Afterword — Terms of Use and Community Guidelines

Last updated: 24 September 2026

These terms are an agreement between you and Jeffrey Ma ("Afterword", "we"), who runs the Afterword app and joinafterword.com. By creating an account or using the app you agree to them and to the Privacy Policy. If you don't agree, don't use Afterword.

1. Who can use Afterword

• You must be at least 13 years old to use Afterword. We ask for your date of birth when you sign up, and we close accounts we learn belong to anyone younger.
• If you are under 18, you may use Afterword only with the permission of a parent or legal guardian, who agrees to these terms for you. You must also be old enough to agree to these terms where you live.
• Afterword is offered only to people in the United States.
• Afterword is invite-only while it is in beta. An invite code lets one person make one account.
• One person, one account. Give accurate information, don't pretend to be someone else, and keep your password to yourself. You are responsible for what happens under your account.

2. The beta

Afterword is a beta. Features change, things break, and data can be lost. The service is provided "as is" and "as available", without warranties of any kind, to the extent the law allows.

3. Community Guidelines — zero tolerance

Afterword has no tolerance for objectionable content or abusive users. You may not post, send or display — in a review, comment, club note, profile name, bio, handle, picture or a message sent with a share — anything that is:

• harassment, bullying, threats or intimidation of anyone;
• hate speech, or content attacking people for their race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, disability, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation or age;
• sexually explicit, or anything that sexualises a minor;
• violent, or that encourages self-harm or suicide;
• spam, scams, advertising, or impersonation of a person or organisation;
• someone else's private information shared without their consent;
• illegal, or infringing someone else's rights.

Disagreeing about a book, sharply, is fine. That is the point.

You also may not:

• scrape, harvest or bulk-collect other readers' information, or use contact matching to find out who is a member;
• vandalise the shared book catalogue (titles, descriptions, covers, series);
• get around a block, a suspension, rate limits or security measures;
• reverse engineer, overload or interfere with the service.

4. Your content

• What you write and upload stays yours.
• You give Afterword a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free licence to host, store, reproduce, display and distribute it within the app — to the readers your settings allow — and in the share cards you choose to make, for as long as it is on Afterword.
• You are responsible for what you post, and you promise you have the right to post it.
• Quoting books. A short quotation from a book, as part of your own review or discussion, is welcome. Keep it short: a few sentences at most in any one post. Never post a whole page, chapter, poem or song lyric, long passages, or photos or scans of a book's pages. Quoting more than your comment needs is not fair use, and we remove it.
• Pictures. Upload only a picture you took or made yourself, or that you have permission to use. Don't upload someone else's photograph or artwork, or a picture of another person who hasn't agreed to it.
• Reading data and aggregate insights. Afterword may use the reading activity on the service — what readers add, finish, react to, rank and save — to create aggregated, de-identified information that does not identify you or any other reader. We own that information and may use, publish, license and sell it, including to publishers, authors and booksellers, during and after your use of Afterword, without payment to you. It never includes your name, handle or other identifying details, your reviews, comments or notes, or anything from readers under 18. The Privacy Policy says what it can and cannot contain.

5. Copyright and takedowns

We respect the rights of authors, publishers, photographers and artists, and we respond to notices of claimed infringement under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (17 U.S.C. § 512).

If you believe something on Afterword infringes your copyright, send a notice to our designated copyright agent:

> Jeffrey Ma, Copyright Agent, Afterword > Email: jeffzma2000@gmail.com (subject: "Copyright notice") > Mail: 400 Chambers St, Apt 16F, New York, NY 10282

Your notice must include:

1. your physical or electronic signature, or that of someone authorised to act for the copyright owner; 2. the copyrighted work you say is infringed; 3. the material on Afterword you say infringes it, with enough detail for us to find it: the reader's handle, the book, and what the post says or a screenshot; 4. your name, address, telephone number and email address; 5. a statement that you believe in good faith that the use is not authorised by the copyright owner, its agent or the law; 6. a statement that the information in your notice is accurate and, under penalty of perjury, that you are the owner or authorised to act for the owner.

What we do. We review every complete notice. Where it holds up, we remove or disable access to the material promptly, and we tell the reader who posted it, sending them a copy of the notice.

Counter-notice. If your post was removed and you believe that was a mistake or that you had the right to post it, you can send a counter-notice to the same address. It must include:

• your signature;
• what was removed and where it appeared;
• a statement under penalty of perjury that you believe in good faith it was removed by mistake or misidentification;
• your name, address and telephone number;
• your consent to the jurisdiction of the federal court for your address (or, if you are outside the United States, any judicial district where Afterword may be found), and that you will accept service from the person who sent the notice.

We forward a valid counter-notice to the person who sent the notice. We may restore the material after 10 business days, and within 14, unless they tell us they have filed a lawsuit to keep it down.

Repeat infringers. We end the accounts of readers who infringe repeatedly.

Anyone who knowingly misrepresents that material infringes, or that it was removed by mistake, may be liable for damages under 17 U.S.C. § 512(f). If you're not sure something infringes, ask a lawyer before sending a notice. Other concerns about a post can be raised with Report in the app.

6. Reporting, blocking and moderation

• Every review, comment, club note and profile can be reported from its menu, including a profile that appears to belong to someone under 13 (the … on a profile or entry, or a long press on a comment or note). You can block any reader: you won't see each other's reading, and they can't follow you or send you anything. You tab → Blocked readers undoes a block.
• We review reports within 24 hours. We remove content that breaks these terms, and we may suspend or terminate the accounts of people who post it, with or without notice.
• We may remove any content or restrict any account where we reasonably believe it is needed to protect readers, the service or the law.

7. Third-party content and links

• Book information, covers and descriptions come from third parties including Open Library, Google Books (a book found through Google is marked "powered by Google"), BookBrainz, Wikidata, Wikipedia (text under CC BY-SA 4.0) and The New York Times Best Sellers lists. They belong to their owners.
• Buy links go to Bookshop.org and Amazon. As an Amazon Associate and a Bookshop.org affiliate, Afterword earns from qualifying purchases. Those stores' own terms apply to what you buy there.
• Importing from Goodreads opens Goodreads' own website inside the app. Afterword is not affiliated with Goodreads, Amazon or Bookshop.org.

8. Afterword's name and app

The Afterword name, logo and app are ours. These terms give you a personal, revocable, non-transferable licence to use the app for its intended purpose. Your use of the app you download from the App Store is also governed by Apple's Licensed Application End User License Agreement.

9. Ending your account

• You can delete your account at any time: You tab → Delete account. What is deleted and what remains is described in the Privacy Policy.
• We can suspend or end your account if you break these terms, or if we stop running Afterword.

10. Limitation of liability

To the fullest extent the law allows, Afterword is not liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential or punitive damages, or for loss of data, arising from your use of the service, and our total liability is limited to the greater of the amount you paid us in the last twelve months or USD 50.

11. Governing law and disputes

These terms are governed by the laws of the State of New York, USA, without regard to its conflict-of-laws rules. Disputes will be resolved in the state and federal courts located in New York County, New York, and you and Afterword consent to their jurisdiction.

12. Changes

We may change these terms. We will post the new version here with a new date and, for material changes, tell you in the app before they take effect. Continuing to use Afterword after that means you accept them.

13. Contact

Questions, or a report you would rather send by email: jeffzma2000@gmail.com. Copyright notices go to the agent named in section 5.