Terms of use

1. About these terms

These terms govern your use of Hamsterra at hamsterra.com, a platform where authors offer advance review copies (“ARCs”) of their books and readers apply to receive them. Hamsterra is operated by Cat and box LLP, a limited liability partnership registered in England and Wales, number OC458074, registered office 71-75 Shelton Street, Covent Garden, London, WC2H 9JQ, United Kingdom (“we”, “us”).

You accept these terms when you create an account, apply to a campaign or accept an invitation. Requesting an author's free book also means accepting these terms and the acceptable use rules: you tick a box saying so on the request form. The acceptable use and content rules are part of these terms. Our Privacy policy explains how we handle personal data. Hamsterra is free for readers and has a Free plan for authors with no time limit; paid author plans are covered by our Paid plans terms. Each campaign also has its own terms set by its author, which you accept when you apply; if they conflict with these terms, these terms apply between you and us.

2. The service

Authors use Hamsterra to publish an author profile and books, run review campaigns, invite readers, approve applications, deliver personalised EPUB and PDF copies and collect review links and feedback, and can give away a free book through a free book page (a “reader magnet”). Several authors can also offer their free books together on one shared page (a “group giveaway”). Readers use it to find campaigns, apply, download their copies and report their reviews, and to request authors' free books.

Readers do not pay. Authors can use Free with no time limit or buy a paid plan that raises their limits. Paid plans are covered by our Paid plans terms, which you accept at checkout, and we do not charge you without your agreement. We may set limits on use, for example the number of contacts or emails, and some features, such as sending invitations, may need our approval first.

We may change, add or remove features. If a change significantly affects you, we will tell you in advance where we reasonably can. Changes to paid plans are subject to the Paid plans terms, including what a paid period gives you and your refund rights.

3. Who can use Hamsterra

You must be at least 18 years old and able to enter into a binding agreement. If you use Hamsterra on behalf of a business, such as a publisher, you confirm that you are authorised to accept these terms for it.

The age limit applies to every campaign, including campaigns for young adult and children's books: readers under 18 may not apply, even with a parent's consent. We may close an account or application if we believe its holder is under 18.

4. Accounts and guest access

• You can sign in with a password or with Google, or apply to a campaign as a guest by confirming your email address with a one-time code. Guest access works through emailed links that expire.
• Keep your password, sign-in codes and access links private. Do not let anyone else use your account or links. Tell us at once at support@hamsterra.com if you think someone else has used them.
• Give accurate information and keep your email address up to date.
• You can delete your account in Settings at any time. See the Privacy policy for what happens.
• If you requested a free book, you can delete that request and its data yourself, whether or not you have an account: open the download page from the link we emailed you and choose “Delete my data”.

5. Authors

Your rights and promises

When you upload, paste or import a book or other content, you promise that:

• you have all the rights and permissions needed for the uses you choose on Hamsterra: distributing advance review copies, giving away free copies through a free book page, and publishing an excerpt for anyone to read. This includes any permission needed from a publisher, co-author or illustrator;
• it does not infringe anyone's copyright, trade mark, privacy or other rights, and is lawful;
• giving free review copies, giving the book away free through a free book page, or publishing an excerpt does not break any exclusivity or distribution agreement you have, such as Kindle Direct Publishing Select or a publishing contract;
• your answer to the AI use question for each book is accurate under the explanation shown with the question, and you will update it if it stops being accurate;
• you will use readers' details only as these terms and the acceptable use rules allow.

Licence to us

You keep all rights in your books and content. You give us a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free licence to store, copy, convert and personalise your files, to store and copy your excerpt text, and to display your public profile, book pages, published excerpts and campaign pages, only as needed to run Hamsterra for you. In particular, you authorise us to add a visible personalisation line and copy ID to every copy we issue and to deliver those copies to the readers you approve and to readers who request your free book. The licence ends when the content is deleted or removed from Hamsterra, except for copies already delivered to readers and records we must keep. Anyone can read a published excerpt, and it may appear in search results. When you unpublish or delete it, we remove its page from Hamsterra. Search engines may take time to update their results, and we cannot recall copies others have saved.

If you delete your account, we take down your author, book and campaign pages and your free book page, delete your excerpts, remove your book from group giveaways and cancel those you organise that have not started, stop your campaigns, cancel scheduled emails, end readers' access, erase readers' free book requests and delete your files and the personalised copies we issued. Copies readers already downloaded cannot be recalled; your campaign terms keep applying to campaign copies, and these terms to all copies.

Pen names

One author account can hold several pen names, up to the number your plan allows. Each pen name has its own author page, books, campaigns, free book pages, contacts and blocked readers list. A book stays with the pen name it was added under. Readers and other authors are not shown which pen names share an account; we can see it, and the account's usage limits are shared by all its pen names. An account always keeps at least one pen name.

Deleting a pen name takes down everything under it, as deleting your account does for your author side (see above): its pages, excerpts, books and files, campaigns, contacts and giveaway places. We erase its data as section 9 of the Privacy policy describes, keeping only the limited records listed there. It cannot be undone. Your account and your other pen names stay. A pen name we have suspended cannot be deleted until the matter is closed.

Your campaigns

• You decide who takes part in your campaigns and you write your campaign terms. Your campaign terms must be fair, lawful and consistent with these terms.
• Readers' details you receive through Hamsterra, including exports, are shared with you so you can run your review campaigns. For those details you are a separate controller under data protection law, independent of us, and you must:
  • use a participant's details only to run the campaign they applied to, and never sell, publish or share them;
  • use the result of a copy check only to protect your rights in that book;
  • not add a reader to any mailing list unless they joined your reader list, by ticking the box on one of your forms or by joining from your author page;
  • if you export your reader list and email readers from your own email service, be responsible for that mailing: include an unsubscribe link, honour unsubscribes, stop emailing readers who leave your reader list on Hamsterra (they no longer appear in your exports), and comply with the email marketing law that applies to you;
  • keep them secure and delete them when you no longer need them for that purpose;
  • answer readers' requests about the details you hold, and tell us without delay if you learn that they were lost, leaked or misused.
  These terms are the agreement between you and us for that sharing; no separate data sharing agreement is needed.
• Your contact list is made up only of readers who asked, on one of your application forms or your free book page, to receive your ARC invitations or to join your reader list, and of readers who joined your reader list from your author page. You cannot upload or type in contacts. We send ARC invitations to your contacts on your behalf, to the campaigns and at the times you choose, and you must not use contacts who asked only for invitations for anything else. As the sender, we also apply our own rules: we may require our approval before an author can send invitations, set sending limits, block addresses that unsubscribed, complained or bounced, and pause invitations to protect readers and the service.
• If you take part in a group giveaway, a reader who chooses your book requests it from you alone, as on your free book page. The other authors in the giveaway see its anonymous counts for every author's tracking link (visitors, books chosen, confirmed addresses and how many readers ticked each box). Signed-in authors also see each pen name's giveaway rating: a level and points worked out from the results of ended giveaways (readers brought through your link, choices of your book and, a little, visitors) by the formula published in Help. On Stash and Hoard, the level sets how many group giveaways your account can be in at a time. Share your tracking link honestly and do not inflate its counts or your rating, for example with bots, bought clicks, your own addresses or links traded only to raise ratings. We may leave out results that look inflated, and you can ask us to review your rating.
• Keep your own copy of your files. Hamsterra is not a backup or archive service.

How listings are ordered

Only public author pages and public, listed campaigns appear in Hamsterra's listings. The order follows the same rules for every author, and no one can pay for a better place:

• ARCs, on the home page and the ARCs page: open campaigns first, the one closing soonest first and those with no closing date last; then campaigns opening soon, by start date; then finished campaigns, the most recently ended first. Campaigns that are otherwise equal are shown newest first.
• Authors, on the home page and the Authors page: authors with an open ARC first, the one whose ARC closes soonest first; then the other authors, by their most recently published book or, if they have none, their profile, newest first.
• Filters a visitor chooses, such as a genre, narrow a list without changing its order. Site search shows the pages that best match the words searched for.

Plans change usage limits only. They do not change where or how your pages, books or campaigns are shown. Hamsterra does not offer books of its own. Prices, renewal, cancelling and refunds are in the Paid plans terms. Moving to a lower plan does not delete your content; deleting your account has the consequences described above and ends a paid plan as section 10 of the Paid plans terms describes.

Data on Hamsterra

You can see and export the details of the readers in your campaigns, your contacts and reader list, and your campaigns' results, as described above. You do not get access to other authors' readers or their data, except the anonymous counts of a group giveaway you take part in. We use the data that authors and readers give us, and the data the service generates, only to run and protect Hamsterra as the Privacy policy describes. We do not sell it or give it to other authors. When your account is deleted or closed, you lose access to these data, so export what you need first; while your account is suspended, section 9 explains how to get your material.

You indemnify us against claims by third parties that your content infringes their rights or that you used Hamsterra unlawfully, to the extent you are acting in the course of a business. This does not apply to consumers.

6. Readers

• Each copy is issued to you personally for reviewing the book. The author keeps all rights in it. You get a personal, non-transferable permission to read it; you may not share, upload, sell, lend or forward it, or give it to AI tools or services.
• Each copy carries your name and a copy ID. The author can check a copy found outside Hamsterra against their own campaigns, as described in the acceptable use rules and Privacy policy. A match is not proof of who distributed it.
• Your access to a copy can end when the campaign's access period ends, or if the author removes you from the campaign. It is also paused while we have suspended the author or paused the campaign. Download your copy while you have access.
• A free book you request from an author's free book page is also issued to you personally, with the same permission and limits, except that you are not asked to review it. Your download link keeps working until the author deletes the free book or your request is deleted, except while we have suspended the author. In a group giveaway you choose one of the books offered, once per giveaway, and request it from its author in the same way.
• Reviews are your own and should be honest. We do not require a positive review, and an author may not demand one. Follow the rules of the sites where you post reviews, including disclosure that you received a free copy.

7. Email

Hamsterra sends all email on the platform, such as sign-in codes and campaign updates, except Link's payment emails for paid plans, such as receipts and refund notices. We also send ARC invitations and campaign reminders on an author's behalf, and invitations go only to readers who asked for that author's invitations. Every email names us and our postal address, and every invitation includes an unsubscribe link. We honour unsubscribes across all authors where you ask us to. Emails an author sends from their own email service to their reader list are not sent by us. See the Privacy policy.

8. Our content and copyright complaints

The Hamsterra name, logo, design and software belong to us or our licensors. These terms do not give you any right to use them except to use the service.

If you believe content on Hamsterra infringes your copyright, follow the copyright complaints process. We remove content that we find infringing and may suspend or close the accounts of repeat infringers, as section 9 describes.

9. Restrictions, suspension and closure

We may act if you break these terms or the acceptable use rules (including by using readers' details in a way they did not agree to, or by getting round a limit or an earlier restriction), if the law requires it, or to protect readers, authors or the service from harm.

What we may do

• restrict one feature: remove or unpublish content, hide an author page or book, pause a campaign or your invitations, or end a participant's access to copies;
• suspend an account, for a stated time or until a condition is met;
• end all author services for an account: its author pages, books, campaigns, free book pages and invitations;
• close the account.

We choose the measure that fits what happened: how serious it is, whether it has happened before, the harm it causes and how reliable the evidence is. Where there are reasonable grounds to suspect a breach, we may restrict the features concerned while we look into it. Such a restriction does not mean we have found a breach, and a suspicion alone is never a reason to end your author services or close your account. Where a breach can be put right, we will usually warn you first and give you a reasonable time to fix it, normally 14 days.

We may act at once, without a warning, where there is serious ongoing harm to readers, authors or the service, a security risk, a clear attempt to get round an earlier restriction (for example through another account), or where the law requires it.

If you use Hamsterra in the course of a business, we will tell you, with our reasons, at least 30 days before we end all author services for your account or close it. We may do so without that notice where the law requires it, where we must act at once for an imperative reason under the law, or where you have repeatedly broken these terms or the acceptable use rules. During the notice period we may suspend the features concerned.

How we tell you

When we suspend an account or an author's email sending, we notify the affected user by email no later than when the restriction takes effect. The notice explains what is restricted, the material reason and the facts behind it, its duration or the conditions for restoring access, and how to request a human review at support@hamsterra.com. When an automatic email protection paused your invitations, the notice names the rule that triggered it and says that a person will review it. Particular information may be withheld where applicable law requires or permits this, but this does not create a general exception from providing notice. We do the same when we hide an author page, pause a campaign or remove an author's book or page because of a report or a breach. A notice records the decision when it was made: if we lift a restriction soon after, you get both notices, in that order.

Review

You can ask for a review of any restriction by email to support@hamsterra.com, explaining why you disagree. A person reviews it and tells you the outcome. If we find that the restriction was not justified, we lift it without undue delay and restore your access, including to your data.

While an account is suspended

• You cannot sign in, as an author or as a reader.
• Your author pages and books are hidden, emails to your readers are on hold, and readers cannot download your books, from campaigns or free book pages.
• Nothing is deleted because of the suspension.
• You cannot export anything yourself. If you ask us at support@hamsterra.com, we will provide your book material, such as files, covers and descriptions, and your own account details. We do not provide your contacts or readers' details while the suspension lasts.

Paid plans

If you have a paid plan, section 10 of the Paid plans terms explains what happens to its renewal, limits and refunds. In short: a suspension stops the renewal and applies Free limits, and we refund the paid days that fell within it, less any reasonable losses a serious or repeated breach by you directly caused. If the suspension ends within the paid period, your paid limits return, and the renewal resumes only if the suspension alone stopped it. Ending author services ends the paid plan and does not move the account to Free; we refund the unused time, less any such losses where you were in breach. Your statutory rights and Link's refund policy still apply.

If we end author services or close an account

Your author pages, books, campaigns, free book pages and invitations end in the same way as when you delete your account (section 5). Copies readers already downloaded cannot be recalled. If we close your account, the Privacy policy explains what happens to your data. A restriction or a closure does not take away any right you have under the law, including your rights over your personal data.

AI use answers are the author's own declaration. We do not check them and do not confirm that they are accurate. If we have reason to doubt an answer, we may ask the author to review it, show the book as “Not stated by the author” until they do, or unpublish the book. We never state ourselves that a book was made with AI. Where reasonable we will tell you why and let you respond first.

We may stop offering Hamsterra. If we do, we will tell account holders by email at least 30 days before the service closes. Until then, authors can keep exporting participants and results of their campaigns as CSV files, and readers can keep downloading the copies they have access to. After the service closes we will delete the personal data we hold, except records the law requires us to keep.

10. What we do not promise

We provide Hamsterra with reasonable care and skill. We do not promise that it will always be available or error-free, or that any campaign will receive a number of applications or reviews. This does not limit what we expressly agree to provide, including the limits of a paid plan, or your statutory rights.

Personalisation helps authors trace copies found elsewhere, but it is not copy protection. Marks can be removed or lost, and we cannot prevent a reader from sharing a copy. We are not responsible for what authors and readers do with books, copies, reviews or personal data they receive through Hamsterra, or for third-party sites where reviews are posted.

11. Our liability

Nothing in these terms excludes or limits our liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, or for any other liability that cannot be excluded or limited under applicable law.

If you use Hamsterra as a consumer (for purposes wholly or mainly outside your trade, business, craft or profession), nothing in these terms affects your statutory rights, including under the Consumer Rights Act 2015. We are responsible for loss or damage you suffer that is a foreseeable result of our breach of these terms or of our failure to use reasonable care and skill, but not for loss that was not foreseeable or for any business loss.

If you use Hamsterra in the course of a business (for example as an author or publisher promoting books), then to the extent permitted by law we are not liable for indirect or consequential loss, loss of profits, revenue, sales, goodwill or opportunity, or loss of data you could have avoided by keeping your own copies. Our total liability to you for a claim, or for connected claims, arising out of or in connection with these terms and the service is limited to the greater of one hundred pounds sterling (£100) and the fees you paid for Hamsterra in the 12 months before the event that gave rise to the claim. This limit does not reduce refunds due under these terms or the Paid plans terms.

For example, an author who offers their books for sale, alone or through a publisher, usually uses Hamsterra in the course of a business, and a reader who applies for copies to read and review them usually uses Hamsterra as a consumer.

12. Changes to these terms

Each version of these terms has a version number and effective date at the top, and we record the version you accepted. We may update these terms, for example to reflect changes to the service or the law. If a change significantly affects you, we will tell account holders by email or on the site at least 30 days before it takes effect, unless it is needed sooner for legal or security reasons. If you do not agree, you can stop using Hamsterra and delete your account. If you keep using Hamsterra after the change takes effect, the new version applies to you. When you next create an account, apply to a campaign or request a free book, we record your acceptance of the version then in force. When you buy a paid plan, we record the versions of these terms and the Paid plans terms you accepted, the plan, price and billing period, and your request for the plan to start straight away.

Changes do not reduce what a paid period gives you or your refund rights under the Paid plans terms. Changes that affect a paid plan are also subject to section 12 of the Paid plans terms.

If you use Hamsterra in the course of a business, we tell you about any change to these terms or the acceptable use rules at least 15 days before it takes effect, or longer where the change needs more time to adapt to, unless the law or an urgent need to protect the service, readers or authors from fraud, malware, spam or a data breach requires it sooner.

Where a significant change affects guests whose personal data we still lawfully hold, we notify those affected guests as well as account holders. We do not restore erased contact details for this purpose. Changes do not automatically extend an existing retention period or authorise previously undisclosed processing.

13. Law and disputes

These terms are governed by the law of England and Wales. Please contact us first so we can try to resolve any problem. The courts of England and Wales have jurisdiction, but if you are a consumer living in Scotland or Northern Ireland you may also bring proceedings there, and if you are a consumer living elsewhere you keep the protection of the mandatory consumer laws where you live.

If any part of these terms is found unenforceable, the rest stays in force. These terms are between you and us, and no one else has any right to enforce them, including under the Contracts (Rights of Third Parties) Act 1999. This does not affect an author's own rights against a reader, under the campaign terms the reader accepted or under copyright law.

14. Contact

Cat and box LLP, 71-75 Shelton Street, Covent Garden, London, WC2H 9JQ, United Kingdom. Email support@hamsterra.com or use the help page.