Terms and Conditions

1. Agreement and the Service

These Terms and Conditions (“Terms”) govern your access to Books Pointer’s website, mobile application, application programming interface, and related services. The Website and Mobile Application provide the same connected author-and-reader service and use the same account and API systems. Together they are called the “Service.”

The Service is operated as Books Pointer from Bangladesh. By accessing or using the Service, creating an account, or publishing content, you agree to these Terms and our Privacy Policy. If you do not agree, do not use the Service.

Visitors may read content made publicly available without an account. Registered users may publish books, create author profiles, review and save books, follow users, send messages, and use other reader and community features that we make available.

2. Eligibility and accounts

• You must be at least 13 to create an account.
• If you are a minor where you live, you may use the Service only with the permission and supervision of a parent or legal guardian.
• You must provide accurate information and keep it reasonably current.
• You are responsible for activity under your account and for protecting your password, sign-in method, and device.
• You may not sell, transfer, impersonate another person through, or create an account for unlawful or deceptive purposes.
• Tell us promptly at contact.bookspointer@gmail.com if you believe your account has been compromised.

We may reject a username, author identity, profile, or registration that is misleading, infringes rights, creates a security risk, or violates these Terms. Google or another supported sign-in provider may apply its own terms when you use that sign-in method.

3. Publishing rights declarations

Before publishing a book or other work, you must accurately state why you have the right to publish it. Your declaration is your statement; it is not copyright registration, legal advice, or a guarantee from Books Pointer.

• A translation, adaptation, transcription, edited edition, or collection of another person’s work is not automatically your original work.
• The absence of a copyright notice or the availability of material elsewhere online does not establish permission.
• You are responsible for the work, author attribution, declaration, source information, and permission evidence you provide.
• You must correct a declaration if you learn it is inaccurate. We may preserve an audit history of declarations and corrections.
• Only eligible, verified self-authored original publications may qualify for creator or new-writer promotion. Permission-based and public-domain works may remain available when otherwise allowed but need not qualify as original creator work.
• We may request evidence, pause promotion, limit visibility, preserve a URL with an unavailable notice, unpublish or remove content, or restrict an account while reviewing a credible rights concern.
• Knowingly or repeatedly making false declarations may result in removal, loss of monetization or promotion, suspension, termination, withheld payouts where lawful, and possible legal action.

4. Your ownership and the licence you give us

As between you and Books Pointer, you retain ownership of the books, profile material, reviews, messages, and other content you create and have the right to submit (“User Content”). These Terms do not transfer ownership of your work to us.

You give Books Pointer a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free licence to host, store, cache, reproduce, technically format, transmit, publicly display, communicate, distribute, and make your User Content available through the Service. This licence includes using reasonable excerpts, covers, displayed author names, and profile images to operate, secure, improve, advertise, and promote the Service and the relevant work. We may allow service providers to exercise these rights only as needed to support the Service.

The licence continues while the User Content is available through the Service. After deletion or account closure, public use will end within a reasonable operational period, except for backups, legal or dispute records, audit history, content another user lawfully retains through a Service feature, and material we must retain, restrict, or preserve by law. Aggregate or de-identified analytics may remain.

If paid-book access is introduced, additional seller terms shown before enrollment will explain how author removal, existing reader access, refunds, and post-sale licences work. No paid-content licence or payout right exists until that feature is launched and you accept those additional terms.

5. Your content responsibilities

You represent and warrant that:

• you own your User Content or have all permissions needed to submit and license it;
• your content and our permitted use of it do not infringe copyright, trademark, privacy, publicity, contractual, confidentiality, or other rights;
• your author identity, metadata, copyright declaration, and disclosures are accurate and not misleading;
• you have obtained valid permission before identifying or exposing private information about another person;
• your content complies with applicable law and these Terms; and
• where relevant, you accurately disclose material use of generated content or other facts required by law, platform policy, or a publishing workflow.

You are responsible for keeping your own copy of User Content. Books Pointer is not a permanent archive, copyright registry, publisher of record, or substitute for professional legal or editorial review.

6. Community rules and prohibited conduct

You may not use the Service to:

• publish unlawful, infringing, fraudulent, defamatory, threatening, exploitative, hateful, or sexually abusive material;
• sexualize minors, facilitate child exploitation, groom users, or endanger a child;
• harass, stalk, impersonate, deceive, expose private information, or coordinate abuse against another person;
• send spam, scams, malicious links, unauthorized promotions, or repetitive unsolicited messages;
• upload malware or attempt to bypass authentication, security controls, rate limits, content restrictions, or payment controls;
• scrape, harvest, copy, or train systems on Service content or user information at scale without written permission or another lawful basis;
• manipulate reads, ratings, reviews, follows, impressions, referrals, ad activity, purchases, promotion eligibility, or author earnings;
• misuse reports, copyright procedures, refunds, chargebacks, affiliate links, or payment systems;
• reverse engineer or interfere with the Service except where applicable law expressly permits it; or
• help another person do any of the above.

Reviews must reflect genuine experience with the work. Incentivized, coordinated, irrelevant, or abusive reviews may be removed. Commercial promotion is allowed only through features or written permission provided by Books Pointer.

7. Moderation, reports, and enforcement

We may investigate suspected violations and may reject, label, limit, demonetize, unpublish, preserve, or remove content; restrict messaging or promotion; suspend or terminate accounts; preserve evidence; and refer matters to appropriate authorities. We are not required to monitor every item and do not endorse User Content merely because it appears on the Service.

Enforcement decisions may consider context, severity, history, user safety, credibility of evidence, and legal obligations. Where appropriate, you may ask us to review a decision by emailing the contact address below. We may act without advance notice when reasonably necessary to protect users, the Service, legal rights, or evidence.

8. Copyright and other rights complaints

If you believe content on the Service infringes your copyright or another legal right, email contact.bookspointer@gmail.com with:

• your name and reliable contact information;
• identification of the protected work or right;
• the exact Service URL or sufficient information to locate the challenged material;
• an explanation of why the use is unauthorized or unlawful;
• a statement that your report is accurate and made in good faith; and
• evidence that you own the right or are authorized to act for the owner.

We may forward a complaint to the affected user and invite a response or counter-notice. False or abusive notices may create legal liability and may result in account action. Copyright law varies by country; obtain qualified advice when unsure.

9. Reading access and future paid books

Authors may currently make eligible published books available for reading under the features we provide. We intend to add an option allowing an author to designate a book as free or requiring payment to unlock it, but paid unlocking and author payouts are not yet generally available.

Before a paid feature launches, the checkout and applicable additional terms will disclose:

• the price, currency, taxes, payment provider, and what access the reader receives;
• the platform commission, app-store or processor fees, and author revenue calculation;
• payout eligibility, identity or tax verification, minimum thresholds, timing, holds, and supported countries;
• refund, cancellation, chargeback, failed-payment, and fraud rules; and
• how removal, termination, territorial restrictions, and service discontinuation affect purchased access.

A displayed price is not a promise that paid access is available until checkout is enabled and successfully completed. Mobile purchases must follow the rules of the applicable app store, which may be the merchant or payment processor of record and may control billing, refunds, and payment data. Authors are responsible for taxes, registrations, and legal obligations applicable to their earnings unless the checkout expressly states otherwise.

Books Pointer does not guarantee sales, readership, promotion, revenue, payout availability, or continued availability of any monetization program. We will not retroactively charge readers for books they accessed as free, but an author may choose a paid setting for future access where the launched product permits it.

10. Advertising, sponsorships, and affiliate links

The Service may contain advertisements, sponsored placements, promotions, and affiliate links. Books Pointer may receive money or another benefit from impressions, clicks, purchases, or other qualifying activity. We aim to identify sponsored or affiliate placements where appropriate.

Advertisers, merchants, affiliate networks, and destination sites are independent third parties. Their products, claims, availability, prices, tracking, privacy practices, and transactions are governed by their own terms. Unless we expressly state otherwise, Books Pointer does not sell, fulfill, warrant, or provide support for a third party’s product or service. Use appropriate judgment before leaving the Service or making a purchase.

11. Books Pointer intellectual property

The Service software, design, branding, logos, interfaces, and content created by Books Pointer are owned by or licensed to us and protected by applicable law. User Content remains governed by section 4.

Subject to these Terms, we give you a limited, personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable, revocable licence to access and use the Service for its intended purposes. You may not use our branding, source code, design, or proprietary material outside the Service without written permission or a right granted by law.

12. Third-party services and app stores

The Service may rely on or link to third-party authentication, analytics, notifications, email, search, hosting, advertising, affiliate, payment, and app-store services. We are responsible for the Service we provide, but third parties control their own services and terms. Their availability is not guaranteed.

If you download the app from Google Play or another app distributor, you must also comply with that distributor’s terms. The distributor is not responsible for Books Pointer’s User Content, support, or claims except to the extent its own terms or applicable law require otherwise.

13. Privacy

Our Privacy Policy explains how we collect, use, disclose, retain, and protect information across the connected Books Pointer and Website One services. It is incorporated into these Terms. Public contributions can be copied or shared by others, so publish thoughtfully.

14. Account deletion and termination

You may request account deletion through the in-app route where available or at https://bookspointer.com/delete/account. The Privacy Policy explains deletion and limited retention exceptions.

We may suspend or terminate access when you violate these Terms, create risk or legal exposure, fail required payment or identity checks for a future paid feature, or when continued service is no longer reasonably feasible. Provisions that by their nature should survive—including ownership, licences already necessary for retained records, payment obligations, disclaimers, liability limits, disputes, and enforcement rights—will survive termination.

15. Service changes and availability

We may add, modify, suspend, or discontinue features, content, eligibility criteria, limits, and integrations. We do not guarantee uninterrupted, error-free, or permanent availability or that every feature will be offered on every platform or in every country. Where reasonably possible, we will provide appropriate notice before a material change that significantly affects existing paid access.

16. Disclaimers

To the maximum extent permitted by law, the Service is provided “as is” and “as available.” Books Pointer disclaims implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, title, and non-infringement. We do not warrant the accuracy, legality, quality, safety, or availability of User Content, recommendations, translations, advertisements, affiliate offers, or third-party services.

Nothing on the Service is legal, financial, tax, medical, or other professional advice. Nothing in these Terms excludes a warranty, remedy, or consumer right that applicable law does not allow us to exclude.

17. Limitation of liability

To the maximum extent permitted by law, Books Pointer and its operators, personnel, and service providers will not be liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential, exemplary, or punitive damages, or for lost profits, revenue, data, goodwill, or opportunity arising from the Service. Our aggregate liability for a claim will not exceed the greater of the amount you paid directly to Books Pointer for the feature giving rise to the claim during the six months before the event or BDT 1,000.

These limits do not apply where prohibited by law or to liability that cannot legally be limited. App-store purchases or third-party transactions may also be subject to the provider’s applicable remedies.

18. Indemnity

To the extent permitted by law, you will defend, indemnify, and hold harmless Books Pointer and its operators and personnel from third-party claims, damages, liabilities, and reasonable costs arising from your User Content, publishing-rights declaration, unlawful conduct, misuse of the Service, or material breach of these Terms. We may control the defense of a covered claim, and you agree to cooperate reasonably. This section does not require a consumer to indemnify us for our own unlawful conduct.

19. Governing law and disputes

These Terms are governed by the laws of Bangladesh, without regard to conflict-of-law rules, except where mandatory consumer law in your location applies. Before filing a claim, you and Books Pointer agree to try in good faith for 30 days to resolve it informally by email. If it is not resolved, the courts of competent jurisdiction in Bangladesh will have jurisdiction, unless applicable law gives you a non-waivable right to bring the claim elsewhere.

20. Changes to these Terms

We may update these Terms as the Service or law changes. We will post the updated Terms with a revised date and provide additional notice when a change is material. Changes will apply prospectively from their effective date. If you do not agree to revised Terms, stop using the Service. Paid-book or author-payout features will require clear additional terms before you use them.

21. General terms

These Terms, the Privacy Policy, and any feature-specific terms presented to you are the entire agreement concerning the Service. If a provision is unenforceable, the remainder stays effective. Failure to enforce a provision is not a waiver. You may not assign your rights or obligations without our consent; we may assign these Terms as part of a legitimate transfer of the Service. Headings are for convenience only.

22. Contact

Questions, complaints, rights notices, and requests about these Terms may be sent to Books Pointer at contact.bookspointer@gmail.com.