Terms of Service

Charon is operated by Charon LLC, an Oregon limited liability company. In these terms, “Charon”, “we” and “us” mean Charon LLC.

These Terms of Service govern your use of Charon. By creating an account or using the service, you agree to them. They are written in plain language on purpose: terms you cannot read are not terms. If something here matters to a decision you are about to make, ask before you make it.

1. What Charon is

Charon is subscription software for authors: a manuscript editor, a reference library for your world, tools for production and publishing, a community of writers, and a hosted author page. There are two plans, Writer and Author, billed monthly. Charon is not a publisher, not an agent, and not a party to your publishing decisions.

2. Your account

An account belongs to one person. Keep your sign-in secure; anything done through your account is treated as done by you. You must be a legal adult in your jurisdiction to hold an account. Tell us promptly if you believe someone else has reached your account.

3. Your work is yours

You own everything you write in Charon: your manuscripts, your world, your notes, your pages. Nothing in these terms transfers any part of that to Charon. We claim no rights in your book.

Charon needs narrow permission to run the service for you: to store your work, display it back to you, and process it to produce the reports and tools you asked for. That permission exists only to operate Charon on your behalf, ends when you delete the work or your account, and is never a license to publish, sell, or train on your writing. See the AI Policy.

Sharing is a grant, never a transfer. When you share a world, invite a co-writer, or send a chapter to a reader, you are lending access, not giving away ownership. A shared world leaves with the person who owns it. Your prose can be exported to .docx or PDF at any time, on any plan, including after you cancel and before you delete.

4. What you may not do

Your subject matter is your own. Charon is a tool for writing novels, and novels are about murder, war, abuse, addiction, and every other terrible thing people do to each other. Writing about a thing is not doing it. Nothing in these terms restricts what your fiction may depict, and Charon will not remove a manuscript for being dark, violent, explicit, or uncomfortable. The limits below are about conduct and about material that is illegal in itself, never about the story you are telling.

• Upload work that is not yours to upload, or that infringes someone else’s rights.
• Upload or distribute material that is illegal to possess or share.
• Sexualize a minor, in fiction or in any other form. This is the one subject the protection above does not cover, and it is not a close call.
• Use Charon to plan, coordinate, or carry out real harm to a real person.
• Harass, threaten, or target another member.
• Impersonate a real person, or represent yourself as Charon.
• Scrape, resell, or redistribute other members’ work or the service itself.
• Attack the service: break its limits, probe its security, or automate abuse of it.

The protection above is a commitment to real fiction, not a loophole to shelter behind. Charon reserves the right to remove any content and to close any account, at its sole discretion, and it will use that right on anyone working the edge of these rules rather than writing a book. Where we close an account for that reason we will refund the unused part of the current period and part ways.

5. Names and pen names

Pen names are yours to choose, within limits. Some are enforced automatically: a name may not imitate Charon, may not carry links or invisible characters. The rest is judgment, and judgment is made by a person: names that impersonate a real author, slurs, and names chosen to provoke are decided through Support, case by case, and may be withdrawn.

6. The Community

The Community works because writers read each other honestly. Give feedback you would want to receive. Do not post another member’s pages, or their private words, anywhere outside Charon.

When you report abuse, two things are true: a person reads it, and the person you reported is never told who reported them. Reports can lead to content being removed, a name withdrawn, or an account suspended. We will not always be able to tell you the outcome.

7. Charon Coins are not money

Coins are a way of keeping score inside Charon: they are earned by writing and by reading other members’ work, and they are spent to ask for reading in return. Writing Clans may hold and earn coins as a group in the same way, and everything below applies to a clan’s coins exactly as it applies to a member’s.

• Coins cannot be bought and are not sold by Charon.
• Coins have no cash value, cannot be cashed out, exchanged, or redeemed for money or goods.
• Coins move only inside the loops the app provides, between members and Writing Clans. There is no private transfer outside them.
• Coins are not property, not credit, and not a stored balance you hold against us.
• Charon may adjust coin rates and rules as the economy is tuned, and may reverse coins gained through abuse.
• If your account closes, unspent coins end with it.

8. Agreements between members

Charon gives members a place to record agreements: co-writing terms, service arrangements, clan splits. Unless explicitly stated, Charon is not a party to those agreements. It records that you made one. It does not police what the agreement is worth, does not calculate anyone’s share, does not collect or disburse on your behalf, and will not arbitrate a dispute arising from one. Any dispute is managed between the members who are parties to the contract.

A clan is not a legal entity. Clans can behave like small presses, with a name, a catalog, and an arrangement between members. That does not make a clan a company, and it does not make Charon its publisher, its agent, or its bank. Charon holds no rights in a clan’s books.

This section is about agreements between members. It does not limit Charon’s own business: your subscription, and any service Charon itself offers and charges for, are between you and Charon.

9. Paying for Charon

Plans are billed monthly through our payment provider, who acts as merchant of record for the sale and handles applicable tax. Charon never sees your card number.

• New accounts get a 14-day free trial. You are not billed until it ends.
• Cancel any time. Your plan runs to the end of the period you have paid for, and does not renew.
• Prices can change with at least 30 days’ notice before your next renewal.
• Charges are not refunded for partial months when you cancel. Wherewe close your account, sections 4 and 10 apply and the unused part of the period is refunded. If something has gone genuinely wrong, write to Support: we would rather fix it than argue about it.
• If a payment fails, features above the Writer plan may pause until it clears. Your work is never deleted for non-payment.

10. What Charon may do

We may suspend or close an account, and remove content, at our sole discretion, with or without a breach of these terms having been proven to anyone’s satisfaction but our own. We may also change or retire features as the product develops. Where a change would take something significant away from you, we will say so in advance. If we close your account for a reason other than abuse, you will have a reasonable window to export your work, and we will refund the unused part of the period you have already been billed for.

11. What Charon collects

In summary: your account details, your profile, the work you write, a record of how it was written, your activity in the Community, and, when you send a support report, the page you were on, your browser, and your window size. The Privacy Policy is the full account, and it is part of these terms.

12. Warranties and liability

Charon is provided as it is. We work hard on backups and on keeping the service up, and we do not promise it will never fail or lose data. Keep your own copies: Charon exports .docx and PDF on every plan for exactly this reason.

To the extent the law allows, Charon is not liable for indirect or consequential losses, including lost profits, lost sales, or lost opportunities. Where liability cannot be excluded, it is limited to what you paid us in the twelve months before the claim. Nothing here limits liability that cannot lawfully be limited.

13. Changes to these terms

These terms will change as Charon grows. Material changes are announced in the app before they take effect, and the date at the top of this page always tells you the version you are reading. Continuing to use Charon after a change means you accept it.

14. Law, and reaching us

These terms are an agreement between you and Charon LLC. They are governed by the laws of the State of Oregon, United States, without regard to conflict-of-law rules, and the state and federal courts of Multnomah County, Oregon have jurisdiction. If you are a consumer elsewhere, this does not take away rights your local law gives you.

Reach us through Support inside the app, or at support@charonwriter.com.

Charon LLC
5441 S Macadam Ave, Ste R
Portland, OR 97239
United States