Privacy Policy

• You can read every free chapter without an account. Your reading progress and display settings stay in your browser.
• We count visits without storing your IP address: each visitor is a one-way hashed code, and we only look at totals (for example, how many readers finished chapter 1).
• No advertising, no ad trackers, and no third-party analytics scripts.
• If you sign in, we keep your email address and name. If you subscribe, Stripe handles your card; we never see it.
• We don’t sell your data.

The site saves these in your browser’s local storage. They never leave your device unless you sign in with Google (see below):

• Your reading history: which books and chapters you’ve read, where you stopped, and your scroll position in a chapter.
• Reader display settings: theme, font, text size and column width.
• The name you last typed into the review or bug-report form, so you don’t have to type it again.
• Which reviews you marked helpful and which bug reports you upvoted, so the buttons remember your vote.

A session-only marker remembers that a tab has already been counted as a visit. You can clear all of this at any time by clearing this site’s data in your browser settings.

We only set cookies when you sign in:

• sl_session: keeps you signed in. It holds your email address, name, which sign-in you used and your supporter tier, and is signed so it can’t be tampered with. It lasts 30 days after a Google sign-in and 7 days after a Patreon login, or until you sign out.
• sl_oauth_state: a short-lived security check used only while you are signing in.

There are no advertising or tracking cookies, so there is no cookie banner.

To see which books people enjoy and where they stop, the site records a few simple events: landing on the site, opening a chapter, reaching the end of a chapter, seeing the supporter offer or the Support page, and starting or finishing a subscription.

Each event stores:

• a visitor code: a one-way hash of your network address combined with a secret, so the address can’t be read back (for IPv6 we hash your network block, not your full address);
• the book and chapter, where relevant;
• for landings only, where the visit came from: the site that linked here (for example Google or Reddit) or a campaign tag in the link, otherwise “direct”.

Each visitor is counted once per event, page and day. The same hashed code is used to limit how often one person can post reviews or reports, and to allow one helpful vote per review. Your raw IP address is not stored.

Open tabs also tell the server once a minute that they are still open, for a “readers online now” count. That is kept in memory only and forgotten after 5 minutes.

Event records are kept for 12 months, then deleted automatically.

Signing in is optional. There are two ways to do it:

• Google. Google tells us your verified email address and your name. We use them to recognise you, to look up your subscription, and to show who is signed in. While you are signed in with Google, your reading history is also saved to your account, so your place follows you between devices.
• Patreon. Patreon tells us your name, email address and your pledge to the Lord Screw Loose campaign, which decides which chapters you can read. The Patreon access token is not kept in your session.

Signing out deletes the session cookie from your browser.

Subscriptions are handled by Stripe. You enter your card on Stripe’s checkout page, and we never see or store card numbers. We give Stripe your email address so it can link the subscription to your account, and we ask Stripe which plan you have so we know which chapters to open. Managing or cancelling your plan happens in Stripe’s billing portal, which you reach from the Support page.

• Reviews are public and show the name you choose, your rating and your text.
• Bug reports on the Report a Problem page are public. If you add an email address so we can reply, it is stored with the report but never shown on the site.
• Book reports (reporting a book by another author) go to the site admin. The admin gets a short alert naming the book and the reason.
• Authors who publish at Publish Your Book sign in with Google. We store the author’s email address and pen name, and their books, chapters and cover images. Published books, pen names and covers are public; the email address is not shown.

• Supabase stores the site’s database (accounts’ reading progress, reviews, bug reports, visit counts and authors’ books) and the cover images authors upload.
• Cloudflare sits in front of the site: every page request passes through it on the way to our server, which runs at Hetzner. A backup copy of the site runs on Vercel and takes over if the main server is down.
• Stripe processes subscription payments.
• Google and Patreon handle sign-in.
• Admin alerts about reported books are sent through a notification service (ntfy or Discord).

• Read without signing in, and clear the site’s data in your browser whenever you like.
• Sign out at any time from the menu.
• Cancel a subscription from the Support page.

To ask for a copy of your data or for it to be deleted, contact [email protected]. Please don’t post these requests on the public Report a Problem page.

Screw Loose Novels is run by Lord Screw Loose, an independent author based in the United States, and handles personal information in line with applicable US federal and state privacy laws. Wherever you live, you can ask for a copy of your data, a correction or deletion at the address above.

You must be at least 13 to sign in, subscribe or publish. The site isn’t aimed at children under 13. If we learn that a child under 13 has signed in, we delete their account data.

When the site starts collecting something new, this page will be updated first, with a new date at the top.