Terms of Use
These terms set out what you may do on BetweenBooks, what happens to the words you write here, when an account can be suspended, and the limits of what a service run by one person can promise. They are written to be enforceable and to be read.
Last updated 20 September 2026. Version 1.0.
1. Who these terms are with
1.1 BetweenBooks (the Service) is operated by Betweenbooks, a Norwegian sole proprietorship (enkeltpersonforetak) in the name of Louis Røislie, Tordenskjolds gate 11, 2821 Gjøvik, Norway (the Operator, “we”, “us”). The organisation number is [org.nr to be inserted on registration].
1.2 These Terms of Use (the Terms) form a binding agreement between you and the Operator. By creating an account, or by using the Service, you accept them. If you do not accept them, do not create an account.
1.3 The Community Guidelines form part of these Terms. The Privacy Policy is not part of them, but describes what is done with your personal data and is referred to below.
1.4 Notices, questions, complaints and appeals under these Terms reach a person at privacy@betweenbooks.net.
2. Definitions
- Account. The username, credentials and records that identify you on the Service.
- Content. Anything you enter, upload or send through the Service. That is the books, shelves, tags, ratings, dates and progress you record, your reviews, thoughts and notes, the letters you write and your discussion comments. It is also your display name, profile picture, background image and any custom CSS.
- Public Content. Content that readers other than you can see. That is discussion comments, and the shelf fields you have chosen to share with a friend.
- Guidelines. The Community Guidelines published at /guidelines.
3. Who may use the Service
3.1 You must be 16 or over to hold an Account.
3.2 You must have the capacity to enter into this agreement under the law of the country you live in. If consent from a parent or guardian is required where you live, you confirm you have it.
3.3 You must not hold an Account if a previous Account of yours has been banned, unless we have agreed otherwise in writing.
3.4 The Service is not directed at children, and no part of it is designed for them. If we learn that an Account belongs to someone under 16 it will be removed. If you believe a child holds an Account here, write to privacy@betweenbooks.net.
4. Your Account
4.1 Registering requires a username, an email address you control, and a password.
4.2 A one-time code sent to that email address is required every time you sign in. Keeping the address reachable and up to date is your responsibility. If you lose access to it, you may lose access to your Account.
4.3 Passwords must meet the requirements shown at registration, which are at least eight characters, including a capital letter and a special character. They are also checked against published lists of passwords exposed in known breaches. A password found on those lists is refused. How that check is performed without sending your password anywhere is described in the Privacy Policy.
4.4 You are responsible for everything done through your Account. Keep your credentials to yourself, do not let anyone else use the Account, and write to privacy@betweenbooks.net as soon as you believe someone else has reached it.
4.5 Do not register on another person's behalf, and do not choose a username or display name that impersonates another person or suggests an official connection with the Operator.
5. The Service
5.1 BetweenBooks is a personal reading tracker with optional social features, which are friends and shared shelves, private letters between friends, and public comments on book pages.
5.2 The Service is provided free of charge to everyone at present. See clause 12.
5.3 Features may be added, changed, limited or withdrawn as the Service develops. Where a change would materially reduce what your Account can do, notice will be given under clause 15.
5.4 The Service is not guaranteed to be available, and no particular feature is guaranteed to remain. See clause 14.
6. Acceptable use
6.1 You must not use the Service to:
- (a) break the law, or encourage or help anyone else to
- (b) harass, threaten, stalk or abuse another reader, or post material that incites hatred or violence against a person or a group
- (c) post sexual material involving minors, or any material that sexualises a child, in any form and for any stated reason
- (d) post advertising, promotional material, chain messages or bulk unsolicited content
- (e) impersonate another person, or misrepresent your connection with anyone
- (f) post material that infringes copyright or another right, or link to unlicensed copies of books or other works
- (g) upload or transmit malicious code, or anything designed to damage or disrupt the Service or the devices of those who use it
- (h) access the Service by automated means, scrape it, or work around the rate limits, sign-in checks or other technical restrictions built into it
- (i) probe, scan or test the security of the Service beyond the responsible-disclosure invitation in the Privacy Policy, or attempt to reach any data that is not yours
- (j) misuse the fields meant for personalisation, which are custom CSS, profile pictures and background images, to display material that breaches these Terms, to obscure or imitate parts of the interface, or to attempt to defeat the checks applied to them
- (k) evade a block placed on you by another reader, or a suspension or ban placed on you by the Operator, including by creating a further Account
- (l) resell, rent out or commercially exploit the Service or access to it.
6.2 The Guidelines apply in addition to this clause and are part of these Terms.
6.3 A breach of this clause entitles the Operator to act under clause 10.
7. Your Content
7.1 Your Content remains yours. Nothing in these Terms transfers ownership of it.
7.2 You grant the Operator a non-exclusive, royalty-free licence to store, copy, transmit and display your Content, limited to what is necessary to operate the Service for you and to show your Content to the readers your own settings permit. The licence is not sublicensable, except to the infrastructure providers named in the Privacy Policy, who act on our instructions and for no purpose of their own.
7.3 Your Content is not used for advertising, is not sold, is not shared with anyone beyond what clause 7.2 allows, and is not used to train machine-learning models.
7.4 You confirm that your Content is yours to post, and that posting it does not infringe anyone's rights.
7.5 The licence ends when you delete the Content or your Account, subject to three honest limits:
- (a) a letter you have sent stays readable by the friend you sent it to until it, your Account or their Account is deleted. Unsending a letter erases its text and any book you attached. A record that a letter was there remains, so the conversation still reads truthfully
- (b) operational backups taken before a deletion are overwritten in the ordinary course rather than reached into, and age out within a month, as the Privacy Policy describes
- (c) copies that other readers have made outside the Service, such as a screenshot or a quotation elsewhere, are beyond our reach.
8. Sharing, letters and discussions
8.1 Friends and sharing are off until you switch them on, and what a friend may see is chosen field by field and shelf by shelf. A friendship requires both readers to agree.
8.2 Your reviews, your thoughts and your notes are never shown to another reader under any setting. There is no switch for them.
8.3 A letter is delivered to the one friend you address it to, and to no other reader.
8.4 Book discussion comments are public to every signed-in reader of that book's page, shown under your display name. Do not write anything there that you would not want an unknown reader to see. Switching Book discussions off hides your existing comments from other readers. It does not delete them. Delete a comment to delete it.
8.5 You may report a comment and you may block another reader. A block applies across friends, letters and discussions together. Reporting and blocking are described in the Guidelines.
9. Book information
9.1 Book metadata and cover images come from third-party sources named in the Privacy Policy. That information is not ours, may be incomplete or wrong, and is offered as found. You can correct any of it on your own shelf.
9.2 Cover images are fetched by your browser directly from those sources.
9.3 Nothing in the Service grants you any right in a book, its cover or its text.
10. Moderation, suspension and termination
10.1 The Operator may act where Content or conduct breaches these Terms or the Guidelines, is unlawful, or puts other readers or the Service at risk.
10.2 The measure taken will be proportionate to what happened. In order of severity it may be removing or hiding a comment, withdrawing access to the social features, suspending the Account for a stated period, or banning the Account.
10.3 When a measure is applied you will be told what was done and which rule it was applied under, unless the law prevents us from saying.
10.4 You may appeal once, by email to privacy@betweenbooks.net, within 30 days. The decision will be looked at again by a person and you will get a reply. That second decision is final so far as the Service is concerned. It does not affect any right you have to complain elsewhere or to go to court.
10.5 You may stop using the Service at any time and delete your Account from Settings. Deletion is immediate, complete and irreversible. Your books, shelves, tags, ratings, notes, settings, sessions, friendships, the letters on both sides of each conversation and your discussion comments are deleted at once, not deactivated and not held back for a grace period. Export first. Settings offers your whole library as JSON or CSV, at any time and at no charge.
10.6 A ban may be enforced by refusing further Accounts to the same person.
10.7 Clauses 7.5, 11, 13, 14, 16 and 17 survive the end of this agreement.
11. Our rights in the Service
11.1 The Service and its software, design, interface, text and name belong to the Operator or to its licensors. Your Content is not covered by this clause.
11.2 Using the Service does not give you a licence to copy, adapt, decompile, re-serve or build a competing service from it, beyond the rights that cannot be excluded by law.
11.3 Do not use the BetweenBooks name or mark without written permission.
12. Payment
12.1 No payment is accepted at present. Every Account has the full use of the Service, with no feature held back. No card details are asked for and none are stored.
12.2 Nothing will ever be charged to you without a purchase you have explicitly made.
12.3 If paid plans are introduced, separate payment terms covering price, renewal, cancellation and your right of withdrawal will be published, and notice will be given under clause 15 before they apply to you. Free use of the Service will not be converted into a paid subscription.
13. Your responsibility to us
13.1 If a third party brings a claim against the Operator because of your Content or because you used the Service in breach of these Terms, you will cover the reasonable losses and costs that result. This does not apply where the claim results from our own act or omission, and it does not limit your rights as a consumer.
14. Availability, disclaimers and liability
14.1 The Service is provided as it is and as it happens to be available. It is not warranted to be uninterrupted, error-free or fit for any particular purpose beyond what Norwegian law requires.
14.2 The Service is not a backup service. Backups are taken for our own recovery, not as a service to you, and are not something you can ask to be restored from. Export your library regularly. That export is your backup, and it is free.
14.3 So far as Norwegian law permits, the Operator is not liable for indirect or consequential loss, for loss of data, or for lost profit or opportunity.
14.4 Nothing in these Terms excludes or limits liability for intent or gross negligence, for personal injury, or for anything else that cannot lawfully be excluded.
14.5 Where liability cannot be excluded, it is limited to the amount you have paid for the Service in the twelve months before the event giving rise to it, which, while clause 12.1 holds, is nothing.
14.6 If you are a consumer, the mandatory rights you have under the law of your country of residence apply regardless of this clause.
15. Changes to these Terms
15.1 These Terms may change as the Service changes or as the law requires. The version and the date at the top of this page say which text is current.
15.2 A material change will be notified at least 30 days before it takes effect, by email to the address on your Account or by a notice in the app.
15.3 Using the Service after a change takes effect means you accept it. If you do not, delete your Account before that date, and export your library first.
15.4 Corrections that do not change your rights or obligations, such as a typo, a broken link or a clarification, may take effect when published.
16. Law and disputes
16.1 These Terms are governed by Norwegian law.
16.2 Disputes are to be brought before the Norwegian courts, with Gjøvik tingrett as the agreed venue.
16.3 If you are a consumer resident in the EEA, you keep the mandatory protections of the law of the country you live in, and you may bring proceedings in the courts there.
16.4 Please write to privacy@betweenbooks.net first. Most complaints are quicker to settle that way. A consumer in Norway may also take a complaint to Forbrukerrådet.
17. General
17.1 These Terms and the Guidelines are the whole agreement between you and the Operator about the Service, and replace anything said before.
17.2 If any part of these Terms is found unenforceable, the rest continues to apply.
17.3 Not enforcing a term at once does not waive the right to enforce it later.
17.4 Your Account is personal and cannot be transferred. If the Service changes hands, the Operator may transfer this agreement on notice, and you may delete your Account before the transfer takes effect.
17.5 These Terms are written in English. Any translation is for convenience, and the English text governs.
Written to be read, not to be waved at a regulator. If any part of it is unclear, that is a fault worth reporting to privacy@betweenbooks.net.