Legal
Terms
Last updated September 5, 2026
Chapternal is run by Lucid Systems LLC. Using it means you accept these terms. They are written to be read.
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 build the product you asked for, and — only for a title you publish — serve it to readers. That permission exists so the software 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, and any voice you record or clone. 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 author subscription is $29 per month, or $290 per year, and includes the desk and your first live title. Extra live books are $12 per month each. A character forum is $9 per month. A stills pack is $49; you may bring your own stills instead at no charge.
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.
Machines you connect
You may connect your own machine to render voices. It is yours to run and yours to secure. Do not connect a machine 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 a machine judgement about 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.
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.