Terms of service

Last updated: 1 November 2026

These terms are the agreement between you and Daniel Dewhurst (“we”, “us”), who runs Plothold at plothold.com and app.plothold.com. By creating an account or using Plothold, you agree to them. If you do not agree, please do not use Plothold.

1. Your account

• You must be 18 or older to use Plothold, and so must the readers and editors you share a book with. Plothold is not for children: when we learn that a writer is under 18, we close and delete the account, as the privacy policy describes, and refund the month that its plan is in.
• Each account is for one person. Sign up with an email address that you keep: Plothold does not take a temporary email address for a new account. Keep access to your email (and your Google account, if you use it) secure, because anyone who can read your email can sign in as you.
• Do not create accounts in bulk, to get around Plothold’s limits, or to get more than one free trial.

2. Your writing is yours

You keep all rights in what you write in Plothold. You give us permission to store, copy and process your writing only as needed to run Plothold for you. This includes sending parts of it to the AI model that runs the writing partner, to the AI models that review a chapter when you ask the council for a review, to the AI models that read chapters as AI readers when you ask them to, to the AI model that reads the whole book when you ask for an editorial letter, and to the AI model that makes book covers when you ask for one, as the privacy policy describes. The pictures you give your books, and their captions, never go to either. Upload only pictures that you have the right to use. This permission ends when you delete your writing or your account, or we delete them at your request, apart from copies in backups, which expire about 30 days later. We do not use your writing to train AI models, and we do not claim any ownership of it.

3. The writing partner

• The writing partner is an AI. It can be wrong, it can misread your book, and it can change your book in ways that you did not intend. Read what it writes before you rely on it.
• As far as we are concerned, the text that the writing partner writes for you is yours to use. We cannot promise that it is original, or that no one else could receive similar text.
• You are responsible for what you publish, including text that the writing partner wrote.

3a. Sharing with readers

You can share a read-only copy of a book with readers through a link. Anyone who has the link can read that copy and send you notes, so send it only to people you choose, and only to adults (18 or older). The copy shows the name that you put on the book, but never its contact lines for a standard manuscript. Of the pages before and after the story, it shows the dedication and the epigraph, but not the copyright page, the acknowledgements, About the author or Also by. A link started before 30 October 2026 keeps the copy as it was built then, with all of the book's pages; stop it and start another to change that. You can stop a link at any time. You are responsible for what you share, and for having the right to share it. Notes that readers send become part of your book; treat them with the care you would want for your own words.

3b. Book covers

• When you ask for one, an AI makes a picture for your book's cover from what your book says and what you type. In Plothold, your title shows on a strip below it, so the picture has no words; an EPUB download has the picture alone as its cover. A picture can have mistakes, or show something that you did not ask for. Look at it before you keep it.
• As far as we are concerned, the picture is yours to use. We cannot promise that it is original, or that no one else could receive a similar picture.
• Some book stores ask you to say when a cover was made with AI. You are responsible for what you publish, including a cover that Plothold made.

3c. Inviting an editor

You can give an editor or a critique partner a private link to your book's chapters, under a name that you type. Anyone who has the link can read the chapters as they are now (not your chat, your story bible, your notes to yourself or your other books) and send you comments and suggested changes under that name, so send it only to that person, and only to an adult (18 or older). You can stop a link at any time, and it stops by itself after 90 days. A suggested change reaches your chapter only when you keep it, as your own edit. Their name and notes become part of your book, in its history and backups, and your writing partner reads them when you ask it to; treat them with the care you would want for your own words.

3d. Writing a book with co-writers

You can invite up to 4 other Plothold writers, by their email address, to write one of your books with you. Invite only adults (18 or older) whom you know. A co-writer who joins sees the whole book, its chat and its history, writes in it, and talks to the same writing partner, at the same time as you; each sees who else has the book open, and in which chapter. The book stays yours: it counts as one of your books, the messages and covers that your co-writers ask for count against your trial or plan and its limits, and only you can delete the book, rename its series, share it with readers or an editor, or invite and remove people. If the book is in a series, the writing partner still reads your other books of the series when a co-writer asks it something, as it does for you. You can remove a co-writer at any time, and a co-writer can leave. What they wrote stays in the book and its history, as your own writing does, and goes when you delete the book or your account. Agree with your co-writers who owns what you write together: these terms give each of you the rights of section 2 in your own words, and do not settle that between you. If you are a co-writer, the owner's book is not yours to share, so do not share it beyond Plothold without the owner's agreement.

4. What you must not do

Do not use Plothold to:

• ask the writing partner for work that is not about your books or your fiction, such as code, homework, work emails or a general AI chat;
• break the law, or store or create content that is illegal;
• store or create sexual content involving anyone under 18;
• copy other people’s work in a way that breaks their copyright or other rights;
• harass, threaten or harm other people;
• attack, overload, probe or reverse-engineer Plothold, or try to reach other writers’ books;
• get around Plothold’s limits, for example with many accounts or automated requests.

5. The free trial, the plan and their limits

• The free trial. Each writer gets one free trial of the writing partner, from the first time they use Plothold: 14 days or 50 messages, whichever ends first. The trial also ends once its messages have cost us US$3 in AI, so very long messages can end it sooner. It needs no card, and it never turns into a paid plan by itself. An email address that had a trial gets no second one, also with a new account.
• The plan. The plan costs £10 a month, VAT included. Each billing month has 120 messages, at most 50 a day, and ends its messages once they have cost us US$8 in AI, so very long messages can use the month up sooner.
• What counts as a message. Each message to the writing partner counts as one. So does a council review of a chapter that you ask for under the chapter, and a read of up to 20,000 words by the AI readers on the Readers tab; what each costs us in AI counts toward the trial's and the month's AI cost, as a message's does. One that fails before it reaches an AI model does not count.
• Book covers. The free trial has 5 covers, and each billing month of the plan has 30 covers, at most 10 a day. A cover is not a message, but what it costs us in AI counts toward the trial's and the month's AI cost. A cover that the image service refuses does not count.
• Editorial letters. An editorial letter reads the whole book, so it counts as one message for each 20,000 words of the book's text, or part of them: a book of 45,000 words counts as 3 messages. In a text with few spaces between its words, such as Thai, every six characters count as one word. Its button says how many before you ask. It counts them all when it starts, also toward the limit of 50 messages a day, and it starts only when you have that many messages left and enough of the trial's or the month's AI cost left for one letter (US$0.50). It reads books of up to 200,000 words. If it fails before it reaches the AI model, or Plothold restarts while it writes, its messages come back.
• Extra messages. While you have the plan, you can buy a pack of 60 extra messages for £5, VAT included, paid once. Extra messages count only after the billing month's own messages run out, and stay from month to month until you use them. Each pack adds 60 messages and US$4 of AI cost to your extra messages, which end once either is used up, and they count towards the limit of 50 messages a day. They work only while you have the plan: if it ends, they wait until you subscribe again. When you delete your account, the extra messages that are left end, and we do not refund them.
• Other limits. For everyone: a number of books per writer, the room that each account may use for its books, with their history, pictures and the copies that feedback rounds keep (200 MB on the free trial or with no plan, and 500 MB once you have paid for the plan), a number of feedback rounds open at once and started in an hour, a maximum chapter length, and a number and size of pictures for each book and for each writer, with a number of new pictures a day. For the free trial: 50 messages a day, and a total for all trial writers together, for messages and for covers, with a part of the message total for new accounts, so on a very busy day the writing partner or the covers can stop until the next day. The app shows when you are close to a message limit, and tells you when you reach any limit. We can change these limits, and the free trial's. We change the plan's price and limits, its daily limit included, only as section 5a says.
• After the trial or the plan. Your books stay yours. Without a trial or a plan, you can still read, edit and download them, but the writing partner does not answer.

5a. Buying the plan and extra messages

• Who sells it. Polar (Polar Software, Inc.) sells the plan and the packs of extra messages to you, as the merchant of record. It takes the payment, sends the invoices and handles VAT. Your purchase is also under Polar's buyer terms; these terms cover the use of Plothold.
• Renewal. The plan starts when you pay, and renews each month on the same day until you cancel. Polar charges your card at each renewal. If a renewal payment fails, the writing partner stops a day after the month ends, until a payment goes through. You can change your card on Polar's page.
• Cancelling. You can cancel at any time on Polar's page, which Manage your plan on the Account page opens. The plan then stays until the end of the month you paid for, and does not renew. Deleting your account ends the plan at once instead, and the rest of that month is not refunded; to use your right to cancel below, email us before you delete it.
• Your right to cancel. If you are a consumer in the UK or the EU, you can cancel within 14 days of your first payment for the plan and get that payment back in full. This is once for each person: not again after a new account or a new plan. To do this, email hello@plothold.com. The plan then ends at once.
• Refunds. Apart from that, we do not refund a month that has started, except when the law requires it or when Plothold did not work for you as these terms describe. If you think that is the case, email us. When we refund a month, the plan for that month ends.
• Extra messages. A pack is paid once and does not renew. If you are a consumer in the UK or the EU, you can cancel a pack within 14 days of buying it and get that payment back in full, as long as you have used no extra messages since you bought it. To do this, email hello@plothold.com. When we refund a pack in full, its extra messages end.
• Changes to the plan. If we change the price or the plan's limits, we email you at least 30 days before. The change applies from your first renewal after that, and you can cancel before it does.

6. Availability and changes

We work to keep Plothold running and your writing safe, and we keep daily backups. But we provide Plothold “as is”: it can have faults, be unavailable, or change, and we can stop it. You can download all your books at any time from Account, without a plan. If we plan to stop Plothold, we will email you at least 30 days before, so that you can download them or ask us for a copy. Your plan then stops renewing, and if a month you paid for runs past the day Plothold stops, we refund the days after it. Please keep your own copies of work that matters to you.

7. Our responsibility to you

• We are not responsible for losses that we could not reasonably foresee, or for loss of business, profits or opportunities.
• Our total responsibility to you for any claim related to Plothold is limited to the larger of £100 and what you paid for the plan and extra messages in the 12 months before the claim.
• Nothing in these terms limits our responsibility for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, for fraud, or for anything else that the law does not allow us to limit. If you use Plothold as a consumer, these terms do not affect your legal rights.

8. Ending your use

You can stop using Plothold at any time, and you can delete your books or your account on the Account page in Plothold. If you cannot sign in, email hello@plothold.com and we delete them for you. We can suspend or close an account that breaks these terms. Where it is reasonable, we tell you why first and give you a chance to fix the problem. If we close an account, its plan ends and does not renew.

9. Changes to these terms

If we change these terms, we update the date at the top. If a change is important, we email you before it takes effect. If you continue to use Plothold after a change, the new terms apply.

10. Law

The law of England and Wales applies to these terms. If you live in Scotland or Northern Ireland, you can also bring a claim in your local courts.

11. Contact

For questions about these terms, email hello@plothold.com. Our postal address is 6A Marsh Green Road, Sandbach, Cheshire, CW11 3BH, United Kingdom.

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