Legal
These terms describe how readers use BooksWhale, including accounts, annual membership, book claims, digital access, downloads, and contribution features.
Effective date: June 11, 2026
BooksWhale provides prepared digital editions of public-domain classics and related materials. Editions may include online reading, EPUB, PDF, public-domain notes, AI-assisted translation notes, and selected edition-specific features.
BooksWhale may update, improve, replace, remove, or correct editions, metadata, previews, files, and platform features over time.
You may create an account with email and password, and BooksWhale may also support Google sign-in. You are responsible for keeping your account secure.
Bookshelf is for saving books before claiming them. Library contains books you have claimed, received through rewards, purchased historically, or been granted access to.
BooksWhale annual membership is currently configured as $9.90 per year and may allow up to 365 book claims per membership year. The exact price and renewal terms are shown at Stripe Checkout before payment.
A claim adds a selected edition to your Library. Once a book is claimed, that claim is final and cannot be canceled, returned, exchanged, or used again for another book.
Annual membership renews automatically unless canceled before the next renewal date. Billing is handled by Stripe, and BooksWhale does not store full card numbers.
If you cancel renewal, your current paid membership remains active until the end of the paid period. Optional extra credits are one-time add-ons for active annual members and do not change the renewal date.
Eligible editions may include online reading, EPUB, PDF, or other files. You may use claimed editions for personal reading and study, but may not scrape, mass-download, resell, redistribute, or bypass access controls.
Public-domain source texts remain public domain. BooksWhale edition design, metadata selection, cover preparation, translations, formatting, generated files, software, trademarks, and editorial materials may be protected where applicable.
BooksWhale may allow users to submit public-domain manuscripts, corrections, translation suggestions, chapter translations, or other contributions. Additional contribution terms apply.
BooksWhale may suspend or terminate accounts that abuse the service, violate these terms, bypass access controls, submit infringing material, or create operational or legal risk. Terms may be updated as the service develops.
BooksWhale aims for quality but does not guarantee that every text, translation, file, or metadata field is error-free. To the maximum extent allowed by law, BooksWhale is not liable for indirect or consequential damages from use of the service.
For account, billing, public-domain, takedown, or contribution questions, contact BooksWhale through the Contact or Takedown pages.