Terms of Service
These terms explain what the service does, how points are credited and set aside, what happens when you miss a deadline, and what gets an account throttled, blocked or banned. Everything below describes behaviour that is actually implemented — where a rule exists on paper but is not yet enforced by the software, we say so.
What BookOrbit is
BookOrbit is a place where independent authors read each other’s books and give each other honest feedback. An author shelves a title and opens it for feedback, setting points aside for the readers they ask for; other members take a seat, read the book, and write what they thought — here, on the platform. A shelved book is invisible to everyone else until a moderator has checked that the listing exists and matches what you described. BookOrbit is not affiliated with Amazon, Kobo, Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, Google Play or Smashwords.
Your account and your plan
You need an account to use anything beyond the public pages. You choose at sign-up whether you are here as an author with books of your own or as a reader who writes feedback. A reader account is free, stays free, never needs a card, and can take books to read. An author account starts with no plan: you choose one when you are ready, and choosing Author or Author Plus begins a two-week trial costing $1, charged at the start so the card is checked rather than only stored, and the first full payment is taken automatically on the fifteenth day unless you cancel before then. A paid plan lets you shelve titles and ask for readers, sets how many books you may take to read in a week and hold at once — the pricing page shows the numbers — and comes with points: a signing bonus of 1,500 points on Author or 2,500 points on Author Plus when the first payment goes through, once per account, and 25,000 points on Press for each month paid. The next section but one says what points are, and what they are not.
Paying for a plan
A reader account is free and stays free. The paid plans are monthly subscriptions priced in US dollars; each one shows its price on the pricing page and again in the payment window before you enter a card, together with whatever tax your country requires — you are never asked to pay an amount you have not been shown first. Choosing Author or Author Plus begins a two-week trial that costs $1, charged when the trial starts so that the card is verified rather than only stored; Press has no trial and is charged in full straight away. The first full payment is taken automatically on the fifteenth day unless you cancel before then; after that the same amount is charged on the same day of each month, automatically, until you cancel. Cancelling stops the next charge and nothing else — the Refunds and cancellation page says what happens to the rest. If a payment fails, Paddle tries again over the following days and writes to you, and your plan keeps working while that is going on; if the money still cannot be taken, the subscription ends and the account returns to the free reader tier — reading and giving feedback carry on, while shelving a new title and asking for readers need a plan again — and your books and your feedback stay exactly where they are. Payments are handled by Paddle, which is the merchant of record for everything sold here: Paddle makes the sale, issues the receipt and accounts for the tax, and it is their name rather than BookOrbit that appears on your card or bank statement.
Points
Points are how asking for feedback is balanced against giving it. You are credited a book’s points the moment you take it to read, and they stay yours when your feedback arrives here in time. Opening a request sets points aside for every reader you ask for — 100 points a reader, or 130 points for a book over 200 pages, counted from the PDF you uploaded and never from a number typed in. The price is fixed when the request opens, so replacing the file later changes nothing for readers already promised. Each reader is credited from what you set aside, and whatever no reader takes comes back to you when the request closes or expires. Your balance can go below zero: a book’s points are taken back if its deadline passes, if your feedback is rejected or if you hand the book back, whether or not they have been spent. A balance below zero stops you opening requests and nothing else — you can still take books, which is how it is worked off. Points have no cash value. They come with a paid plan as described above, but they cannot be bought on their own, sold, transferred to another member, withdrawn or exchanged for money, no refund is ever calculated from them, and they end with your account. A moderator may correct a balance by hand, always with a reason you are shown. Points are never given for a rating, and never for anything published outside BookOrbit.
Taking a task, and its deadline
When you take a seat you have 3 days to send your feedback. A notice appears in the site when a task has less than a day left; it is shown here rather than emailed, and the check that produces it runs once a day, so treat it as a courtesy rather than a guarantee. If the deadline passes without feedback, the book’s points are taken back, but the seat stays yours for 2 more days: send your feedback in that time and the points come back. After that the task is marked expired and the seat returns to the author’s request for someone else. Feedback is accepted up to the second each window closes; the points themselves are moved by a check that runs once a day, so they may follow some hours later. Nothing else happens to your account — the section after next says what does. You cannot take that same title again, but the author’s other books stay open to you. Requests opened before 1 October 2026 carry no points and finish under the deadline they were opened with.
Who may read whom
Once you have given feedback on any of an author’s books, that author can never take any of yours — including books you add months later. You, on the other hand, may go on reading their other books. Between any two members feedback flows one way only, so a swap can never be completed: its second half is always refused, by the software rather than by a rule someone has to remember. The rule is read from the feedback itself, so it is in place the moment you submit, and it is never lifted — not when a moderator rejects the submission, not on request. Two members whose accounts share a device or a connection, or whom a moderator has separated, are kept apart in both directions. Authors are never told who read their book.
Missed deadlines, throttling, blocks and bans
A missed deadline costs the points the book credited, and on its own nothing more: your account is not touched. Repeatedly holding seats and letting them lapse does starve the library, so the response escalates: at 2 expired tasks you may hold 1 task at a time — you are not blocked, you work through what you hold, and expiries older than 180 days stop counting, so this can be worked off. At 5 the account is put in front of a moderator, who decides; the check that runs once a day flags it and stops there. A third threshold — 3 rejected submissions — is recorded with the other limits and is likewise never applied automatically. A moderator may block an account for 3, 7 or 30 days, which lifts by itself when the time is up, or ban it, which only an administrator can lift. Either one ends your sessions and hands back the books you hold, with their points; you can still sign in to see why, write to us, or close the account. Every block and ban is a person’s decision, made by hand with a reason you are shown, and you can write and ask about it.
Books and files
Your book stays yours. When you upload a PDF its pages are counted, because that is what a request for it is priced by, and a file that cannot be read is refused. Uploading a PDF grants BookOrbit a narrow licence to store it and show it to the people entitled to read it — you, a member currently holding a task on it, and staff — and to nobody else, for nothing else. Files live in private storage under opaque paths that carry no author identifier, every download is a freshly signed link that expires after sixty seconds, and every download is recorded against the account and the task it was served for. You can replace the file at any time from your shelf, which deletes the previous one, and you can remove a book from your shelf yourself; a removed book keeps its file for thirty days in case the removal was a mistake, and after that the file is deleted. If you are the reader: the file is yours to read for that task only. Do not copy it, share it, pass on the link, upload it anywhere, or keep it after the task ends. Doing so ends the account and is a matter between you and the copyright holder.
Moderation and appeals
Books are checked before they enter the library, and every piece of feedback is read by a person before it reaches the author — nothing is published by a machine. A moderator who rejects a submission must give a reason of at least ten characters, and you see that reason; the book’s points are taken back and the seat returns to the author. A moderator who blocks or bans an account, or corrects its points, must give a reason too, and it is sent to the member. Moderators may not decide their own submissions or feedback written about their own books, nor act on their own account or one that shares their device — the software refuses, it does not merely hide the button. There is no appeal form in the product yet; if you think a decision is wrong, get in touch and a person will read it.
Ending the relationship
You can close your account yourself in Settings. It removes your name, email address, pen name and the hashed record of the address you signed up from, deletes your stored credentials and every session, and closes any open requests for feedback, returning what they had set aside to the account before it closes; your points end with it and are never paid out. It is refused while you hold a task, because disappearing part-way through leaves an author waiting on feedback that is never coming — finish it or let it lapse first. A blocked or banned account can be closed at any time, and its books go back to their requests. One thing survives on purpose, and we would rather say so plainly: the record of who has given feedback to whom, because it decides what two members are offered and erasing it would undo that. We may also block or ban an account that abandons tasks repeatedly, redistributes a book, runs more than one identity, or submits feedback it did not do the reading for. Every one of those is a person’s decision: nothing on this service closes an account on its own. If you are a consumer, nothing in these terms takes away a right your own country gives you that cannot be given away by agreement. This page describes how the system actually works today; it is not legal advice.
How to reach us
Write to [email protected], or use .