Spines & Stars Terms of Service
Effective Date: September 13, 2026
Welcome to Spines & Stars. These Terms of Service (“Terms”) govern your access to and use of the Spines & Stars website, community features, member profiles, forums, private messaging, and other services made available through Spines & Stars.
By creating an account, accessing member-only features, or otherwise using Spines & Stars, you agree to these Terms, the Spines & Stars Community Rules, and the Spines & Stars Privacy Notice.
If you do not agree to these Terms, you may not create an account or use Spines & Stars’ member-only community features.
1. Age Requirement
Spines & Stars is intended exclusively for individuals who are 18 years of age or older.
You may not create or maintain a Spines & Stars account if you are under 18. When registering, you must provide an accurate date of birth and represent that you meet Spines & Stars’ minimum age requirement.
Providing a date of birth does not mean that Spines & Stars has independently verified your identity or age.
Spines & Stars may restrict, suspend, or terminate an account if there is reasonable reason to believe the account belongs to someone under 18 or that false information was provided to circumvent the age requirement.
2. Account Registration and Email Verification
Certain Spines & Stars features require an account.
When registering, you agree to provide accurate information, including a valid email address, date of birth, and display name.
You must complete Spines & Stars’ email-verification process before gaining access to certain profile and community features.
You are responsible for maintaining the confidentiality and security of your password and account credentials.
You are responsible for activity conducted through your account except where applicable law provides otherwise.
If you believe your account has been accessed without authorization, you should notify Spines & Stars promptly.
Accounts may not be sold, rented, transferred, shared, or used on behalf of another person.
3. Display Names, Identity, and Impersonation
Spines & Stars requires unique display names and may reserve or restrict certain names.
You may not impersonate another member, Spines & Stars staff member, moderator, the Spines & Stars Owner, an author, public figure, business, organization, or another person or entity.
You may not use a display name, profile image, biography, or other account information in a manner intended to mislead others about your identity, affiliation, authority, or relationship with another person or organization.
Spines & Stars may reject, modify, or require the modification of display names that are deceptive, impersonating, confusing, abusive, or reserved for official Spines & Stars use.
4. Community Rules
All member interactions on Spines & Stars are subject to the **Spines & Stars Community Rules**.
The Community Rules apply wherever members interact through Spines & Stars, including forums, profiles, private messages, friendships, member-to-member interactions, and other community features.
Members may be required to affirmatively accept the current version of the Community Rules before accessing community features.
Violations may result in warnings, content restrictions or removal, loss of features, temporary suspension, permanent account termination, or other reasonable moderation measures.
5. Member Profiles and Shelves
Members may be able to create profiles containing information such as profile images, cover images, backgrounds, biographies, favorite genres, favorite books or series, currently-reading information, reading progress, and book shelves.
You are responsible for information you choose to make available through your profile.
Only upload or publish content that you have the legal right or permission to use.
Spines & Stars may remove profile material that violates these Terms, the Community Rules, applicable law, intellectual-property rights, or Spines & Stars’ safety requirements.
6. Member Content
You retain any ownership rights you have in original content that you submit to Spines & Stars. By submitting content, you grant Spines & Stars a limited, non-exclusive license to host, store, reproduce, display, process, and otherwise use that content as reasonably necessary to operate, secure, maintain, improve, and moderate Spines & Stars and provide its features.
This permission does not transfer ownership of your original content to Spines & Stars.
You are responsible for ensuring that you have the rights necessary to submit any text, photographs, artwork, profile images, backgrounds, links, or other material you provide.
Certain information or records may remain after content or an account is deleted when reasonably necessary for security, fraud prevention, moderation records, legal compliance, backups, or maintaining the integrity of existing community discussions, subject to applicable law and the Spines & Stars Privacy Notice.
7. Prohibited Conduct
You may not use Spines & Stars to:
- Harass, threaten, stalk, intimidate, or personally attack another person.
- Post bigoted, discriminatory, hateful, or race-baiting material prohibited by the Community Rules.
- Impersonate another person or falsely represent your identity or authority.
- Publish another person’s private or identifying information without authorization.
- Distribute malware, malicious code, scams, spam, phishing material, or deceptive links.
- Attempt unauthorized access to another account, Spines & Stars systems, or restricted areas. – Circumvent bans, suspensions, blocks, account restrictions, security controls, age restrictions, or moderation measures.
- Create alternate accounts for the purpose of evading enforcement.
- Scrape, harvest, collect, or systematically extract member information without authorization.
- Use automated systems, bots, crawlers, or similar technologies to access or collect Spines & Stars content where prohibited or without authorization.
- Use Spines & Stars or member information to build unauthorized datasets, mailing lists, marketing databases, or similar collections.
- Sell, rent, transfer, or commercially exploit Spines & Stars accounts or member information.
- Submit fabricated evidence, intentionally altered evidence, malicious reports, or coordinated false reports.
- Infringe copyrights, trademarks, privacy rights, publicity rights, or other legal rights.
- Disrupt Spines & Stars or interfere with another person’s ability to use the service.
- Engage in unlawful, fraudulent, deceptive, or deliberately harmful activity.
8. Self-Promotion and Commercial Activity
Spines & Stars is primarily a reader community and is not intended to function as a general advertising platform.
Members may not use profiles, forums, messages, or other community features for unauthorized advertising, affiliate marketing, referral programs, solicitation, spam, or commercial self-promotion.
Spines & Stars may designate specific exceptions or areas where particular links are permitted.
For example, Spines & Stars may allow members to include an author’s official website or author page in designated profile fields associated with a Currently Reading or Favorite Book/Series entry.
Such exceptions do not authorize unrelated advertising, affiliate links, storefront links, referral links, or other promotional activity.
9. Private Messages
Spines & Stars may provide private or direct messaging between members.
Private messages remain subject to these Terms and the Community Rules.
Members should not assume that an on-site private message is inaccessible to Spines & Stars under all circumstances.
Messages may be processed and stored as necessary to operate the service and may be reviewed when appropriately reported, reasonably necessary for safety or moderation, or required by law, subject to Spines & Stars’ Privacy Notice and applicable law.
Spines & Stars does not guarantee that another member will keep information you voluntarily send to them confidential.
Use caution before sharing personal, financial, identifying, intimate, or other sensitive information with another member.
10. Blocking and Member Safety Tools
Spines & Stars may provide tools that allow members to block or otherwise limit interactions with other members.
Blocking is intended to reduce unwanted interactions through Spines & Stars but **is not a guarantee of personal safety**.
A block cannot prevent another person from contacting you outside Spines & Stars, viewing information available through other sources, or engaging in conduct outside Spines & Stars’ control. Certain Spines & Stars staff or active moderators may be exempt from member blocking where necessary to maintain moderation, safety, or administrative communication.
Attempting to circumvent another member’s block through alternate accounts or other methods may result in moderation action.
11. Member Relationships and Off-Platform Interactions
Spines & Stars provides tools through which members may discover and communicate with other readers.
Spines & Stars does not guarantee the identity, background, intentions, honesty, safety, or conduct of any member. Spines & Stars does not conduct background checks on members unless Spines & Stars expressly states otherwise.
Members are responsible for exercising their own judgment when interacting with others.
If members voluntarily move communications or relationships away from Spines & Stars to another website, application, telephone service, email, text messaging, social media platform, or in-person interaction, Spines & Stars generally cannot monitor or control what occurs through those external interactions.
Members should use appropriate caution before sharing personal information or arranging an in-person meeting with someone they met through Spines & Stars.
12. Member Disputes
Spines & Stars may take action when conduct violates these Terms or the Community Rules, but Spines & Stars is not obligated to mediate every disagreement or personal dispute between members.
Submitting a complaint does not guarantee that Spines & Stars will determine that another member violated a rule or that a particular enforcement action will be taken.
Spines & Stars may determine that some disagreements are personal disputes that do not require moderation action.
13. Reporting and Moderation
Members may be provided tools to report content or conduct that they reasonably believe violates Spines & Stars policies.
Reports should be made in good faith and should include genuine information or evidence when available. Knowingly submitting fabricated evidence, deceptively altered screenshots, malicious reports, coordinated false reports, or repeatedly abusing reporting systems may itself result in moderation action.
Spines & Stars reserves the right to investigate reports and take reasonable action, including removing or restricting content, issuing warnings, limiting features, muting accounts, temporarily suspending accounts, or permanently terminating accounts.
Spines & Stars does not guarantee that every violation will be detected, that every report will be investigated immediately, or that every report will result in enforcement.
14. Emergencies and Immediate Danger
Spines & Stars is **not an emergency service**. Spines & Stars moderators, administrators, reporting tools, and private messaging systems are not substitutes for emergency services or law enforcement.
If you believe you or another person is in immediate danger, contact the appropriate emergency services or authorities for your location.
15. Reviews, Ratings, Recommendations, and Opinions
Book reviews, ratings, recommendations, commentary, forum discussions, and other opinions expressed through Spines & Stars may reflect the personal opinions of individual contributors.
Spines & Stars does not guarantee that another reader will have the same experience with a book, author, product, website, or service.
Members and visitors are responsible for deciding whether particular content, books, products, or services are appropriate for them.
16. Content Warnings
Spines & Stars may provide content warnings or allow members to discuss potentially sensitive book content.
Content warnings are provided as a convenience and are not guaranteed to identify every subject, theme, trigger, or potentially upsetting element contained in a work.
Readers who require comprehensive or highly specific content information should consult additional sources.
17. External Links and Third-Party Services
Spines & Stars may contain links to or integrations with third-party websites and services, including author websites, publishers, retailers, social networks, media providers, GIF services, and other platforms.
Third-party services operate under their own terms, privacy practices, security measures, and policies.
Spines & Stars does not control and is not responsible for third-party content, availability, privacy practices, security, products, services, or conduct.
Use of external websites or services is at your discretion and may be subject to additional terms.
18. Affiliate Links, Advertising, and Sponsored Content
Spines & Stars may in the future use advertising, affiliate links, gifted products, partnerships, or sponsored content.
When disclosure is required, Spines & Stars will identify relevant commercial relationships in accordance with applicable requirements. Compensation, gifts, or free products do not guarantee positive reviews.
19. Copyright and Intellectual Property
Unless otherwise stated, Spines & Stars’ original branding, logos, graphics, site design, written materials, and other original content are owned by or licensed to Spines & Stars and may not be copied, sold, republished, misrepresented, or commercially exploited without authorization, except as permitted by law. Book titles, book-cover artwork, author names, publisher materials, trademarks, and other third-party works remain the property of their respective rights holders.
Their appearance on Spines & Stars does not imply ownership, sponsorship, affiliation, or endorsement unless expressly stated.
If you believe material available through Spines & Stars infringes your intellectual-property rights, you may contact Spines & Stars with sufficient information to identify the material and explain the basis of your concern.
Spines & Stars may establish additional copyright or takedown procedures as required.
20. Security and Unauthorized Access
Spines & Stars may implement reasonable technical and administrative measures intended to protect the service and its users, but no online service can guarantee absolute security.
You may not probe, scan, attack, disrupt, bypass, reverse engineer where prohibited by law, or attempt to gain unauthorized access to Spines & Stars systems, accounts, security measures, or restricted functionality.
Members should use strong passwords and take reasonable steps to protect their accounts.
21. Website and Feature Availability
Spines & Stars may add, modify, restrict, suspend, or discontinue features or portions of the service.
Spines & Stars does not guarantee that any particular feature, integration, message, profile element, uploaded file, discussion, or other content will remain available indefinitely.
Spines & Stars should not be used as the sole permanent storage location for information or content that you cannot afford to lose.
The service may occasionally experience maintenance, outages, technical errors, data loss, security incidents, or circumstances outside Spines & Stars’ reasonable control.
22. Account Suspension and Termination
Spines & Stars may restrict, suspend, or terminate accounts when reasonably necessary to enforce these Terms, the Community Rules, protect members or the service, comply with legal requirements, address security concerns, or respond to abuse.
Serious conduct may result in immediate action without a prior warning where appropriate.
Creating additional accounts to evade a suspension, ban, block, or other restriction is prohibited.
Account termination does not necessarily require Spines & Stars to delete every record associated with an account immediately. Certain information may be retained when reasonably necessary and legally permitted, as further described in the Privacy Notice.
23. Disclaimer of Warranties
Spines & Stars is provided on an **“as is” and “as available”** basis to the extent permitted by applicable law.
Spines & Stars does not guarantee uninterrupted availability, error-free operation, complete security, accuracy of member-provided information, compatibility with every device, or that every harmful or policy-violating action will be prevented or detected.
Nothing in these Terms excludes warranties or rights that cannot legally be excluded.
24. Limitation of Liability
To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, Spines & Stars and its operators will not be liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or similar damages arising from or related to use of the service, member-generated content, interactions between members, third-party services, unauthorized access, service interruptions, or loss of content.
Nothing in these Terms limits or excludes liability where doing so would be prohibited by applicable law.
25. Indemnification
To the extent permitted by applicable law, you agree to be responsible for claims, losses, liabilities, and reasonable expenses arising from your unlawful conduct, content you submit without the necessary rights, infringement of another person’s rights, or material violation of these Terms.
26. Changes to These Terms
Spines & Stars may update these Terms as the service, community, features, legal requirements, or policies change.
The current version and effective date will be made available through Spines & Stars. When material changes are made, Spines & Stars may require members to review and **affirmatively accept the updated Terms** before continuing to access certain community features.
Continued access may be restricted until any required acceptance is completed.
27. Relationship to Other Spines & Stars Policies
These Terms should be read together with the **Spines & Stars Community Rules** and **Spines & Stars Privacy Notice**.
The Community Rules primarily govern member behavior and acceptable conduct.
The Privacy Notice explains how Spines & Stars collects, uses, stores, and otherwise handles personal information. Additional policies or notices may apply to specific Spines & Stars features.
28. Contact
Questions, legal notices, copyright concerns, or other matters relating to these Terms may be submitted through Spines & Stars’ designated Contact page or other official contact method.