Terms

Chapternal is run by Lucid Systems LLC. Using it means you accept these terms. They are written to be read.

Who these terms are for

Three words for three ways of using Chapternal. One person can be all three.

An author brings work they wrote. A reader listens. A composer uses Chapternal to tell a story out of text, recordings, sound or other media that they did not necessarily write themselves — a public-domain novel, a script someone licensed to them, a piece a collaborator sent. The composer is the one who assembles it.

A composer makes the same promise an author does, about everything they bring: that they have the legal right to use it for this. We cannot check that for you and we do not try to.

Your work is yours

You keep every right in what you bring and what you make here — your manuscript, your cast, your recordings, your finished files. We claim no ownership of any of it.

You give us permission to store your work, process it to provide the service you asked for, and — only for a title you publish — serve it to readers. That permission exists so the service can function. It ends when you delete the work, except for copies in backups that age out.

What you promise about what you upload

That you have the right to use it. That includes the text, any images, any sound or other media you assemble, and any voice you record or clone — whether you wrote it or not. If it came from somewhere else, you are telling us you are allowed to use it here. A voice belongs to the person it came from. Do not clone a voice you were not given permission to clone. If you upload something you do not have the right to, that is on you, and we will remove it if the rightsholder tells us.

What we will not host

Work that infringes someone else's rights. Material that sexualises children. Content made to harass a real person, or a cloned voice used to impersonate someone. We may remove such work and close the account behind it.

The house library

Titles we publish ourselves are free to hear. They are public-domain texts, read by voices we have the right to use. You may listen. You may not redistribute our recordings as your own.

Money

The Desk seat is $29 per month and includes the desk and one live title; each plate is a title. Extra live titles are $15 per month each, and only alongside a live seat. The Premium seat is $99 per month and includes two extra titles (three in all), lets you remove the Chapternal branding, and comes with bigger file limits. There is no free plan. Each title includes 90 minutes of speech; a title is one plate, a book or an episode. More time on that same plate is $25 for 30 minutes. It is not sold here — write to support@chapternal.com and name the book. Another title is the cheaper way to keep going. Payments are taken by Stripe, monthly. A character forum is $9 per month. A stills pack is $49; you may bring your own stills instead at no charge. House Speak, if you use it, is charged by use and queued. Cleaning a voice sample before a clone is cut, and checking that a take said the words on the page, are options on that same use. They are not a separate charge. An automated check can be wrong. You still decide whether the take stands.

Readers pay nothing for house titles. For a title an author publishes, the reader pays the author's price plus one dollar, which is ours. The rest is the author's.

Subscriptions renew until you cancel. You can cancel any time and keep access to the end of the period you paid for. Prices can change; we will tell you before a change affects a renewal. See Support for refunds.

Your files, if you stop paying

You can export your work at any time while your subscription is active, and we encourage you to keep your own copies. If a subscription lapses, your books stop being served to readers and the desk becomes read-only, but your work is not deleted. Write to us and we will get you your files.

Your own computers

You may connect your own computer to generate voices. It is yours to run and yours to secure. Do not connect a computer you are not entitled to use, and do not use the connection to reach anything on Chapternal other than your own account.

What we do not promise

Chapternal is provided as it is. We do not promise it will be available without interruption, that a generated voice will sound the way you hoped, or that an automated check of a recording will be right. Keep your own copies of anything you cannot afford to lose.

To the extent the law allows, Lucid Systems LLC is not liable for indirect or consequential loss, and our total liability for any claim is limited to what you paid us in the twelve months before it arose.

Nobody here works for us

Authors, readers and composers are not our employees. Using Chapternal does not make anyone staff, a worker, an agent or a partner of Lucid Systems LLC. We do not set your hours, direct your work, or withhold or pay employment taxes on anything you earn, and nothing here creates a joint venture or a franchise.

You are using a tool. What you make with it is yours, and so is responsibility for how you made it.

Ending it

You can close your account whenever you like. We may suspend or close an account that breaks these terms, and will say why unless the law stops us.

Law

These terms are governed by the law of the State of Texas, and disputes belong to the courts there.

Changes

We will post changes here and change the date. If a change is material, we will tell account holders before it takes effect.

Contact

support@chapternal.com

Lucid Systems LLC
A Texas limited liability company
5473 Blair Rd Ste 100 PMB 964735
Dallas, TX 75231-4227