Author Login

BookFunnel Author and Publisher Terms of Service

Last updated: May 8, 2024
Effective: May 29, 2024

(Previous terms effective from October 2015 until May 2024)

These Author and Publisher Terms of Service (together with our data processing addendum in Exhibit A, these “Terms”) and our Privacy Policy represent all of the terms relating to authors’ and publishers’ access to and use of BookFunnel LLC’s (“BookFunnel”, “we,” “us,” and “our,”) services offered at https://bookfunnel.com (the “Service”). 

Please carefully read these Terms and our Privacy Policy before you start accessing or using the Service. Our Privacy Policy governs our data practices and the ways in which you, as an author or publisher, may use the data (including names and email address) of the readers who access your e-books and audio books via our Service. By accessing or using the Service, you agree to be bound by these Terms and our Privacy Policy. If you do not want to agree to these Terms or our Privacy Policy, you must not access or use the Service.

 

Changes to these Terms

We reserve the right, at our sole discretion, to modify or replace these Terms at any time. If a revision is material, we will provide at least 15 days’ notice prior to any new terms taking effect by posting the revised Terms on our Service or by emailing you. 

By continuing to access or use our Service after any revisions become effective, you agree to be bound by the revised terms. If you do not agree to the new terms, you are no longer authorized to use the Service.

 

Communications from BookFunnel

By creating an account on our Service, you consent to being subscribed to our newsletters and other information we may send.  Where required by law, we will obtain your consent to send you marketing-related communications. You may opt out of receiving any, or all, of these communications from us by following the unsubscribe link or instructions provided in any email we send. Note that we may still have to send you administrative emails about your account.

 

Your Content

Our Service allows you to post, link, store, share and otherwise make available certain information, text, graphics, videos, or other material, including books  (“Content”). You are responsible for the Content that you post, link, store, share and otherwise make available on or through the Service, including its legality, reliability, and appropriateness.

By posting, linking, storing, sharing and making available Content on or through the Service, you represent and warrant to BookFunnel that: 

  • the Content is yours (you own it) and/or you have the right to use it and the right to grant us the rights and license as provided in these Terms, 
  • the Content does not and will not violate the publicity rights, copyrights, contract rights, privacy rights, or any other rights of any person or entity, and
  • the Content is not and will not be fraudulent, illegal, defamatory, or libelous.

You retain all of your rights to your Content and you are responsible for protecting those rights. We take no responsibility and assume no liability for your Content. 

We reserve the right to refuse service, terminate accounts, remove or edit Content in our sole discretion.

 

Your License to BookFunnel

By posting, linking, storing, sharing or otherwise making available Content on or through the Service, you grant us a non-exclusive, revocable, worldwide, perpetual, transferable (e.g., if we are acquired), sublicensable (e.g., to our distributors and to your readers), fully paid up and royalty-free right and license to copy, use, modify (e.g. to fix broken sales page links, correct file errors, and resize graphics), publicly display and publish, and distribute such Content on and through the Service. 

BookFunnel has the right but not the obligation to monitor and modifyContent provided by you.

Except as permitted above in connection with the distribution of your Content, BookFunnel will not use your intellectual property.  

 

Pen Names 

A Pen Name is defined as one alias (or pseudonym) of one author. All author accounts are designed for one author, even if more than one Pen Name is available. A company, corporation, publisher, or collective may not use an Author-Level Plan to distribute the books of more than one author. A company, corporation, publisher, or collective may not use their own name in place of a Pen Name or Author Name.

 

Access and Use of the Services 

BookFunnel grants to you a personal, limited, nonexclusive, nontransferable right to use the Services that is valid only for the period of time while your account is active, your payment obligations to BookFunnel are satisfied, and only for the purposes of distributing your books and audio files, and hosting your landing pages, email sign-up pages and promotional activities. You are only granted the right to use the Services in accordance with these Terms and all rights in the Services remain the exclusive property of BookFunnel and its licensors. You may use the Services exclusively for authorized and legal purposes, consistent with all applicable laws, regulations and the rights.

In connection with using or accessing the Services you represent and warrant to BookFunnel that:

  • you are of legal age to form a binding contract with BookFunnel, 
  • you have full power and authority to enter into these Terms and the pricing plan, 
  • if you represent a business, you are an authorized representative of the business,
  • you are not a person barred from receiving Services under the laws of the United States or other applicable jurisdiction,
    • you have not been removed or suspended from using or accessing the Services,
  • you have provided and will maintain true, accurate, current, and complete information about yourself and, if applicable, the business you represent,
  • you are responsible for maintaining the confidentiality of your account password,
  • you are responsible for all activities that occur in connection with your account,
  • you agree to notify us immediately of any unauthorized use of your account,
  • you are not impersonating and will not impersonate someone else,
  • you are not and will not breach or circumvent any laws, third party rights, BookFunnel’s systems, or BookFunnel’s terms and policies,
  • you will not refer anyone to the Service (e.g., name, email and/or phone number) without the prior written authorization of such person, 
  • you will not distribute or post unsolicited communications, promotions, or advertisements,
  • you will not distribute viruses or any other technologies that may harm the Service,
  • you will not interfere with or disrupt the Service, for example by overloading, flooding, spamming, or mail-bombing any part of the Services,
  • you will not use any robot, spider, scraper, or other automated means to access our Service for any purpose,
  • you will not bypass our robot exclusion headers, interfere with the working of our Service, or impose an unreasonable or disproportionately large load on our infrastructure,
  • you will not infringe the copyright, trademark, patent, moral, database, or other intellectual property rights (collectively, “Intellectual Property Rights”) that belong to or are licensed to BookFunnel or any of its users, 
  • you will not infringe any Intellectual Property Rights of third parties affected by your use of the Services,
  • you will not duplicate, copy, de-construct, sell, trade, resell, rent, lease, attempt to reverse engineer, reproduce, or distribute any portion of the Service, and
  • you will not circumvent any security, authentication, or technical measures we use to provide the Services.

 

Fees for the Service

You are subject to a subscription fee, either monthly or annually, as selected by you at the time you sign up or re-activate your account. The subscription fee excludes all service and use taxes, unless stated otherwise. You are responsible for such taxes in connection with the use of the Services. 

Payments will be billed to you in U.S. dollars. Your credit card or other payment vehicle (such as PayPal) will be automatically charged.   We may suspend or terminate your account and refuse your use or access of the Services if your payment and/or registration information is not accurate, current, or complete. Questions about billing should be addressed to support@bookfunnel.com.

If you have subscribed to our annual plan, you can upgrade to a new subscription plan at any time.  You will be credited for any unused portion of your previous plan before you are invoiced for your new plan. Annual plans can be downgraded on the account page of your author dashboard in our Service. Downgrades initiated before the end of your subscription year will be scheduled and automatically processed at the end of your existing annual plan.

If you have subscribed to our monthly plan, you can change your subscription at any time. Any remaining balance on your previous plan will be automatically credited to your new plan before you are invoiced for the new plan. Any account credit that exceeds the cost of the new plan will be applied to future invoices. When downgrading to a lower-priced plan, some features, including pen names, books, and reader links, will be deleted from your account.

You may request a full refund of fees paid if you notify us in writing within 30 days after creating your new account. We do not provide refunds after the first 30 days of your new account, or if your account is suspended for violating our Terms.

 

Termination

We may terminate or suspend your account and access to the Service immediately, without prior notice or liability, in our sole discretion, for any reason whatsoever and without limitation, including but not limited to a breach of these Terms and our privacy policy, posting infringing Content, and abusing the privacy rights of readers.

If you wish to terminate your account, you may simply cancel your account on your account page of our author dashboard within the Service. Termination will not terminate your obligation to pay amounts owed through your subscription term. See Fees for the Service, above, for details on refunds.

You may email support@bookfunnel.com to request and retrieve data from your most recent giveaway signups.

These provisions survive termination: Your Content, Access and Use of the Services, Fees for the Service, Intellectual Property of BookFunnel, Confidentiality, Indemnification, Limitation of Liability, Disclaimers, Exclusions, Governing Law, Disputes, Assignment, and Exhibit A.

 

Deletion of Books from the Service

When you delete books from your dashboard, your books will not automatically be permanently deleted because when a reader receives an ebook via our Service, the ebook exists in that reader’s password-protected BookFunnel reader library and can be downloaded again by that reader at any time. To request the permanent deletion of your book from our database, you may contact us at support@bookfunnel.com and provide us with your account login, email address, book title, and author pen name.

 

Author and Publisher Giveaways and Group Promotions

We will assist you in hosting your book giveaways and group landing pages but you are the sole party responsible for these activities. As an issuer of your giveaways, you agree to comply with the terms and conditions of your giveaway.

When interacting with other users of the Service, you may not harass or libel another user. You may not misrepresent your Pen Names, use fake email addresses, or join promotions your books are not eligible for. You may not create new Pen Names or whole new accounts in order to try and circumvent our terms or improve your reputation among other authors.

BookFunnel retains the right to remove you and block you from group promotions, giveaways, or landing pages for violating these Terms.

 

Copyright Policy

We respect the intellectual property rights of others. It is our policy to respond to any claim that Content posted on the Service infringes on the copyright or other intellectual property rights of any person or entity.

If you are a copyright owner, or authorized on behalf of one, and you believe that the copyrighted work has been copied in a way that constitutes copyright infringement, please submit your claim via email to legal@bookfunnel.com, with the subject line: “Copyright Infringement” and include in your claim a detailed description of the alleged infringement as detailed below, under “DMCA Notice and Procedure for Copyright Infringement Claims”

You may be held accountable for damages (including costs and attorneys’ fees) for misrepresentation or bad-faith claims on the infringement of any Content found on and/or through the Service on your copyright.

 

DMCA Notice and Procedure for Copyright Infringement Claims

You may submit a notification pursuant to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) by providing our Copyright Agent with the following information in writing (see 17 U.S.C 512(c)(3) for further detail):

  • an electronic or physical signature of the person authorized to act on behalf of the owner of the copyright’s interest;
  • a description of the copyrighted work that you claim has been infringed, including the URL (i.e., web page address) of the location where the copyrighted work exists or a copy of the copyrighted work;
  • identification of the URL or other specific location on the Service where the material that you claim is infringing is located;
  • your address, telephone number, and email address;
  • a statement by you that you have a good faith belief that the disputed use is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law;
  • a statement by you, made under penalty of perjury, that the above information in your notice is accurate and that you are the copyright owner or authorized to act on the copyright owner’s behalf.

You can contact our Copyright Agent via email at legal@bookfunnel.com.

 

Intellectual Property of BookFunnel

The Service and its original content (excluding Content provided by you and other authors and publishers), features and functionality are and will remain the exclusive property of BookFunnel and its licensors. The Service is protected by copyright, trademark, and other laws of both the United States and foreign countries. Our trademarks and trade dress may not be used in connection with any product or service without the prior written consent of BookFunnel.

 

Confidentiality

You may have access to our confidential information in connection with using our Service. You agree not to disclose our confidential information to any third party, except your representatives on a need-to-know basis who are bound to you by comparable obligations of confidentiality. You agree not to use our confidential information except for the limited extent necessary to use our Service in accordance with these Terms. 

 

Indemnification

You agree to defend, indemnify and hold harmless BookFunnel and our directors, members, employees, partners, agents, suppliers, and affiliates (“BookFunnel Indemnitees”), from and against any and all damages, obligations, losses, liabilities, costs and expenses (including but not limited to reasonable attorney’s fees) arising from claims, demands, and actions asserted by any third party against the BookFunnel Indemnitees, resulting from or arising out of (a) the use and access of the Service by you or any person using your account in breach of these Terms; (b) your breach of these Terms or our privacy policy, (c) the Content posted by you on the Service, or (d) your violation of any law or rights of any third party.

 

Links to Other Websites

Our Service may contain links to third party web sites or services that are not owned or controlled by BookFunnel, for example, links to video platforms and email management providers. BookFunnel has no control over, and assumes no responsibility for the content, privacy policies, or practices of any third party web sites or services. We do not warrant the offerings of any of these entities/individuals or their websites.

You acknowledge and agree that BookFunnel shall not be responsible or liable, directly or indirectly, for any damage or loss caused or alleged to be caused by or in connection with use of or reliance on any such content, goods or services available on or through any such third party web sites or services.

We strongly advise you to read the terms and conditions and privacy policies of any third party web sites or services that you visit.

 

Limitation of Liability

Regardless of anything to the contrary in these Terms, if we (or any of our directors, members, employees, partners, agents, suppliers, licensors or affiliates) are found liable to you under these Terms or in connection with our Service, our liability (and the liability of our directors, members, employees, partners, agents, suppliers, licensors or affiliates) to you is limited to: five (5) times the most recent monthly fee that you paid for the Service, if any, or US$100, whichever is greater.  The above limitation of liability applies regardless of whether you base your claim on contract, tort (including negligence), or any other legal theory, or whether we knew or should have known about the possibility of such damages.

BookFunnel, its directors, members, employees, partners, agents, suppliers, licensors, and affiliates, are not liable to you for any indirect, incidental, special, punitive or consequential damages (including lost profits, data, use, goodwill, or other intangible losses), arising from these Terms or your access to or use of the Services or any content or materials accessed through the Services, whether based on contract, tort (including negligence) or any other legal theory, whether or not we have been informed of the possibility of such damage, and even if a remedy set forth in these Terms is found to have failed of its essential purpose.

 

Disclaimer

Your use of the Service is at your sole risk. The Service is provided on an “AS IS” and “AS AVAILABLE” basis. The Service is provided without warranties of any kind, whether express or implied, including, but not limited to, implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, non-infringement or course of performance. We also disclaim all warranties arising from course of dealing or usage of trade or relating to your giveaways and promotions on our Services. 

BookFunnel its subsidiaries, affiliates, members, directors, employees, partners, agents, licensors, and suppliers do not warrant that (a) the Service will function uninterrupted, be secure or available at any particular time or location; (b) any errors or defects will be corrected; (c) the Service is free of viruses or other harmful components; or (d) the results of using the Service will meet your requirements. Our Services may be interrupted due to a variety of events, including maintenance, updates, and system and network failures.

 

Exclusions

Some jurisdictions do not allow the exclusion of certain warranties or the exclusion or limitation of liability of damages, so the limitations above may not apply to you. 

 

Governing Law 

These Terms are governed by the laws of Texas, United States, without regard to its conflict of law provisions.

Our failure to enforce any provision of these Terms is not a waiver of those rights. If any provision of these Terms is held invalid or unenforceable by a court, the remaining provisions of these Terms remain in effect. These Terms constitute the entire agreement between us regarding our Service, and supersede and replace any prior agreements we might have had between us regarding the Service.

 

Disputes; Courts

If a dispute arises between you and BookFunnel, we strongly encourage you to first contact us directly to seek a resolution by contacting legal@bookfunnel.com. We will consider reasonable requests to resolve the dispute through alternative dispute resolution procedures, such as mediation or arbitration, as alternatives to litigation. You and BookFunnel both agree to submit to the exclusive jurisdiction of the state and federal courts located in or having jurisdiction over Brazoria County, Texas, USA and you and BookFunnel agree to commence any proceeding arising from these Terms exclusively in such courts. 

 

Assignment

You cannot assign these Terms (including your rights or obligations) to any third party except with our consent, but BookFunnel may assign these Terms (including our rights and obligations) to any third party. 

Contact Us

If you have any questions about these Terms, please contact us via email at support@bookfunnel.com or at our address below:

BookFunnel LLC
Attention: Legal
5205 W. Broadway St. 184
Pearland, Texas 77581
USA

 

EXHIBIT A: EUROPEAN DATA PROCESSING ADDENDUM

This addendum applies to the personal data of readers, employees and contractors of authors and publishers where the personal data is protected under data protection laws in the European Economic Area (“EEA”). 

Purpose of Processing: BookFunnel will process such personal data solely for the following purposes: 

  • BookFunnel will use emails, IP address, and other personal data to deliver its services and provide technical support.
  • BookFunnel will process the personal data for the purposes set forth in this addendum and to provide the services. 
  • BookFunnel may process the personal data in such other ways as reasonably requested by the author or publisher. 

 

Categories of personal data: The categories of personal data include the following: 

name, user name, email address, password, contact details, usage data and patterns with respect to the service, IP address, cookie IDs, and other personal data provided by data subjects (or the author or publisher) in connection with the use of the services.

 

Consent of EEA Individuals: If you are an author or publisher, you are responsible for ensuring that your readers, employees and contracts who are protected under this addendum have consented to BookFunnel’s use of their personal data to provide the BookFunnel services. 

 

Transfers to the US: If you are an author or publisher, you authorize BookFunnel to transfer personal data from the EEA to the United States pursuant to the Controller to Processor Module two Standard Clauses (available at https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELEX:32021D0914) where the author or publisher is the “data exporter” and BookFunnel is the “data importer.” 

 

Confidentiality:  BookFunnel will ensure that any person who it authorizes to process personal data under this addendum is subject to confidentiality obligations.

 

Security Measures:  BookFunnel will implement appropriate technical and organizational measures to protect against accidental or unlawful destruction, loss, alteration, unauthorized disclosure of, or access to the personal data.

 

Appointment of Sub-Processors: If you are an author or publisher, you authorize BookFunnel to appoint sub-processors (including BookFunnel’s affiliates, such as CloudFlare, Inc., DigitalOcean, LLC., and Google Cloud) to perform specific services on BookFunnel’s behalf which may require such sub-processors to process personal data. 

BookFunnel will enter into a written agreement with each sub-processor that imposes on the sub-processor the obligations required by applicable law.

BookFunnel is liable for the performance of its sub-processor’s obligations.

 

Data Subject Rights:  BookFunnel will, at the author’s or publisher’s request, provide the author or publisher with reasonable assistance necessary for the fulfillment of the author’s or publisher’s obligation to respond to requests for the exercise of individuals’ rights relating to BookFunnel’ processing of personal data. The author or publisher is solely responsible for responding to requests.

 

Personal Data Breaches: BookFunnel will: (a) notify the author or publisher as soon as practicable after it becomes aware of any personal data breach; and (b) at the author’s or publisher’s request, promptly provide the author or publisher with all reasonable assistance necessary relating to personal data breaches on BookFunnel’ systems.

 

Data Protection Impact Assessment; Prior Consultation:  BookFunnel will, at the author’s or publisher’s request, provide the author or publisher with reasonable assistance to facilitate legally required: (a) data protection impact assessments; and (b) consultations with European data protection authorities, taking into account the nature of the processing and the information available to BookFunnel.

 

Deletion of Personal Data:  BookFunnel will delete or return all personal data of individuals protected under EEA law in its possession or control after BookFunnel ceases to provide the services, unless the applicable EEA data protection law requires or permits otherwise.

 

Information:  BookFunnel will, at author’s or publisher’s request, provide the author or publisher with all information necessary to enable the author or publisher to demonstrate compliance with its obligations under the EEA’s data protection laws, and allow for audits conducted by the author or publisher.