These Terms of Use govern your use of CiaoNovel (CiaoNovel Write and CiaoNovel Read, together the “Service”), available at ciaonovel.com. By creating an account or using the Service you fully accept these terms; if you don’t accept them, you may not use the Service.
Account. To use the Service you must create an account with your email and username, declaring that you are at least 18 years old. CiaoNovel, both CiaoNovel Write and CiaoNovel Read, is for adults only, and an account is also required to read the novels published on CiaoNovel Read. You’re responsible for keeping your credentials confidential and for all activity carried out with your account; you may have only one personal account.
The Service. CiaoNovel Write lets you write novels one paragraph at a time, as well as gamebooks and diaries, with the help of an artificial intelligence: every new account receives 10 trial AI credits, after which AI assistance is reserved for users with an active Premium subscription. With the TramaEngine Premium subscription the AI is provided by CiaoNovel, and the texts of your novels are never used to train artificial intelligence models, either by CiaoNovel or by the AI providers we rely on. With the BYOK Premium subscription you instead use your own OpenRouter key and the model you choose: you pay OpenRouter directly for AI calls, and they are also subject to the terms of OpenRouter and of the model provider, which also govern how those providers use the texts sent to them. Your key is never stored on our servers, and you are responsible for its use and for the costs it generates. In any case, CiaoNovel never uses your texts to train artificial intelligence models. CiaoNovel Read lets you read novels and play gamebooks published by other authors, for free or for a fee. Trial credits are given only once: a new account opened with a device or an email address that has already received them does not get them.
Subscription and purchases. The Premium subscription renews automatically each period until you turn off renewal from your account area, just as easily as you activated it. When purchasing a novel on CiaoNovel Read, access to the digital content begins immediately after payment: if you are a consumer residing in the European Economic Area, at the time of purchase we ask you to expressly confirm that you want immediate performance and acknowledge that, once the content is unlocked, you lose the 14-day right of withdrawal. Regardless of this, our Refund Policy still allows you to request a refund of your latest subscription charge: 100% within 14 days if it is your first charge or, for a renewal, within 7 days and only if you have used no more than 5 credits in the current cycle; each customer is entitled to a maximum of 2 refunds. Books purchased on CiaoNovel Read remain available to you forever but are non-refundable under this policy: that’s why you can, and should, look at the book’s preview, which is always available, before buying. For details, see our Refund Policy. BYOK Premium includes a free first month, granted only once per account, per payment card and per device: your card is required when you subscribe and, unless you turn off renewal before the free month ends, the first charge happens when it expires. If the card or the device has already used it, the trial subscription is cancelled without any charge. With BYOK Premium, where you use your own key and consume no credits, a renewal is refundable within 7 days with no other conditions. The limit applies per person: refunds obtained with the same email (even from a deleted account) or with the same card also count.
Selling your works. If you choose to publish a paid novel or gamebook on CiaoNovel Read by connecting an account through our payment service provider, the price is in US dollars, between the minimum and maximum shown at the time of publication. For each sale you receive 90% of the amount actually collected, meaning what the reader paid (after any discount code) minus the payment provider’s fee; CiaoNovel keeps the remaining 10%. Your share is paid out to you monthly, at the beginning of the month following the sale. You remain solely responsible for the price, content, and availability of your work. You can withdraw a work from publication at any time: readers who have already bought it can keep reading or playing it, while a free work remains available for 60 days to readers who had already opened it, who are notified, and then is no longer available. You can publish at most 2 new titles on CiaoNovel Read every 7 days, free or paid; new editions and republications of a work already released don’t count. If your account is closed or deleted, anyone who has already bought one of your works keeps finding it in their library, and anyone who opened it while it was free can still read it for 60 days.
Your content. You retain all rights to the novels you write. By using the Service you only grant us the license needed to store them, process them, and — if you choose to publish them — display them on CiaoNovel Read: nothing more. You’re solely responsible for what you write and publish, and content must not be illegal, infringe third-party rights (copyright, trademarks, privacy) or be defamatory or misleading. If you write a novel or a gamebook with the multi-author writing feature, the copyright and responsibility for the content remain with the main user, that is, the person who started the novel or gamebook with their own account; the other participants do not acquire any rights to the work, because they do not actually write any of its text: they only give advice in the chat and vote on the proposals, while it is always the main author who chooses how the story continues, even differently from the vote. A novel written with the “Two-Player Game” feature, on the other hand, belongs to both players, who are its co-authors: the copyright and responsibility for the content belong to both of them. It can be published on CiaoNovel Read by whoever created the game, only with the other player’s consent and free of charge; if a player leaves the game or deletes their account, the novel stays on the Service with the other player, who can continue it.
Responsibility for content. CiaoNovel is a writing and publishing tool: it does not review in advance, approve or endorse the content created, published or shared by users, such as novels, gamebooks, diaries, reviews and messages in the collaborative writing chat. A text suggested by the artificial intelligence also becomes your content when you approve, save or publish it. You are solely responsible for it, including towards third parties and in every respect, civil and criminal. To the extent permitted by law, CiaoNovel is not liable for the lawfulness, accuracy or originality of users’ content, nor for any damage it may cause. The automatic check we run before publication on CiaoNovel Read serves only the operation of the Service: it is neither a review nor a guarantee that the work is lawful. You agree to indemnify and hold CiaoNovel harmless from any claim, complaint or action by third parties, including reasonable legal fees, arising from what you have written or published or from your breach of these terms. If we receive a well-founded report or a request from an authority, we may remove or disable access to content; doing so does not make us responsible for content we have not removed.
AI Teacher. The lessons, exercises, corrections, answers and flashcards of the AI Teacher are written by artificial intelligence and normally checked by a second artificial intelligence call, but they can still contain errors, inaccuracies or out-of-date information. They are for study and information only: they do not replace a teacher or the advice of a professional (for example on health, law, finance or safety). It is up to you to check important information before using it; to the extent permitted by law, CiaoNovel is not liable for errors in the AI Teacher’s content or for the consequences of its use.
Prohibited use and closure of your account. You may not use the Service for illegal purposes, to publish or distribute unlawful content or content that infringes the rights of others, to get around the limits of your plan, credits or free trial (including by creating multiple accounts), to interfere with the operation or security of the platform, to extract its content in bulk without authorization, or in ways that harm CiaoNovel, other users or third parties. We may close your account at any time, at our discretion, with 14 days’ notice by email. From that moment your books leave CiaoNovel Read and, until the closure, you can only read and download your texts; then your account and your data are deleted as described in the Privacy Policy. Closing the account does not entitle you to any refund of the subscription or of unused credits, except as required by mandatory law. You can close your account at any time.
Chat. You can only message people who have given you their code, and you are responsible for what you send. Because messages are end-to-end encrypted, CiaoNovel cannot read or check them. That is why every user can block whoever messages them: a blocked user can no longer message you or add you to a chat. If many different users block the same account, chat is suspended for that account, first for one month, then for three months and then for six months each time it happens again. The suspension only affects chat: the rest of the service remains available. Shared world. In scenes with other players, what you write is also told in the stories of everyone present and you are responsible for it as for any other content of yours; the rules on prohibited use apply, you can leave a scene at any time and block any user from the chat.
Intellectual property. The CiaoNovel name, logo, and the Service remain the property of its developer; copying, reproducing, reverse-engineering, redistributing, or reselling the Service or any part of it is not permitted. The novels and other content you write remain your property, as indicated in the “Your content” section above.
No warranty on the service. CiaoNovel is an independent project, developed and maintained on a volunteer basis: we offer no guarantee of service continuity, uninterrupted availability, or freedom from errors or malfunctions, including those of the third-party providers we depend on. We encourage you to always keep a local copy of your novel texts (you can export them at any time using the Export feature). To the extent permitted by applicable law, and except in cases of intentional misconduct or gross negligence on our part, CiaoNovel assumes no liability for any data loss, service interruptions, or damages, direct or indirect, arising from the use of the Service.
Changes to these terms. We may update these Terms of Use over time; if there are significant changes we’ll let you know through the Service or by email. Continued use of the Service after a change constitutes acceptance of the new terms.
Governing law. These Terms of Use are governed by the laws of Hong Kong, provided that if you are a consumer residing in the European Economic Area you continue to benefit from the mandatory consumer protection rules provided by the law of your country of residence, which this clause cannot override. For any questions you can write to us from the Report a problem page.
