Terms of Service

Inkwharf is operated by the operator of Inkwharf. In this document “we” and “us” mean that company, and “you” means the author or publisher using the service.

By creating an account you agree to these terms. If you do not agree, do not create one.

Inkwharf is software for selling ebooks directly to your readers. It hosts your storefront, stores your files, takes an order, and delivers the book to the buyer.

We are not a party to the sale of your book. Card payments are charged on your own Stripe account using a key you connect. Bitcoin payments settle to a wallet you control, from an address derived from your own credentials. At no point does money from a book sale pass through an account of ours, and there is no moment at which we could take a share of it.

That makes you the merchant of record on every sale. The contract for the book is between you and your reader. So are the obligations that come with it — described in sections 4 and 5.

You are responsible for keeping your login credentials secure and for everything done through your account.

You keep every right in the books you upload. You grant us only the permission needed to run the service: to store your files, to generate covers, samples and preview images from them, to produce watermarked copies for buyers where you have enabled that, and to serve all of it to the people who buy from you. This permission ends when you delete the content, except for copies already delivered to buyers and for backups that expire on their normal cycle.

You confirm that you hold the rights to everything you upload and that selling it does not infringe anyone else’s rights.

Because you are the merchant of record, tax on a book sale is your obligation, not ours. This includes VAT on sales to consumers in the EU and the UK, which is due from the first sale, with no threshold at all if you are established outside those territories.

We make it collectable rather than making it go away. Enabling Stripe Tax in your shop settings makes card checkouts collect a billing address, apply the right rate for a digital book in the buyer’s country, and hand the figure to Stripe to file where you are registered. Bitcoin sales cannot be covered this way — nothing sits between the buyer and your wallet to add a tax line — so we record the buyer’s country against the order and the rest is yours.

Registering where you owe tax is something no platform that leaves you as merchant of record can do for you. If you would rather that obligation sat with someone else, a platform that acts as merchant of record is the right choice, and we would rather say so here than have you find out later.

You may not use Inkwharf to distribute content you do not hold the rights to, content that is unlawful where it is sold, material that sexualises children, or material that exists to harass or defame a real person.

You may not use the service to send unsolicited email, to relay files to addresses that did not ask for them, or to probe, overload or work around the limits described in section 7.

We may remove content or suspend an account that breaches this section. Where we can, we will tell you why and give you a chance to respond first; where the breach is serious or ongoing, we may act immediately.

Plan prices, and what each plan includes, are on the pricing page. Paid plans are billed in advance through Stripe on a monthly or yearly cycle and renew until cancelled.

You can cancel at any time from the studio. Cancelling stops the next renewal; it does not refund the current period, except where section 3 of our refunds policy or a mandatory consumer right says otherwise.

If we change a price, we will give at least 30 days’ notice before it applies to your renewal.

Falling behind on a plan never withholds a book from a reader who has paid for it, and never touches money already earned. Nothing you have sold is ours to hold.

We aim to keep the service running and we do not promise it will never be unavailable. It is provided as it is, without warranties beyond those that cannot be excluded by law.

Some endpoints are rate limited to protect the service and its reputation with mail providers — password resets, download-link recovery, and sending a book to an e-reader. Ordinary use does not reach these limits.

Nothing here limits liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, for fraud, or for anything else that cannot lawfully be limited.

Subject to that, we are not liable for lost profits, lost sales, lost data or indirect losses, and our total liability to you in any twelve month period is limited to the amount you paid us for the service in that period. If you are on a free plan, that amount is zero, and the practical remedy is to stop using the service and take your files and your customer list with you.

You can close your account at any time. We will delete your content on request, subject to the retention described in the privacy policy.

We may end this agreement on 30 days’ notice, or immediately for a serious breach of section 5. If we end it without cause, we will refund the unused part of any prepaid plan.

Your readers’ existing download links keep working for their normal lifetime after an account closes, unless the content was removed because it was unlawful. Someone who paid for a book should not lose it because of a dispute between us.

The governing law and forum have not yet been set — see the draft notice above. If you are a consumer, this does not deprive you of the protection of mandatory rules in your own country of residence.

A contact address has not yet been published — see the draft notice above.