Terms of Use
Last updated 3 November 2026
The short version: your writing is yours, readers may read but not copy, and we only use your text to run the features you choose.
1. About these terms
Kanonara (“we”, “us”) runs kanonara.com: a writing app for fiction and a public library where authors publish their books. These terms apply to everyone who uses the site, whether you write, read or just browse. By creating an account or using Kanonara, you agree to them.
Kanonara is in early access. Features will change as we build, and new accounts wait for approval before they can use the writing app.
We may switch individual features off for a time, for example to fix a problem. Switching a feature off never deletes your writing.
2. Your account
You must be at least 13 years old to create an account, or older if the law where you live requires it. Give us accurate details, keep your password to yourself, and tell us if you think someone else has used your account. One account is for one person.
You are responsible for what happens under your account.
3. Your writing belongs to you
You keep all rights in what you write on Kanonara: your chapters, notes, characters, worlds and every other part of your story bible. We claim no ownership of it.
The same applies to pictures you upload: book and volume covers, pictures in your chapters and your profile photo. They must follow the same rules as your text.
To run the service you give us permission to store your writing, keep backup copies, show it to you on your devices, process it for the features you use (such as search and chapter analysis), and, only when you publish a book, show that book to readers in the Kanonara library. This permission is only for running Kanonara. It ends when you delete the writing, except that deleted chapters stay in your trash for 30 days so you can restore them, and backup copies may take a limited time to be overwritten.
You can export your manuscript and a full backup of each book from its settings at any time.
Our staff may read your writing, unpublished drafts included, when they need to: to check that an account is really used for writing, to answer a support request, or to look into a report or a breach of these terms. Staff only read it and never change it, and each time they open a draft, who opened it and why is recorded.
4. AI features
Chapter analysis runs only when you ask for it. To produce the analysis, the chapter’s text and the relevant parts of your story bible are sent to the third-party AI model providers we use. What comes back are proposals: nothing changes your story or story bible until you accept it.
To power “Related passages” search, the text of chapters you save is also sent to a third-party AI service that turns it into a search index for your book only.
Other AI features also run only when you ask for them: proofreading of a passage you select, co-writer drafts, character portraits drawn from a character’s description, and narrative reports on your book’s structure. For these, the text or details you choose are sent to the same AI model providers. During early access they share a monthly allowance.
AI results are suggestions for you to review. A proofreading suggestion replaces your text only when you choose “Replace my selection”, and you can undo it. Co-writer drafts are never added to your chapters for you.
We do not use your writing to train AI models. AI output can be wrong; check it before you rely on it.
Those providers process what we send them under their own terms and policies.
5. Publishing and reading
When you publish a book, it appears in the public library, together with the chapters you publish (each chapter is published on its own, now or at a time you schedule). Anyone can read its opening chapters; the rest needs a free account. You can unpublish a chapter or the whole book at any time.
Readers can follow a book to be emailed when a new chapter comes out, and can stop at any time. Writers see reading statistics for their chapters as totals, never who read them.
Readers may read published books for their own enjoyment and share short quotes with credit to the author and a link to the book (the reader adds these when you copy a short passage). Readers may not copy, republish, sell, translate or otherwise distribute a book or large parts of it, and may not use it to train AI or build datasets, without the author’s permission.
Each published book has its own page with its cover, description, chapters and comments. Authors who publish also have a public author page with their name, bio, profile photo, published books and number of followers; you can hide yours under Profile, and your books then show your name without a link.
Some books in the library may be written by AI for Kanonara as samples. They are labelled “AI-generated”, no person wrote them, and readers can hide them in the library.
6. What you may not post
You may only publish writing you have the right to publish. Do not post:
- someone else’s work without their permission;
- sexually explicit content (Kanonara does not host it);
- anything that sexualises minors, in any form;
- content that is illegal, threatens or harasses people, or attacks them for who they are;
- spam, malware, or content pretending to be someone else.
These rules apply to comments too. We may remove content or unpublish books that break them.
Anyone signed in can report a comment to us. Writers can hide comments on their own books and block a reader from commenting on them; blocking also hides that reader’s comments there.
These rules apply to pictures too: covers, pictures in chapters and profile photos. Anyone can report a picture from a book page. We may take a picture down, and a picture that was taken down cannot be uploaded again.
Anyone can also report a book whose writing breaks these rules, from its book page.
7. Using the site fairly
You may not:
- scrape, crawl or download books or other content with bots or scripts;
- get around rate limits, the sign-in requirement, copy protection or other safeguards;
- test, probe or attack our security without our written permission;
- resell or share access to your account.
8. Copyright complaints
If you believe something on Kanonara copies your work, report it through our copyright page. We review every report, unpublish books that infringe, and close the accounts of people who repeatedly post others’ work.
9. Plans
The free plan includes a monthly allowance of chapter analyses. We do not take payments today. If we offer paid plans, their price and what they include will be shown to you before you pay.
During early access, the other AI features (proofreading, co-writer drafts and character portraits) come with a monthly allowance shown in the app.
10. Ending your use
You can stop using Kanonara at any time, and delete your account yourself under Profile. That deletes everything in it, so export your books first if you want to keep them. How we handle your data is in our Privacy Policy.
We may suspend or close an account that breaks these terms. Unless the law or safety requires otherwise, we will tell you why, and your writing stays yours to export.
11. The service as it is
We work hard to keep Kanonara running and your writing safe, but we provide it as it is, without guarantees that it will always be available or free of errors. Keep your own copies of work that matters to you.
12. Limits on our liability
As far as the law allows, we are not liable for indirect or consequential losses, such as lost profits or lost opportunities, and our total liability to you is limited to what you paid us in the 12 months before the claim. Nothing in these terms limits liability that the law does not allow us to limit.
13. Changes to these terms
We may update these terms as Kanonara grows. For significant changes we will tell you by email or on the site before they take effect. If you keep using Kanonara after that, the new terms apply.
14. Contact
For copyright matters, use the copyright page. For anything else, reply to any email you have received from Kanonara.