Terms of Service

These Terms govern your use of sotare.app, our mobile apps, and everything we publish through them (together, the “Service”). By creating an account or using the Service, you agree to these Terms. If you don’t agree, don’t use the Service.

We’ve written these Terms to be readable. Where the law requires specific language, we’ve kept it as plain as we can.

1. Who can use Sotare

You must be 18 or older. Sotare publishes fiction for adults, including mature romance. By creating an account, you confirm you are at least 18 years old (or the age of majority where you live, if higher). If we learn an account holder is under 18, we will close the account.
One account per person. Accounts are personal. Don’t share your login, and don’t create multiple accounts.
Accurate information. Keep your account details (especially your email address) accurate and current — it’s how we send you legally required notices, billing reminders, and receipts.
You’re responsible for activity on your account. Tell us right away at support@sotare.app if you suspect unauthorized access.

2. What Sotare is

Sotare is a reading platform for serialized fiction published under our house imprints. Some episodes are free; others require a paid subscription. Access tiers are set per chapter and enforced on our servers — what you can read depends on your subscription status at the time you read it.

3. Subscriptions and billing

3.1 How subscriptions work

Paid plans are billed in advance on a recurring cycle (monthly or annual, as shown at checkout).
Your subscription renews automatically at the end of each billing period, and your payment method is charged the then-current price, until you cancel.
The price, billing frequency, and renewal terms are shown clearly before you subscribe, and you must affirmatively accept them (for example, by ticking a box or tapping a clearly labeled subscribe button). We’ll also email you a confirmation with these terms and instructions for cancelling.

3.2 Cancelling

You can cancel any time, yourself, online — in your account settings on the web, or through your app store subscription settings if you subscribed through an app store. No phone calls, no chat queues, no retention hoops.
Cancellation takes effect at the end of your current billing period. You keep access until then. We don’t charge you again after that.

3.3 Free trials and promotional pricing

If we offer a free trial or introductory price:

We’ll tell you before you sign up exactly when the trial or promo ends, and what price you’ll be charged afterward.
Your paid subscription starts automatically when the trial ends, unless you cancel before then.
For trials or promotional periods longer than one month, we’ll email you a reminder before your first charge, with a direct link to cancel.

3.4 Price changes

If we change the price of your plan, we’ll email you at least 30 days before the change takes effect.
The new price applies from your next renewal after the notice period — never mid-cycle.
If you don’t want to pay the new price, cancel before that renewal and you won’t be charged it. For significant increases, we may also ask you to confirm the new price in-product before renewing you at it.

3.5 Payments

Payments are processed by third-party payment providers (currently Stripe, or your app store). We don’t store your full card details. Failed payments may result in suspension of paid access until payment succeeds. Prices may be shown inclusive or exclusive of VAT/sales tax depending on your location; applicable taxes are stated at checkout.

App-store subscriptions are additionally subject to the app store’s own terms, and cancellation and refunds for those purchases are handled through the app store.

4. Your EU/UK right of withdrawal — and how it’s waived

If you’re a consumer in the EU or UK, you normally have 14 days to withdraw from an online purchase. For digital content, that right ends once delivery begins with your consent. So, at checkout:

You expressly consent to us providing you immediate access to digital content, and you acknowledge that you thereby lose your 14-day right of withdrawal.

You give this consent by ticking the checkbox (or equivalent affirmative step) at checkout. We’ll confirm it in your subscription confirmation email. If you subscribe but do not access any paid content, you may still withdraw within 14 days for a full refund — contact support@sotare.app.

Nothing in this section affects your statutory rights regarding defective services.

5. Refunds

We don’t offer refunds for content you’ve already accessed. When you read a paid chapter, that purchase (or the portion of your subscription covering it) is consumed.
We may, entirely at our discretion, issue goodwill refunds or credits — for example, for billing mistakes, duplicate charges, or genuine service failures. Asking never hurts: support@sotare.app.
Your statutory rights always come first. Nothing in this policy limits refund rights you have under mandatory consumer law where you live (including the EU/UK withdrawal right described in Section 4, and applicable US state or Israeli consumer protection law).
Purchases made through an app store follow that store’s refund process.

6. Your license to read

When you access content on Sotare, we grant you a personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable, revocable license to read (and, where we provide the feature, listen to) that content through the Service, for your own private, non-commercial enjoyment, for as long as your access tier covers it.

That’s the whole license. In particular, you may not:

copy, download (except via features we provide), redistribute, republish, or publicly perform the content;
scrape, crawl, or bulk-extract content, whether manually or with automated tools;
rip, record, or convert content into audio, video, or other formats (including via text-to-speech capture);
use the content, in whole or in part, to train, fine-tune, or evaluate any machine-learning or AI model, or include it in any dataset for those purposes;
circumvent access controls, paywalls, or tier restrictions;
sell, rent, or commercially exploit the content or your access to it.

Text and data mining reservation: To the fullest extent permitted by law, we expressly reserve all rights in our content for the purposes of text and data mining, including under Article 4(3) of EU Directive 2019/790. This reservation is also expressed in machine-readable form on the Service (including via robots directives). No license for text or data mining, AI training, or similar uses is granted.

Cancelling your subscription, or termination of your account, ends the license. You don’t “own” chapters — you have access while subscribed at the relevant tier.

7. Mature content

Everything on Sotare is fiction. Characters, events, and settings are imaginary, and all characters depicted in romantic or intimate situations are adults (18+) within their stories.
Some works are tagged as mature. Before reading a mature-tagged work, you’ll be asked to confirm you’re an adult and wish to proceed. By confirming, you affirm that you are 18+ and that viewing such content is lawful where you are.
Content tags and heat-level indicators are provided in good faith as guidance, not guarantees. If something is mis-tagged, tell us and we’ll fix it.

8. Your conduct

Where the Service allows you to post content — comments, reviews, reactions, profile information — you’re responsible for what you post. Don’t post anything that:

is unlawful, threatening, harassing, hateful, or defamatory;
sexualizes minors in any way (this results in immediate termination and, where appropriate, reporting to authorities);
infringes someone else’s rights, including copyright and privacy;
contains spam, advertising, malware, or attempts to phish or scam;
impersonates any person or misrepresents your affiliation.

You grant us a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free license to host, display, and moderate what you post on the Service. We may remove any user content at our discretion. We don’t claim ownership of your posts.

You also agree not to interfere with the Service itself: no probing or breaching security, no reverse engineering (except where the law grants you that right regardless of contract), no automated access except through interfaces we publicly provide, and no using the Service to build a competing dataset or product.

9. Our intellectual property

The Service — including all published works, cover art, branding, software, and design — is owned by Cleo and Sable House LLC or our licensors and authors, and is protected by copyright, trademark, and other laws worldwide. Except for the reading license in Section 6 and any rights that can’t be excluded by law, no rights are granted to you.

If you believe content on the Service infringes your copyright, contact us at legal@sotare.app with enough detail to identify the work and the basis of your claim.

10. Termination

By you: You can stop using the Service any time, and you can delete your account in settings or by emailing support@sotare.app. Deleting your account cancels future renewals. Deletion doesn’t entitle you to a refund for the current paid period, except where mandatory law says otherwise.
By us: We may suspend or terminate your account if you materially breach these Terms (for example: scraping, redistribution, payment fraud, underage use, or the conduct prohibited in Section 8), or if required by law. Where reasonable, we’ll warn you first and give you a chance to fix the problem; for serious breaches (like content theft or child-safety violations) we may terminate immediately.
If we terminate your account without cause, or discontinue the Service entirely, we’ll refund the unused portion of any prepaid period. If we terminate for your material breach, no refund is owed for the current period, except where mandatory law requires one.
Sections that by their nature should survive termination (licenses granted to us, IP, disclaimers, liability limits, disputes) survive.

11. Disclaimers

We work hard to keep Sotare available and enjoyable, but we provide the Service “as is” and “as available.” We don’t promise uninterrupted or error-free operation, that any particular work or feature will remain available, or that content will meet your expectations. Serialized works may be updated, revised, rescheduled, or discontinued.

Some jurisdictions don’t allow certain warranty disclaimers, so parts of this section may not apply to you. If you’re a consumer in the EU or UK, you retain all guarantees of conformity that apply to digital content and services under your local law.

12. Limitation of liability

To the extent permitted by law:

We are not liable for indirect or consequential losses — lost profits, lost data, or losses that weren’t reasonably foreseeable when you agreed to these Terms.
Our total liability to you for all claims relating to the Service is capped at the greater of (a) the amount you paid us in the 12 months before the claim arose, or (b) USD $100.

What we don’t limit: Nothing in these Terms excludes or limits our liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, for gross negligence or willful misconduct, or for anything else that cannot lawfully be excluded. If you’re a consumer, nothing here limits rights that your local consumer law makes non-waivable.

13. Indemnity

If your breach of these Terms — for example, unlawful content you post, or unauthorized redistribution of our works — leads to a third-party claim against us, you agree to cover the reasonable costs and damages we incur as a result. This applies only to claims actually caused by your breach, and we’ll notify you of any such claim and won’t settle it unreasonably at your expense. This section doesn’t apply to the extent local consumer law prohibits it.

14. Governing law and disputes

These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of Wyoming, USA, without regard to conflict-of-law rules, and disputes will be resolved in the state or federal courts located in Wyoming, whose jurisdiction both parties accept — except as provided below.
Consumer carve-out: If you are a consumer, nothing in this section deprives you of (a) the protection of mandatory consumer-protection laws of the country or state where you habitually live, or (b) your right to bring or defend proceedings in the courts of that place where local law gives you that right. In particular, if you live in the EU or UK, you may rely on the mandatory laws of your home country and bring claims in your home courts.
Talk to us first. Before filing anything, email support@sotare.app or legal@sotare.app — most problems are billing issues we can fix in a day. EU consumers can also use the European Commission’s online dispute resolution platform.
There is no mandatory arbitration clause in these Terms, and nothing in these Terms waives your right to bring claims on any basis available to you under applicable law.

15. Changes to these Terms

We may update these Terms as the Service evolves. If a change is material — anything affecting pricing mechanics, your rights, or dispute terms — we’ll notify you by email at least 30 days before it takes effect and post the updated Terms with a new effective date. Non-material changes (typos, clarifications, feature renames) may take effect on posting.

If you don’t agree to a material change, cancel before it takes effect and it won’t apply to you. Continuing to use the Service after the effective date of a change we’ve properly notified constitutes acceptance of the updated Terms. We keep prior versions available on request.

16. Everything else

Entire agreement. These Terms, plus our Privacy Policy and any plan-specific terms shown at checkout, are the whole agreement between us about the Service.
Severability. If any part of these Terms is found unenforceable, the rest stays in effect.
No waiver. If we don’t enforce a provision, that isn’t a waiver of our right to enforce it later.
Assignment. You can’t transfer your account or these Terms to anyone else. We may assign these Terms in connection with a merger, acquisition, or sale of the Service, and we’ll notify you if we do.
Contact. Cleo and Sable House LLC — 1908 Thomes Ave, Cheyenne, WY 82001, support@sotare.app, legal@sotare.app.