Terms of Service

Plain terms for a small site. Read them once; they are shorter than most.

Last updated 30 September 2026 · contact@shardreader.com

1. Who these terms are with

ShardReader (the "site") is operated by IggyTag ("we", "us"). By using the site you agree to these terms. If you do not agree with them, please do not use the site. Where a separate document applies (the Privacy Policy, the Refund and Billing Policy shown at checkout, or the Copyright and DMCA page), it forms part of this agreement.

2. Who may use the site

• You must be 13 or older to make an account. If the law where you live sets a higher age for agreeing to online services (16 in parts of the European Union), you must meet that age instead.
• The fiction is written for adults and young adults and contains violence, peril and, occasionally, strong language.
• If you are under 18, please use the site with a parent or guardian's knowledge.
• You may not use the site if we have previously closed your account.

3. Your account

• Sign up with an email address and a password, or with Google. One person, one account.
• A new account made with an email and password must confirm that address before it can post, message other readers or file a report. Until then it can read everything public.
• Keep your password to yourself. Anything done from your account is treated as done by you.
• Your nickname is what other readers see, along with a short reader ID. Your email address is never shown to other readers.
• Nicknames may not impersonate the author or another reader, and may not be abusive. We may reset a nickname that is.
• You can delete your account at any time by asking us. Deleting removes your account and everything of yours on the site. Payment records kept for tax and accounting are the one exception; see the Privacy Policy.

4. Memberships and payment

• Membership is optional. Every chapter becomes free to read on its published public date, with or without one.
• A membership unlocks a set number of chapters ahead of that date, as stated on the tier you choose.
• Payments are taken by Stripe. We never see or store your card number.
• Subscriptions renew automatically at the stated price until you cancel. Cancel from Profile → Tier; it takes two clicks, needs no email to us, and no one will try to talk you out of it.
• Cancelling stops the next charge. You keep what you have paid for until the end of that period.
• Prices are shown inclusive of tax where tax applies. If a price changes, existing members are told before the change takes effect and may cancel first.
• The Refund and Billing Policy shown at checkout governs refunds, failed payments and cancellation, and is part of these terms. Readers in the EU and UK keep their statutory cancellation rights; the checkout box explains how starting immediately affects them.
• The number of advance chapters a tier unlocks may change as the schedule changes. If it drops for a tier you are on, you will be told, and you may cancel.

5. The writing, and what you may do with it

Every chapter, cover, illustration and page of this site is the author's own work and is protected by copyright. Nothing here is public domain, free to repost, or free to train on.

You may

• Read it, on any device, as many times as you like.
• Link to it anywhere.
• Quote a short passage, a few sentences at most, with the title and a link, for review, discussion or criticism.
• Make fan art or fan writing for fun, posted where you like, as long as it is free, clearly marked as fan work, and does not reproduce the chapters themselves. We are glad to see it.

You may not

• Repost, mirror, republish or distribute chapters, in whole or in part, anywhere else.
• Translate the work and publish the translation, with or without payment.
• Sell, licence or bundle the work, or include it in a paid collection, application or audio recording.
• Record, narrate or adapt it into another medium for public distribution without written permission.
• Remove or alter any notice of authorship.
• Scrape, crawl or copy the site in bulk, by hand or by program, including with an account.
• Use any part of it to train, fine-tune, ground or evaluate a machine learning model, or to build a dataset for that purpose. This applies to commercial and non-commercial models alike, and is an express reservation of rights, including for the purposes of Article 4(3) of EU Directive 2019/790.
• Get around the release schedule or any membership limit, or share a membership account with others.

Permission for anything beyond the first list is sometimes given, and is always worth asking for: contact@shardreader.com.

6. What you post

You keep the copyright in whatever you write in the chat rooms, the suggestions board, your notes to us, and your profile. By posting it here, you give us permission to show it on the site, to store it, and to quote it when replying to you or when explaining a moderation decision. You can delete your own messages, and deleting your account removes them.

If you post an idea on the suggestions board and something like it later appears in the story or the site, that happens without payment or credit, and you agree to that. Ideas arrive from many directions at once.

Do not post anything that is not yours to post, and do not post another person's private information.

7. Behaviour in the rooms

The full Room rules are shown in the site, beside the Rooms heading and in every room, and form part of these terms. In short: be kind; no hate, harassment or threats; no spoilers in open rooms; keep it clean; no spam or advertising; keep personal details private; do not pretend to be someone else; report problems instead of arguing.

A word filter watches every message. Messages it catches may be blocked, and repeated attempts mute an account for a period. We may hide a message, mute an account, remove it from a party, or close it entirely if the rules are broken, and we may do so without notice where the safety of readers calls for it.

8. Availability, and the schedule

• Chapters are released on a published schedule. Dates can move: writing is not a factory, and life happens.
• We try to keep the site up, but we do not promise it will never be unavailable. It may go down for maintenance, or because something we depend on does.
• Features may change. We will not remove something you are paying for without telling you first.
• A book may be paused, rewritten, or in rare cases withdrawn. If a book is withdrawn while you hold a membership, email us and we will make it right.

9. Emails we send

Account emails, such as confirming your address, resetting a password or a warning that your password changed, are part of the service and are always sent. Release emails and news are optional: they are switched on when you join, and can be turned off in Profile → Settings or through the unsubscribe link in any of them.

10. Ending things

• You may stop using the site at any time, cancel a membership at any time, and ask us to delete your account at any time.
• We may suspend or close an account that breaks these terms, attacks the site, charges back a payment it received the benefit of, or is used for fraud.
• If we close your account for a reason that is not your fault, we will refund the unused part of any current period.
• Sections that by their nature should survive the end of this agreement (copyright, what you post, liability, governing law) do survive it.

11. What we do not promise

The site is provided as it is. To the fullest extent the law allows, we do not give warranties that it will be uninterrupted, error-free, or fit for any particular purpose. Nothing in these terms limits liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, for fraud, or for anything else that cannot lawfully be limited, and nothing in them removes rights you have as a consumer that cannot be waived.

Where liability can be limited, ours is limited to the amount you have paid us in the twelve months before the event complained of, or, if you have paid nothing, to fifty US dollars.

12. Changes to these terms

We may change these terms. The date at the top always shows when they last changed. For a change that materially affects your rights, signed-in readers are told in the site or by email before it takes effect. Continuing to use the site after a change means you accept it. Versions of the subscription terms and refund policy as they stood when you subscribed are kept on file, so a question about an old charge can be answered with the exact wording you agreed to.

13. Which law applies

These terms are governed by the law of the country ShardReader is operated from, and a dispute belongs to the courts of that country. Which country that is, is not published here, to keep one person's home off a public page. It is held by our domain registrar and by Stripe, and is given to a court, or to anyone with a genuine legal need, on request to contact@shardreader.com.

If you are a consumer, none of this takes away the protection of the mandatory consumer law where you live, or your right to bring a claim there.

14. Getting hold of us

Email contact@shardreader.com, or use Profile → Reports when signed in. We aim to answer within a few days.