These terms govern your use of the Curated Word website (curatedword.com), the storefront, the manuscript-submissions service, and any account you may hold with us. By using the site you agree to these terms; if you don't agree, please don't use it.
1. Who we are
Curated Word is an indie publisher operating curatedword.com. You can reach us at hello@curatedword.com. Our handling of personal data is described in our Privacy Policy and Cookie Policy, which form part of these terms.
2. Using the site
You may browse our catalogue, read the news, subscribe to the newsletter, submit a manuscript, and (where applicable) buy ebooks and audiobooks. You agree not to interfere with the site's operation, attempt to access areas you aren't entitled to, scrape the catalogue in bulk, or use the site to do anything unlawful.
3. Buying a book
Listed prices are in the currency shown at checkout and include any applicable taxes unless stated otherwise. Payment is taken by Stripe at the moment you complete checkout; we never see or store your card details.
When your payment succeeds, you receive a non-exclusive, non-transferable licence to read or listen to the book you bought, for personal, non-commercial use. You may keep your own backup copies. You may not resell, redistribute, sublicence, or publicly perform the book, or strip rights-management or watermarking from any file we deliver.
Books are for personal use only. If you want to share a book with a friend, please buy them their own copy. You can gift a book to someone else at checkout, or just send them the link to buy it themselves. Sharing files or accounts is not allowed. You are free to sell or give away your physical copy, but digital copies are licensed, not sold, and may not be transferred. Ebooks are delivered DRM-free as signed download links. Audiobooks are delivered via our in-browser streaming player and, in addition, as a protected download — the download link is short-lived, count-limited, and tied to the buyer who purchased it. Podcasts are delivered via our in-browser streaming player and, in addition, as a protected download — the download link is short-lived, count-limited, and tied to the buyer who purchased it.
4. Refunds
Digital goods are generally non-refundable once a download or stream has been accessed, because we can't recall the copy you already have. If a file is defective, the wrong book was delivered, or you have a consumer-law right to a refund in your jurisdiction (for example, the UK/EU 14-day cooling-off period for digital content that you have not yet downloaded or streamed), please write to hello@curatedword.com and we will sort it out.
5. Newsletter
We send the newsletter only after you confirm a double opt-in email. Every issue carries a one-click unsubscribe; you can also email us to be removed. We do not sell or share the subscriber list.
6. Manuscript submissions
Submitting a manuscript through /submissions is free and requires no account. You retain the copyright in your work. By submitting you grant Curated Word a limited, internal-use licence to read, store, and evaluate the manuscript for editorial purposes, including generating an internal AI-assisted summary to help our editors triage submissions. Your manuscript is not used to train third-party AI models, is not made public, and is not shared outside Curated Word.
Submissions are governed by the moral clauses summarised on the submissions form and re-stated in §7 below. You must accept the moral clauses to submit. We aim to respond within a reasonable time but cannot guarantee a response window, and we decline far more than we accept. A decline is not a judgment of the work.
7. Moral clauses (submissions & publishing)
These standards apply to everything submitted to Curated Word and everything published through us. They are intentionally short and plain.
7.1 Rights & originality. By submitting or publishing a work, you represent that:
- The work is your own original creation, or you hold all rights necessary to submit and (if accepted) publish it.
- The work does not infringe any copyright, trademark, patent, trade secret, or other intellectual-property right.
- The work is your own original human authorship. AI tools may be used to assist with editing or feedback, but the work may not be created primarily by an artificial-intelligence tool. Submitting a substantially AI-generated work as your own original authorship is a breach of these clauses.
- Any third-party material (quotations, lyrics, images) is used with permission, properly licensed, or a lawful fair use, and is attributed.
- You have not granted rights in the work to a third party (e.g., a publisher or distributor) that would conflict with our ability to publish it.
7.2 Acceptable-content standards. Curated Word publishes challenging and mature fiction. The following will be rejected in moderation and may not be submitted or published:
- Anything unlawful in the relevant jurisdiction.
- Child sexual abuse material, or any sexualised depiction of minors — including fictional depictions. Zero tolerance.
- Content that incites or instructs real-world violence, terrorism, or serious criminal harm.
- Hate content that dehumanises or promotes violence or discrimination against people on the basis of a protected characteristic. Depicting prejudice within a narrative is permitted; endorsing it as the work's purpose is not.
- Non-consensual disclosure of private information (doxxing) about real, identifiable people.
- Defamatory material presented as fact about real, identifiable people.
- Plagiarised work, impersonation of another author, or metadata/marketing that materially misrepresents the work.
- Malware or harmful files embedded in any uploaded document.
Works containing fictional depictions or academic discussions of violence, sexual content, profanity, drug use, or morally complex characters are welcome. The standard is about real-world harm, unlawfulness, and deception — not subject matter, darkness, or discomfort.
7.3 Maturity labelling. Works containing explicit sexual content, graphic violence, or other adult themes must be accurately labelled so the storefront can age-gate and categorise them. Mislabelling to evade age-gating is a breach.
7.4 Self-Publishing. You can use the Curated Word website to self-publish works in your own name and at your own expense, without going through our editorial process, and without entering into a publication agreement with us. Self-publishing is the default way to publish on Curated Word and does not require a subscription. This includes the ability to engage the services of editors and other professionals through our website, to access print-on-demand services, and to sell ebooks, audiobooks, and podcasts directly to readers through our storefront. Self-published works must still comply with these terms of service including the moral clauses in §7.1 and §7.2. When you self-publish, you are the publisher of record: your work is not reviewed, curated, or marketed by us, it does not carry the Curated Word imprint, and it is clearly marked as self-published on the site — shown as an independent title where it appears on covers and shelves, and named as self-published, with you as the publisher, on the book’s own page. Your own name (or your own imprint, if you have one) is what we record as the publisher wherever that is declared — on the book itself and in the metadata we send to retailers, distributors, and libraries. You use your own ISBN (or none); our ISBN pool is reserved for works we publish. We charge a commission on each sale of a self-published work, and additional charges apply for your use of AI and certain other tools; these are explained in the self-publishing FAQ.
7.4a We do not screen self-published works before they go on sale. We do not read, review, vet, edit, or approve a self-published work before it is published, and we do not offer editorial review of self-published works. Publication happens when you complete the publishing steps yourself. You are solely responsible for the work you publish — including that it is your own, that you hold or have cleared every right needed to publish and sell it, and that it complies with §7.1, §7.2 and §7.3. That a work appears on our storefront is not an endorsement of it, a statement about its quality, or a representation that we have checked it. No Curated Word mark, badge, or imprint is applied to a self-published work.
7.4b We may take down a work that breaches these terms. We do not monitor self-published works, but we act on what we become aware of. Where a work breaches §7.1, §7.2 or §7.3, or where we receive a valid infringement notice or another credible report, we reserve the right to suspend the work — taking it off sale, and pausing access for everyone including prior buyers — or to remove it, and in serious or repeated cases to suspend or terminate the account. How we handle infringement notices, including your right to file a counter-notice, is set out in §10. Neither acting nor declining to act on a report is a review of the work, and it creates no obligation on us to check any other work.
7.5 Publication by Curated Word. If we agree to publish your work under the Curated Word imprint, we will enter into a separate publication agreement with you that outlines the terms of the relationship. We will work with you to edit, design, market and distribute the book at our expense, and we will pay you royalties based on sales. The moral clauses in §7.1 and §7.2 still apply, and a breach of those clauses may lead to termination of our publication agreement.
7.6 Indemnity. You agree to indemnify Curated Word against claims, losses, and costs arising from a breach of §7.1 or §7.2 in a work you submitted or published.
8. Hiring editors and other professionals
Through our website you can engage editors, proofreaders, cover designers, and other professionals ("specialists") to work on your book. When you agree an engagement, its terms — including whether the specialist is paid a fixed fee, an hourly rate, or a share of royalties — are recorded on the engagement and become part of your agreement with that specialist. Curated Word facilitates the engagement and the payments; the professional work itself is provided by the specialist.
8.1 Fixed-fee and royalty-share engagements. For a fixed-fee engagement, the agreed fee is charged when the work is marked complete. For a royalty-share engagement, the specialist's share is accrued against your sales and settled on our normal payout schedule. In both cases the commission Curated Word retains is fixed at the rate shown when you agree the engagement.
8.2 Hourly engagements — how time is billed. For an hourly engagement, the specialist logs time against your engagement and you are charged the agreed hourly rate multiplied by the hours logged. The following terms apply to every hourly engagement:
- You approve each entry. The specialist logs time; each logged entry is charged to your payment method on file only when you approve it (or when it is deemed approved — see below). You see the hours, any note, and the resulting charge before you approve.
- Weekly cap. Every hourly engagement carries an agreed maximum number of hours per week. A specialist cannot log time beyond that cap, so your maximum exposure is knowable in advance.
- Deemed approval. An entry you neither approve nor reject within the approval window is automatically approved and charged. The window is set by us and shown to you when you agree the engagement (currently 7 days). We remind you by email before an entry is deemed approved. This protects the specialist from an indefinite wait for payment.
- Dispute window. After an entry is charged, you may dispute it within the dispute window shown when you agree the engagement (currently 14 days), including entries that were deemed approved. A dispute does not reverse the charge automatically; it is reviewed and resolved by Curated Word, which may uphold the dispute (refunding you and recovering the amount from the specialist) or reject it (the charge stands).
- No escrow. We do not hold hourly funds in escrow. Approved charges settle to the specialist promptly and are reversed only if a dispute is upheld.
- Chargebacks are a last resort. Please use the dispute process above before raising a card chargeback. A chargeback can harm the specialist's standing with our payments provider, which the on-platform dispute process is designed to avoid.
8.3 The work is the specialist's. Specialists are independent professionals, not employees or agents of Curated Word. We are not responsible for the quality, timeliness, or outcome of a specialist's work, though the dispute process above is available where an hourly charge is contested. Any wider dispute about the work itself is between you and the specialist.
9. Accounts
You don't need an account to buy a book or submit a manuscript through our site. If you do create an account, you're responsible for keeping your sign-in credentials secure and for activity on your account. We use magic-link sign-in and offer passkeys and TOTP as stronger options; we never ask for a password by email or phone. Tell us promptly if you think your account has been compromised.
10. Intellectual property
The Curated Word name, logo, site design, and the editorial copy on the site are ours (or used under licence). Book covers and book content are the property of their respective rights-holders, displayed here under the licences they have granted us. Nothing on the site grants you a licence to reuse those marks or materials beyond what these terms or applicable law permit.
If you believe content on the site infringes your rights, use our Report infringement form to send us a notice identifying the work and your rights claim. (You can also write to hello@curatedword.com, but the form captures what we need to act quickly.)
How we handle notices. We review every notice. If we find a notice valid, we temporarily suspend the work — it is taken off sale and access is paused for everyone, including prior buyers, while we review the matter; buyers' purchases are preserved. We do not delete a work automatically; permanent removal is a separate decision we make deliberately. We notify the person who published the work, who may file a counter-notice through their account. If a counter-notice or our review resolves the matter in their favour, we reinstate the work. Where we uphold repeated valid notices against the same account, we may suspend or terminate that account.
11. Availability
We aim for the site to be available, but we don't promise uninterrupted service. We may change, suspend, or discontinue features from time to time. Where a change materially affects something you've already bought (for example, your library access), we'll act in good faith to preserve what you paid for.
12. Disclaimers & liability
The site and the books are provided "as is". To the extent permitted by law, we exclude implied warranties and we are not liable for indirect or consequential loss. Nothing in these terms limits or excludes liability that cannot be limited or excluded by law — for example, for fraud, for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, or for your statutory consumer rights.
13. Changes to these terms
We may update these terms from time to time. The "last updated" date at the top of this page reflects the most recent change. Material changes will be flagged on the site or by email to account holders. Continued use of the site after a change means you accept the updated terms.
14. Governing law
These terms are governed by the laws of the State of Victoria in Australia. Nothing in this section affects your non-waivable rights as a consumer in your country of residence.
15. Contact
Questions about these terms? Email hello@curatedword.com. For data-protection requests, use the data-request form.