Terms
Written to be read. If any of this is unclear, that is our failure and we want to know — the whole argument for this company is that the rules should be legible.
What we are
Book Factory Café is a marketplace. Authors publish here; we host, sell and deliver their work. We are not the publisher and we do not own or claim any rights in what authors upload.
You are contracting with Number One Son Software Development, the operator of bookfactory.cafe.
Your work stays yours
You keep full copyright. By publishing you grant us a non-exclusive, revocable licence to store, convert, display, sell and deliver your work, and to make samples and audio editions of it. That licence exists only so we can sell your book, and it ends when you unpublish.
We will never ask you for exclusivity, and we will never ask you to delist from anywhere else.
What you are responsible for
You confirm you own or control the rights to everything you publish, including cover art, quoted material and any AI tools used to produce it.
You are responsible for the content of your work. Claims we receive about it are passed to you within one business day.
You agree to indemnify us against claims arising from your work. In practice: if someone sues over a book you published, that is yours to answer.
Review and approval — you check it before we sell it
Before any book of yours can be sold, you must complete the file approval step: you personally read every chapter of the ebook, and — where an audiobook exists — listen to every track in full.
You then record a signed attestation confirming the content is complete, correct and consistent. We keep that attestation with a timestamp, a content fingerprint and the number of chapters and tracks you reviewed. A book with no recorded approval cannot be put on sale.
This is deliberate and it is not optional. It means that if a reader ever reports an error or inconsistency, the record shows you reviewed the work in full and approved it. Responsibility for the content of a book you approved rests with you, not with us.
Money
You keep 80% of the sale price of every copy. Founding 50 authors keep 85%, locked for life. Your rate is fixed at the date you joined and will not be reduced retroactively for any reason.
Payouts run daily through Stripe once your payout account is connected. We absorb payment processing fees out of our share.
Conversion to ebook and audiobook costs $99 once per book. There is no annual fee, no subscription and nothing to cancel. Founding 50 authors pay nothing for conversion, ever.
Refunds to readers are deducted from the sale they relate to. We do not claw back beyond that sale.
AI
AI-assisted and AI-generated work is welcome here. We ask only that you label it honestly, and we show that label to readers.
Our audiobook narration is synthetic and always disclosed as such to listeners.
Moderation, and the limits on it
Anyone can flag a book, an audiobook or a post. A person reviews every flag. Nothing is removed automatically by a system, and no account is ever terminated by one.
If we act against your work you get a written reason and a route to appeal to a human.
We will remove content that is illegal, that infringes someone else’s rights, or that sexualises minors. That list is short and we intend to keep it short.
Leaving
You can unpublish at any time, for any reason, without asking us.
You can export your books, your metadata and your reader list at any time from your settings. There is no fee, no waiting period and no retention offer.
If you leave, the licence you granted us ends and we stop selling your work.
Changing these terms
Any change is published here with a date and a plain-English summary of what changed.
Changes take effect no sooner than 30 days after they are announced, and they apply only to authors who join after the effective date. Existing authors keep the terms they joined under unless a change is required by law.
The boring but necessary part
The service is provided as-is. We work hard on conversion quality and we verify every ebook against its manuscript, but we do not warrant that it will be uninterrupted or error-free.
Our total liability to you is limited to the fees you paid us in the twelve months before the claim.
These terms are governed by the laws of the State of California.
Changelog
Every version of these terms, with what changed and when. We never edit a past version — we add a new one, so you can always see what you agreed to.
First published terms.
- Authors keep 80% of every sale; the Founding 50 keep 85% for life.
- Audiobook and ebook conversion: $99 once per book, no subscription.
- Your rate is locked to the date you joined and is never reduced retroactively.
- No exclusivity. Export your books and reader list at any time at no cost.
- A person reviews every flag before anything is taken down.
See also Privacy and the Author Bill of Rights.