only the permission described above — to display and promote entries and winners on ZPubHouse and our channels — and we will name the writer whenever we do.
• Prizes are as described with each contest, cannot be exchanged for cash unless we say so, and any tax on a prize is the winner’s responsibility.
• Where the law does not allow a contest like ours, it is void. Entrants are responsible for their own local law.
• We may change or cancel a contest if we have to — for example if too few entries arrive, or if something goes wrong with it. If we cancel one, we will say so on the contest page.

13.Availability, and what we do not promise

14.Limitation of liability

15.Suspension and termination

16.Governing law and disputes

17.The rest

• Changes. We may update these terms. The effective date at the top tells you which version you are reading, and we will give notice of material changes. Continuing to use the site after a change means you accept it.
• The whole agreement. These terms, the Privacy Policy, the author qualification questions you agreed to, and any contest or purchase rules, are the entire agreement between us about the platform.
• If part of it fails. If any provision is held unenforceable, the rest stays in force.
• No waiver. If we do not enforce something straight away, we have not given up the right to enforce it later.
• Transfer. You may not transfer your rights under these terms without our consent. We may transfer ours in connection with a sale or reorganisation of the business.

18.How to reach us