Terms of Service

Welcome to GoldenPalm Novels. These Terms of Service ("Terms") are the agreement between you and GoldenPalm Novels ("GoldenPalm," "we," "us," or "our") that governs your use of the GoldenPalm Novels website at goldenpalmnovels.com, any related applications, and any features or services we provide (together, the "Services").

By creating an account, publishing a story, reading a story, commenting, or otherwise using the Services, you agree to these Terms. If you don't agree, please don't use the Services.

These Terms should be read alongside our Community Guidelines page at /guidelines, our DMCA Policy at /dmca, and our Privacy Policy at /privacy. Together, those documents describe how the platform works, what's allowed, and how we handle your data. Where the documents overlap, these Terms control on legal matters.

Who can use GoldenPalm Novels

You must be at least 13 years old to create an account and use the Services. If you're under 18, you're only allowed to use the Services with the consent of a parent or legal guardian, and by using the Services you represent that you have that consent.

If you're using the Services on behalf of an organization, you're representing that you have the authority to bind that organization to these Terms.

You're responsible for keeping your account credentials secure and for everything that happens under your account. Tell us at support@goldenpalmnovels.com if you believe someone is using your account without permission.

Your content stays yours

You own your content. Anything you write, upload, or create using the Services remains yours: stories, chapters, comments, reviews, cover art, profile details, forum posts, all of it. We call all of that "Your Content" throughout these Terms. Posting on GoldenPalm Novels does not transfer copyright to us and does not give us ownership of your work.

You keep every right you had before you posted. You can publish the same story on Wattpad, Royal Road, Substack, your own website, or anywhere else you want. You can enter into agreements with publishers, agents, or other platforms. You can adapt your work into other formats. You can sell your work. You can remove your work from GoldenPalm at any time. Nothing in these Terms restricts any of that.

The license you grant GoldenPalm

To let us actually host and show Your Content to readers, you grant us a limited license. Here's exactly what that license covers, and just as importantly, what it doesn't.

What you grant us: By posting Your Content on the Services, you grant GoldenPalm Novels a non-exclusive, worldwide, revocable license to host, store, display, reformat, reproduce, publish, distribute, and promote Your Content on the Services. This license exists only so we can operate the platform: show your story to readers on the site, generate previews and thumbnails, deliver it to different devices and screen sizes, feature it in homepage rails and category pages, include it in newsletters and social media promoting the Services or your work, and index it in search results.

Sub-license for infrastructure only. The license above is sub-licensable, but only to the third-party providers we use to actually run the Services, for example hosting providers, content delivery networks, backup providers, email delivery services, and analytics providers. It is not sub-licensable to third parties for the purpose of exploiting Your Content in any other way, including publishing, adapting, translating, or commercially reproducing it outside the Services.

One narrow irrevocable piece: you grant us an irrevocable license to retain backup copies of Your Content for a reasonable period after you remove it or terminate your account, solely so we can restore it if there's an incident and so we can comply with legal obligations. Backup copies are not accessible to other users and are deleted according to our normal backup rotation.

What you don't grant us: You do not grant us the right to sell Your Content to third parties, to license it to book publishers or film studios, to create adaptations or derivative works (translations, audiobooks, films, comics, merchandise), or to sub-license it for any commercial exploitation outside the Services. If we ever want to do any of those things, we'll come to you and ask. Separately, in writing, and only with your explicit agreement.

Revoking your license. You can revoke the license at any time by removing Your Content from the Services (through the "delete" or "unpublish" controls in your author dashboard) or by asking us to remove it. Once you revoke, we will remove the content from public view within seven business days, subject only to the backup-retention exception described above. Some fragments of removed content may persist in reader-side caches or search-engine indexes for a period outside our control. We'll make reasonable efforts to expire those but cannot guarantee immediate removal from third-party systems.

What you promise us about your content

By posting Your Content, you represent and warrant that:

• You either wrote or created it yourself, or you have all necessary rights and permissions from the actual copyright holders to post it on the Services.
• Posting it on the Services doesn't infringe anyone else's copyright, trademark, publicity or privacy rights, moral rights, contract rights, or any other legal rights.
• Any cover art, images, or other assets attached to Your Content are yours to use, or you have permission from the actual creator to use them.
• If Your Content is a translation, an adaptation, or fan fiction of someone else's work, you've marked it as such using the platform's disclosure tools, and where the underlying work is still in copyright you have the original author's or rightsholder's permission.
• If Your Content includes real people, real cultural or religious material, or real communities, you've represented them in a manner consistent with our Community Guidelines and, where our guidelines require, obtained the appropriate permissions or verifications.
• Your Content complies with our Community Guidelines.

You are solely responsible for Your Content and for any consequences of posting it.

What we can do with Your Content

We're running a platform, so we need some operational rights beyond the plain license above. We may:

• Format, tag, or excerpt Your Content for display in different contexts across the Services (search results, recommendation rails, previews, notifications, RSS feeds).
• Include Your Content in promotional posts, social media, newsletters, and other communications about the Services or your work.
• Show Your Content alongside advertisements. At the time of writing GoldenPalm does not run advertising; if we begin running advertising, we'll update these Terms and give you notice.
• Remove or hide Your Content, temporarily or permanently, if we believe it violates these Terms, our Community Guidelines, or applicable law, or if we receive a valid takedown notice under our DMCA Policy.
• Add trust or safety context around Your Content (content warnings, AI disclosure badges, permission-verified badges, maturity ratings) based on information you provide and our own review.

Tipping, donations, and money

At the time of writing, GoldenPalm Novels does not directly process payments to authors, does not sell subscriptions, does not run advertising, and does not take a cut of any money authors earn. Authors may choose to link to third-party tipping or support platforms (such as Ko-fi or Buy Me a Coffee) from their profiles or story pages, in accordance with our Community Guidelines.

Any transactions on those third-party platforms are strictly between the author and the reader (and the third-party platform). GoldenPalm is not a party to those transactions, does not process the payment, and does not receive any portion of it. We're also not responsible for whether those transactions succeed, for tax reporting, for refunds, or for disputes between the author and the reader.

If we introduce first-party paid features in the future (subscriptions, premium chapters, revenue-share, or similar), we'll update these Terms and give you notice before those features go live. Your existing content and license will not be automatically enrolled in any paid feature without your explicit opt-in.

Community conduct

You agree to use the Services in a way that respects other users and the platform. Specifically, you agree not to:

• Post content that violates our Community Guidelines page at /guidelines.
• Harass, threaten, dox, or target abuse at other users, moderators, or the GoldenPalm team.
• Impersonate another person, GoldenPalm staff, or an organization you don't represent.
• Manipulate ratings, rankings, or metrics, including creating alternate accounts to boost your own work or attack others.
• Scrape, crawl, or extract content from the Services in a way that violates these Terms, our robots.txt directives, or applicable law.
• Reverse engineer, disassemble, or attempt to derive the source code of any part of the Services, except to the extent applicable law expressly permits.
• Use the Services to distribute malware, phishing content, or anything that could damage or interfere with other users' systems.
• Bypass or attempt to bypass any moderation action taken against your account (for example, by creating alternate accounts).

We may suspend or terminate accounts that violate this section, at our discretion.

Content moderation

We review reports from users, and we do some proactive moderation, but we don't pre-screen every piece of content on the Services. We may remove, hide, or flag content that appears to violate these Terms, our Community Guidelines, or applicable law. We may also take account-level action ranging from a warning to a temporary suspension to a permanent ban, depending on the severity and history.

When we take an enforcement action against a specific piece of content or an account, we try to notify the affected user with a brief reason, unless there's a legal or safety reason not to. If you believe we made a mistake, you can contact support@goldenpalmnovels.com. We don't guarantee we'll reverse a decision, but we read every appeal and respond.

Copyright and DMCA

We take copyright seriously. If you believe your copyrighted work has been posted on the Services without your permission, please follow the procedure in our DMCA Policy at /dmca. We will act promptly on properly formatted notices, including removing infringing content and, where appropriate, terminating repeat infringers' accounts.

If you believe your content was removed in error following a DMCA notice, you can submit a counter-notice as described in our DMCA Policy.

Third-party services and links

The Services may include links to third-party websites, integrations with third-party platforms (like Ko-fi or Buy Me a Coffee), and content posted by third parties. We're not responsible for those third parties, their content, their terms, or their privacy practices. Your interactions with third parties are between you and them.

Termination

You can leave anytime. You can stop using the Services and close your account at any time by using the account controls in your dashboard or by emailing support@goldenpalmnovels.com. Closing your account will remove Your Content from public view within seven business days, subject to the backup-retention exception described above.

We can end accounts too. We may suspend or terminate your account, remove Your Content, and refuse to provide the Services to you if we believe you have violated these Terms, our Community Guidelines, or applicable law, or if we're required to do so by law. We'll try to give you notice and, where the violation is minor or unintentional, a chance to remedy it, but we're not obligated to.

What survives termination. These parts of these Terms survive account termination: the license you granted us to retain backups; your representations and warranties about content you posted; our disclaimers and limitations of liability; any indemnification obligations you have; the section on governing law and dispute resolution; and any other section that by its nature should survive.

Disclaimers

The Services are provided "as is" and "as available." To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, GoldenPalm disclaims all warranties, express or implied, including any warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, and non-infringement. We don't warrant that the Services will be uninterrupted, error-free, secure, or free of viruses or other harmful components. We don't warrant the accuracy, completeness, or reliability of any content posted on the Services, including Your Content or content posted by other users.

Some jurisdictions don't allow disclaimers of implied warranties. If you live in such a jurisdiction, some of the above may not apply to you.

Limitation of liability

To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, GoldenPalm and its officers, employees, contractors, and agents will not be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive damages, or any loss of profits, revenue, data, or goodwill, arising out of or related to your use of the Services. This applies whether based on contract, tort, negligence, strict liability, or any other legal theory, and whether or not GoldenPalm has been advised of the possibility of those damages.

To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, GoldenPalm's total liability to you for any claim arising out of or related to these Terms or the Services is limited to the greater of (a) the total amount you've paid GoldenPalm in the twelve months before the claim, or (b) fifty US dollars (USD 50.00). Because the Services are currently free, this means GoldenPalm's liability is capped at USD 50 today.

Some jurisdictions don't allow the exclusion or limitation of certain damages. If you live in such a jurisdiction, some of the above may not apply to you.

Indemnification

You agree to defend, indemnify, and hold harmless GoldenPalm and its officers, employees, contractors, and agents from any claim, loss, liability, damage, or expense (including reasonable legal fees) arising out of (a) Your Content, (b) your use of the Services, (c) your violation of these Terms, or (d) your violation of any third party's rights, including intellectual property or privacy rights.

Governing law and dispute resolution

These Terms, and any dispute arising out of or related to them or the Services, are governed by the laws of the State of Washington, United States, without regard to conflict-of-laws principles. Any court proceedings must be brought exclusively in the state or federal courts located in Washington State, and you consent to the jurisdiction of those courts.

Before filing any court proceeding, you agree to first contact us at legal@goldenpalmnovels.com and try to resolve the dispute informally. We'll do the same. If we can't resolve it within sixty days, either of us can proceed to court.

Changes to these Terms

We may update these Terms from time to time. When we make a material change, we'll post the updated Terms at this URL, update the "Last updated" date at the top, and notify you through the Services (for example, by an in-app notice or an email to the address associated with your account) at least fourteen days before the change takes effect. If you don't agree with a change, you can stop using the Services and close your account before the change takes effect. Continued use of the Services after a change means you accept the updated Terms.

Contact

• General questions: support@goldenpalmnovels.com
• Author questions: support@goldenpalmnovels.com
• Legal or privacy: legal@goldenpalmnovels.com
• Copyright complaints: dmca@goldenpalmnovels.com. Please follow our DMCA Policy at /dmca.
• Appeals of moderation decisions: support@goldenpalmnovels.com