Terms of Service

Effective

These Terms of Service (the “Terms”) govern access to and use of serial.link by authors and other professional users. By creating an author account or using the author platform, you agree to these Terms.

Please read the Privacy Policy, which explains how serial.link handles personal data.

1. Operator, scope, and payment roles

serial.link is operated by MALATRAIT HUGO, entrepreneur individuel, SIREN 892852989, SIRET 89285298900011, whose registered address is 7 rue du Collège d’Annecy, 84000 Avignon, France (“serial.link,” “we,” “us,” or “our”).

These Terms cover the serial.link marketing website and the software, hosting, author dashboard, publishing, storefront, membership-management, payment-integration, and related services we provide (the “Service”).

For these Terms:

  • an “Author” is a professional user of the Service;
  • a “Reader” is a person who visits or purchases access through an Author’s storefront;
  • a “Storefront” is an Author-controlled website or page made available using the Service;
  • a “Reader Transaction” is a transaction directly between an Author and a Reader for the Author’s content, membership, or related digital access;
  • a “Reader Payment Provider” is a third-party payment provider that an Author connects to the Service to accept Reader Transactions; and
  • a “Billing Provider” is a third-party provider used to process amounts an Author owes serial.link for access to the Service.

The Service provides software and infrastructure to Authors. serial.link does not sell, acquire title to, or resell Author content and is not the seller or merchant of record for Reader Transactions.

An Author’s purchase of a serial.link subscription is separate from any Reader Transaction. The Billing Provider used for an Author’s serial.link subscription may be different from the Reader Payment Provider used by that Author to receive payments from Readers.

These Terms govern the relationship between serial.link and Authors. They do not serve as the terms between an Author and that Author’s Readers.

2. Professional eligibility and acceptance

The Service is offered only for professional or business activity, including activity carried out by an independent or individual author. It is not offered to consumers acting wholly outside their trade or profession.

You may create an account only if you:

  • are at least 18 years old;
  • have legal capacity to enter into these Terms;
  • use the Service for a professional purpose; and
  • have authority to bind any business or organisation on whose behalf you act.

You must provide accurate information and keep it current. We may ask for reasonable evidence that you meet these conditions.

The Service is not available where providing or using it would breach applicable trade, export-control, or economic-sanctions laws. Availability of billing or payout features may also depend on the countries supported by our payment providers.

3. Accounts and security

You are responsible for activity carried out through your account and for maintaining control of your email account, sign-in codes, connected payment accounts, and devices. Tell us promptly at contact@serial.link if you suspect unauthorised use.

Your account is personal to you or the organisation you are authorised to represent. You must not sell, transfer, or assign it, or allow another person to use it, without our written permission. You must not share access in a way that compromises the Service or bypasses plan limits. We may suspend access while investigating a credible security or abuse risk.

You must keep your account email current because we use it for authentication and important Service or legal notices.

A subdomain supplied by serial.link is a revocable routing identifier, not a domain name or other property transferred to you. A requested subdomain, site name, or pen name must not impersonate another person, infringe rights, or mislead readers. We may refuse, reserve, suspend, or reassign an identifier where reasonably necessary for security, legal compliance, infringement, impersonation, infrastructure, or account closure. We will give reasonable notice where the circumstances allow.

4. The Service

serial.link is a software-as-a-service platform for authors. It lets Authors create and operate branded fiction websites and Storefronts, publish free or paid content, offer memberships or paid access, connect supported Reader Payment Providers, and manage their relationships with Readers.

serial.link provides the software and technical infrastructure for these activities. Authors independently operate their Storefronts and decide what lawful content and offers to make available, subject to these Terms.

The Service may provide technical integrations with third-party Reader Payment Providers. Providing an integration does not make serial.link a payment institution, payment processor, seller, reseller, merchant of record, escrow provider, or collection agent for Reader Transactions.

Features may change as the Service develops. We may add, change, or discontinue features where reasonably necessary for product development, security, legal compliance, payment-provider requirements, or changes to third-party services.

You remain responsible for deciding whether the Service is suitable for your activity and for keeping your own copies of material you cannot afford to lose. Unless we expressly agree otherwise, the Service does not include bespoke development, legal advice, tax advice, accounting advice, or guaranteed data recovery.

5. Author subscription and billing

Access to paid features may require an Author subscription. An Author subscription is a purchase of access to serial.link’s software and services. It is separate from Reader Transactions and does not give serial.link ownership of or a share in an Author’s Reader Transaction proceeds.

The current subscription price, billing period, included features, any trial, applicable taxes, renewal terms, and cancellation information are shown at checkout. Those checkout disclosures apply to the relevant order and may change for future orders or renewals, subject to applicable law and advance notice where required.

Author subscription checkout and payment are handled by Stripe Managed Payments, with Stripe acting as merchant of record for those transactions. Your payment is also subject to the terms and notices shown by Stripe at checkout. Stripe may calculate taxes, issue invoices, and administer payment-related refunds or disputes. You authorise recurring charges until cancellation where the checkout is presented as recurring.

Subscription payments are processed by the Billing Provider identified at checkout. The checkout and applicable payment terms will identify the entity collecting the payment and any applicable merchant-of-record arrangement. The Billing Provider may process payment information, calculate or collect taxes, issue payment documents, perform fraud checks, and administer payment-related matters according to its own terms.

The Billing Provider used by serial.link may change. A change of Billing Provider does not alter the separate relationship between an Author and that Author’s Readers.

Where a subscription is recurring, you authorise recurring charges until cancellation. You can cancel through the available billing portal or other cancellation method we provide. Unless the checkout terms or mandatory law provide otherwise, cancellation prevents future renewals and access continues until the end of the paid billing period.

Charges already incurred are non-refundable except where required by law or expressly stated at checkout.

We may suspend paid features where a subscription payment is overdue, reversed, fraudulent, or otherwise unsuccessful. We will normally provide notice and an opportunity to resolve an ordinary payment failure.

Paused membership. If your Author subscription ends, whether because a trial ended without payment, a payment could not be collected after the applicable retry period, or the subscription was cancelled, your Storefront goes offline and shows a paused page to Readers. Dashboard access becomes read-only. Content and settings are retained with no fixed retention window and remain available when you resume. You may resume at any time by purchasing a new subscription. A new subscription does not include a further free trial.

6. Storefronts, Readers, and Reader payments

Each Storefront is operated by the Author whose identity or business is presented on that Storefront.

When you offer a membership, chapter, subscription, or other paid digital access to Readers, the transaction is directly between you and the Reader.

For every Reader Transaction:

  • you are the seller and merchant of record;
  • the Reader’s contract is with you and not serial.link;
  • you determine the content or access being sold and its price;
  • you are responsible for accurate descriptions of your offer and any promised benefits;
  • you are responsible for renewal and cancellation disclosures;
  • you are responsible for Reader support, refunds, disputes, and chargebacks;
  • you are responsible for taxes and any legally required invoices or receipts;
  • you must provide appropriate Reader-facing terms, privacy information, and other legally required disclosures; and
  • you are responsible for compliance with applicable consumer-protection, e-commerce, advertising, accessibility, tax, content, and other laws.

Reader Payment Providers

To accept Reader Transactions, you may connect an account with a supported Reader Payment Provider, such as a payment account offered through an integration made available by serial.link.

Your account with a Reader Payment Provider is governed by a separate agreement directly between you and that provider. You are responsible for establishing and maintaining that account and for satisfying the provider’s identity-verification, business-verification, eligibility, sanctions, risk, and other requirements.

The Reader Payment Provider may charge its own processing or other fees and may delay, reserve, withhold, reverse, refund, block, or refuse transactions or payouts according to its terms and applicable law.

serial.link provides the technical integration between the Storefront and supported Reader Payment Providers. serial.link does not provide regulated payment services merely by providing that integration.

Reader Transaction proceeds are intended to be processed for and settled to the Author through the Author’s connected Reader Payment Provider account. serial.link does not take beneficial ownership of those proceeds.

While your Storefront is paused, you instruct and authorise serial.link, acting through the technical integration described in this section, to pause collection on recurring Reader Transactions connected through that integration, so that no further charges or invoices are created. serial.link does not cancel, refund, hold, or receive Reader Transaction proceeds in doing so. A Reader may resume their own subscription from the Storefront once you resume. Refunds or credits owed to a Reader for any period the Reader could not access remain your responsibility under this section.

serial.link currently charges no commission, application fee, or percentage-based transaction fee on Reader Transactions.

You remain responsible for payment-provider fees, chargebacks, refunds, negative balances, disputes, reserves, and payout eligibility associated with your Reader Payment Provider account.

Permitted use of Reader payments

Reader payment functionality may be used only for genuine transactions involving your own fiction, memberships, chapters, or digital access directly related to your Storefront.

You must not use Reader payment functionality to:

  • transmit money between individuals;
  • make personal or peer-to-peer payments;
  • provide money-transfer, remittance, escrow, or cash-advance services;
  • collect unrelated donations or charitable fundraising;
  • conduct crowdfunding;
  • sell stored value, cash equivalents, or payment instruments;
  • process payments on behalf of another seller;
  • sell goods, services, or content that you do not have the right to sell;
  • disguise the true nature of a transaction; or
  • circumvent the restrictions, verification requirements, or prohibited-business rules of a Reader Payment Provider.

serial.link may add or remove supported Reader Payment Providers or integrations. Availability may vary by country, account type, provider approval, or other eligibility requirements.

serial.link may provide technical records relating to a Reader Transaction but does not decide disputes between an Author, Reader, card issuer, bank, or Reader Payment Provider and does not guarantee their outcome.

You appoint serial.link to process Reader personal data on your behalf only as necessary to provide the Service. The Data Processing Addendum in the Appendix applies to that processing.

7. Your content and licence to serial.link

You retain ownership of the content you upload, create, or publish through the Service.

You represent and warrant that you own that content or otherwise have all rights, licences, permissions, and consents required to upload, reproduce, publish, distribute, display, monetise, and sell access to it through the Service.

You grant serial.link a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free licence to host, store, reproduce, format, transmit, display, cache, and technically adapt your content only as reasonably necessary to:

  • operate and provide the Service;
  • display your Storefront and content to Readers;
  • provide backups and infrastructure services;
  • secure the Service;
  • prevent fraud or abuse;
  • investigate reports or suspected violations;
  • enforce these Terms; and
  • comply with applicable law and lawful requirements from service or payment providers.

We may sublicense these rights only to service providers and contractors to the extent reasonably necessary to perform those functions.

This licence lasts while the content is hosted through the Service and for limited backup, security, dispute, and legal-retention periods after removal.

Mature themes

Fiction containing mature themes may be permitted where lawful and consistent with these Terms.

However, pornography or other mature-audience content, including literature, whose primary purpose is sexual gratification is prohibited.

The inclusion of sexual themes, romance, nudity, or sexual events as part of a broader fictional narrative does not by itself make a work prohibited under this paragraph, provided the work is not primarily designed for sexual gratification and otherwise complies with these Terms.

Where appropriate, you are responsible for applying content warnings, age classifications, or access restrictions required by law or by features we make available.

A warning, age classification, or paywall does not make otherwise prohibited content permissible.

8. Prohibited content and conduct

You must not use the Service to engage in unlawful, fraudulent, abusive, or deceptive activity.

Without limiting that rule, you must not use the Service to:

  • publish, distribute, sell access to, or promote content that is unlawful in a jurisdiction where you make it available;
  • publish pornography or other content, including literature or other media, whose primary purpose is sexual gratification;
  • publish sexual or sexualised content involving a minor, a person presented as a minor, or fictional characters presented as minors;
  • publish child sexual abuse material or content that sexually exploits children;
  • publish non-consensual intimate imagery;
  • publish content that sexualises, eroticises, promotes, or glorifies rape, sexual exploitation, or non-consensual sexual activity;
  • unlawfully threaten, promote, facilitate, or incite violence, terrorism, hatred, or other serious unlawful harm;
  • infringe copyright, trademark, privacy, publicity, confidentiality, or other rights;
  • plagiarise or knowingly publish content you do not have the right to use;
  • impersonate another person, organisation, author, or rights holder;
  • mislead Readers about who operates a Storefront, what they are purchasing, what access they will receive, or how they will be charged;
  • engage in fraud, scams, phishing, spam, deceptive marketing, or manipulation of payment systems;
  • distribute malware or malicious code;
  • harass, threaten, defraud, or unlawfully discriminate against another person;
  • use Reader payment functionality for a transaction prohibited under Section 6;
  • use a Reader Payment Provider integration for products or transactions that provider prohibits or restricts without required approval;
  • attempt to evade a payment-provider restriction by changing accounts, transaction descriptions, Storefronts, or payment routes;
  • use Reader data for purposes incompatible with the privacy information and lawful basis provided to those Readers;
  • sell, transfer, rent, sublicense, frame, or mirror the author dashboard or Service except where expressly permitted;
  • reverse engineer, decompile, disassemble, or attempt to derive non-public source code or underlying technology except where applicable law expressly permits it;
  • probe, attack, disrupt, overload, or bypass security measures, access controls, rate limits, or plan limits; or
  • use automated systems to scrape or access the Service in a manner that harms the Service, Readers, Authors, or other users.

Moderation and enforcement

We may investigate potential violations based on user reports, rights-holder complaints, payment-provider notices, security signals, automated systems, manual review, or other information reasonably available to us.

Depending on the circumstances, we may:

  • request additional information;
  • remove or restrict particular content;
  • apply warnings or access restrictions;
  • disable a particular payment or monetisation feature;
  • prevent a particular item or Storefront from being monetised;
  • temporarily restrict a Storefront;
  • suspend an account; or
  • terminate an account.

Where reasonably possible, we aim to use measures proportionate to the violation and may act against particular content or features instead of an entire account. Serious, repeated, fraudulent, illegal, payment-abusive, or safety-related violations may result in immediate account-level action.

We do not undertake a general obligation to proactively monitor all Author content except where applicable law requires otherwise.

Where appropriate and lawful, we will provide the affected Author with the material reason for an enforcement decision and a way to contest it by contacting contact@serial.link.

We may access, preserve, and disclose relevant content or account information where reasonably necessary to comply with law or legal process; investigate or enforce these Terms; respond to payment-provider, security, fraud, or abuse issues; respond to support or rights complaints; or protect the rights, property, or safety of serial.link, Authors, Readers, third parties, or the public.

Personal data remains subject to the Privacy Policy.

9. Reports, illegal content, and rights complaints

Anyone may report content or conduct that they reasonably believe violates these Terms, applicable law, or their rights by emailing contact@serial.link or by using any reporting mechanism we make available.

A report should include, where reasonably available:

  • the reporter’s name and contact information;
  • the exact URL or other information identifying the content or Storefront;
  • a sufficiently detailed explanation of the issue;
  • where illegality is alleged, the relevant legal basis and jurisdiction where reasonably known;
  • where intellectual-property infringement is alleged, identification of the protected work or right and the reporter’s relationship to the rights holder;
  • supporting material reasonably available to the reporter; and
  • if the reporter acts for another person or organisation, information showing their authority to do so.

Reports must be made in good faith. Knowingly submitting materially false, fraudulent, or abusive reports may itself violate these Terms or applicable law.

We may request additional information before taking action where it is reasonably necessary to evaluate a report.

Depending on the circumstances, we may remove or restrict content while a complaint is reviewed.

Where appropriate and legally permitted, we may provide the affected Author with information about the complaint and allow the Author to respond or provide evidence that the content is lawful or authorised.

If an Author believes content was removed or restricted because of an incorrect intellectual-property complaint, the Author may contact contact@serial.link with the relevant URL, an explanation of their rights to the material, and supporting information.

We may restore content where we reasonably determine that a complaint was mistaken, withdrawn, insufficiently supported, or otherwise does not justify continued restriction.

We may suspend or terminate Authors responsible for repeated or serious infringement or other repeated violations.

Nothing in this section prevents us from taking immediate action where reasonably necessary to address child sexual exploitation, fraud, security threats, imminent harm, legal requirements, or payment-provider obligations.

The Service, software, visual identity, and documentation—excluding author content—belong to serial.link or its licensors. These Terms give you a limited, revocable, non-transferable right to use the Service for your professional activity. They do not transfer our intellectual property to you.

Feedback is voluntary. If you give us feedback, you permit us to use it without restriction or payment, provided we do not identify you publicly without permission.

11. Third-party services

The Service relies on and may integrate with third-party services, including hosting providers, communications providers, billing providers, payment providers, identity or verification services, analytics providers, and other infrastructure providers.

These providers currently include Cloudflare, PlanetScale, Resend, and Stripe. Their services and terms may affect availability or particular features.

We may add, replace, or discontinue third-party providers as the Service develops.

Where you choose or are required to connect a third-party account to serial.link, your relationship with that provider is governed by the provider’s separate agreement, policies, and privacy notices.

You are responsible for maintaining any third-party account you connect and for complying with that provider’s requirements.

Third-party providers may independently require identity or business verification, sanctions screening, underwriting, restricted-business review, reserves, additional documentation, or other eligibility checks.

A provider may approve, reject, suspend, restrict, or terminate your use of its services independently of serial.link. We do not control those decisions and cannot guarantee that a particular provider will approve or continue supporting you.

A third-party provider’s decision may make a particular feature unavailable even where the rest of the Service remains available.

Links to third-party websites or services are provided for convenience or functionality and do not mean that serial.link controls or endorses those third parties.

12. Privacy and confidential information

Our Privacy Policy explains how we process personal data as a controller. When we process reader personal data on your behalf, the Appendix governs that processing.

Each party may receive non-public information that is confidential by its nature or circumstances. The receiving party will use reasonable care to protect it and use it only for the relationship under these Terms, except where disclosure is authorised or required by law. This does not cover information that is public without breach, independently developed, or lawfully received without a duty of confidence.

13. Availability, maintenance, and beta features

We aim to provide a reliable Service but do not promise uninterrupted or error-free operation. Maintenance, incidents, internet failures, provider failures, abuse prevention, and events outside our reasonable control may affect availability.

Neither party is responsible for delay or failure caused by an event beyond its reasonable control, provided the affected party takes reasonable steps to limit the impact and resumes performance when reasonably possible. This does not excuse payment obligations already due.

Features labelled beta, preview, or experimental may be incomplete, change materially, or be withdrawn. Do not rely on them for critical operations without your own safeguards.

14. Restriction, suspension, termination, and account closure

You may stop using the Service and request account closure by emailing contact@serial.link. Cancellation of billing, disconnection of a Reader Payment Provider, and deletion of account data are separate actions unless the interface expressly combines them. Account closure pauses recurring Reader Transactions created through the integration in the same way as a paused membership under Section 5, and you remain responsible for informing and refunding Readers affected by the closure.

We may restrict particular content, Storefronts, features, payment integrations, or monetisation capabilities without suspending your entire account where a narrower action is reasonably sufficient.

We may suspend or terminate access immediately where reasonably necessary because of:

  • unlawful activity;
  • fraud or payment abuse;
  • a serious security risk;
  • prohibited content;
  • serious or repeated intellectual-property infringement;
  • a material breach of these Terms;
  • non-payment of amounts owed to serial.link;
  • conduct that creates material risk to Readers, third parties, serial.link, or a service provider;
  • an attempt to circumvent enforcement or payment-provider restrictions; or
  • a legal, regulatory, payment-network, or service-provider requirement.

For other remediable violations, we will normally provide reasonable notice and an opportunity to cure where circumstances allow.

If a Reader Payment Provider restricts or terminates your payment account, serial.link may disable the affected payment integration or Reader payment functionality. This does not necessarily terminate your access to unrelated parts of the Service.

Where reasonably possible and legally permitted, we will provide the material reason for a serial.link enforcement action and a method to contest it.

Termination of your serial.link account does not eliminate obligations you already owe Readers, payment providers, tax authorities, rights holders, or other third parties.

On account closure, your right to use the Service ends. We aim to remove active account data and hosted content within 30 days of a verified closure request, and backup copies normally expire within 90 days.

We may retain limited information where required for legal claims, fraud prevention, abuse prevention, accounting, regulatory compliance, or other legal obligations.

You should export or copy anything you need before closure.

Sections that by their nature should survive termination—including accrued payment obligations, Reader Transaction responsibilities, intellectual-property provisions, confidentiality, disclaimers, liability, indemnities, disputes, and the Data Processing Addendum—continue to apply.

15. Warranties and disclaimers

We will provide the Service with reasonable care and skill.

Except for that commitment and rights that cannot lawfully be excluded, the Service is provided “as is” and “as available.”

We do not guarantee:

  • particular revenue, readership, discoverability, or search ranking;
  • that any Reader will purchase or continue purchasing an Author’s content;
  • successful payment, settlement, or payout of any Reader Transaction;
  • approval or continued eligibility with any Billing Provider or Reader Payment Provider;
  • that a particular payment method or payment provider will remain available;
  • uninterrupted or error-free operation;
  • that the Service will meet every legal or regulatory requirement applicable to your particular business; or
  • preservation of data beyond the commitments expressly stated in these Terms and the Privacy Policy.

You remain responsible for your content, business decisions, Reader relationships, Storefront obligations, backups, payment-provider relationships, and legal compliance.

16. Liability

Nothing in these Terms excludes or limits liability that cannot lawfully be excluded or limited, including liability for fraud, fraudulent misrepresentation, wilful misconduct, or death or personal injury caused by negligence where applicable.

Subject to that rule, neither party is liable for indirect or consequential loss, or for loss of profit, revenue, business opportunity, anticipated savings, goodwill, or data, except to the extent such loss was reasonably foreseeable and directly caused by a breach for which exclusion is prohibited.

Subject to the same rule, serial.link’s total aggregate liability arising out of or relating to the Service and these Terms is limited to the fees paid or payable by you for the Service during the 12 months immediately preceding the event giving rise to the claim. If you paid no fees in that period, the cap is EUR 100.

17. Indemnity

To the extent caused by your act, omission, content, Storefront, or business activity, you will indemnify serial.link against third-party claims, damages, liabilities, and reasonable costs arising from:

  • your content or alleged infringement of third-party rights;
  • products, memberships, or access you offer to Readers;
  • your contracts or disputes with Readers;
  • refunds, chargebacks, or payment disputes for which you are responsible;
  • taxes, disclosures, or regulatory obligations relating to your Reader Transactions;
  • your misuse of Reader personal data;
  • your breach of Sections 6–9;
  • fraud or unlawful transactions associated with your Storefront; or
  • assessments, penalties, fees, or claims imposed by a payment provider, financial institution, payment network, or other third party because of your activity or breach of their applicable rules.

This indemnity applies only to the extent the relevant claim or loss was caused by your act or omission.

We will give you reasonably prompt notice of a covered claim, allow reasonable participation in the defence, and will not settle a claim in a manner that admits your fault or imposes non-monetary obligations directly on you without your consent.

18. Changes to these Terms

We may update these Terms to reflect changes to the Service, law, security, or our business. The current version and effective date are published here. We will give reasonable advance notice of material changes where practicable and request renewed acceptance where required. Changes do not retroactively reduce rights already accrued.

We may deliver Service and legal notices through the dashboard or to the current email address on your account. You consent to receiving those notices electronically. This does not replace any form of notice that mandatory law requires by another method.

19. Governing law and disputes

These Terms are governed by French law, without regard to conflict-of-law rules. Before filing a claim, each party should make a good-faith attempt to resolve it by contacting contact@serial.link. Courts with jurisdiction under applicable French procedural law have jurisdiction over disputes.

The parties are independent contractors. These Terms do not create a partnership, joint venture, franchise, employment, fiduciary, or general agency relationship, and neither party may bind the other. The limited data-processing appointment in the Appendix and the roles of payment providers described above are not changed by this paragraph.

If any provision is unenforceable, the remainder stays effective. A failure to enforce a provision is not a waiver. You may not assign these Terms without our written consent; we may assign them as part of a reorganisation, transfer of the Service, or change of legal entity, with notice where required. These Terms, their Appendix, and checkout disclosures form the agreement about the Service and replace prior discussions on the same subject.

20. Publisher, hosting, and contact

Publisher and Service operator: MALATRAIT HUGO, entrepreneur individuel
SIREN: 892852989
SIRET: 89285298900011
Registered address: 7 rue du Collège d’Annecy, 84000 Avignon, France
Publication director: Hugo Malatrait
Contact: contact@serial.link

Hosting provider: Cloudflare, Inc., 101 Townsend Street, San Francisco, California 94107, United States; telephone +1 650 319 8930.

Appendix — Data Processing Addendum

This Data Processing Addendum (“DPA”) forms part of the Terms when serial.link processes personal data on behalf of an author in connection with that author’s storefront and readers.

A.1 Roles and instructions

The author is the controller and serial.link is the processor for reader personal data processed to provide the Service. Each party will comply with the data-protection laws that apply to it, including the GDPR where applicable.

serial.link will process personal data only on the author’s documented instructions in these Terms, the author’s use and configuration of the Service, and support requests, unless Union or Member State law requires otherwise. If legally permitted, we will inform the author before processing required by law. We will promptly tell the author if we believe an instruction infringes applicable data-protection law.

Reader Payment Providers and Billing Providers may separately process personal data under their own terms, privacy notices, and data-protection roles. Their role as controller, processor, joint controller, or other regulated party is determined by the applicable provider agreement and law. Nothing in this DPA changes the independent legal obligations of an Author or a third-party payment provider.

Where serial.link receives limited Reader Transaction information from a Reader Payment Provider—such as transaction identifiers, membership status, payment status, billing country, or similar information—we process that information only as described in these Terms, the Privacy Policy, and this DPA.

A.2 Processing details

  • Subject and purpose: hosting and presenting the author’s storefront; reader authentication; follows and preferences; membership access; subscription and payment-status administration; transactional communication; support; security; and related operation of the Service.
  • Duration: for the term of the author’s use of the Service, plus deletion, backup, and legal-retention periods described in the Privacy Policy.
  • Data subjects: prospective, current, and former readers or members; people who contact the author through supported features; and authorised storefront collaborators if introduced later.
  • Personal data: identity and contact data such as email, name, or nickname; authentication and technical data; follows and preferences; subscription, entitlement, transaction-reference, and billing-country data; support communications; and other data the author submits or causes readers to submit through the Service.
  • Special-category data: not intentionally required by the Service. The author must not instruct serial.link to process it unless the parties first put appropriate safeguards in place.

A.3 Confidentiality and security

serial.link ensures that people authorised to process personal data are bound by confidentiality and access it only as needed. We maintain technical and organisational measures appropriate to the risk, including access controls, encryption in transit, managed infrastructure protections, authentication safeguards, logging, backups, and procedures for security incidents. Security measures may evolve without reducing the overall level of protection materially.

A.4 Subprocessors

The author gives general written authorisation for serial.link to use subprocessors needed to operate the Service. Current core subprocessors are identified in the Privacy Policy. We will require subprocessors to protect personal data under obligations materially equivalent to this DPA and remain responsible for their performance as required by applicable law.

We will provide notice of a material new subprocessor before it begins processing where reasonably practicable. An author may raise a reasonable, documented data-protection objection by emailing contact@serial.link. The parties will try in good faith to resolve it; if no reasonable alternative is available, either party may terminate the affected Service.

A.5 International transfers

Where reader personal data is transferred outside the European Economic Area, serial.link will use a lawful transfer mechanism, such as an adequacy decision or the European Commission’s Standard Contractual Clauses, together with supplementary measures where appropriate.

A.6 Assistance and incidents

Taking into account the nature of processing and information available to us, serial.link will reasonably assist the author with:

  • responding to requests from data subjects;
  • security, breach-notification, data-protection impact assessment, and regulator-consultation duties; and
  • information reasonably necessary to demonstrate compliance with Article 28 GDPR.

We will notify the author without undue delay after becoming aware of a personal-data breach affecting reader personal data and provide available information reasonably needed for the author’s assessment and notifications. The author remains responsible for determining whether and how to notify readers or authorities.

A.7 Deletion and return

At the end of the Service, at the author’s choice and subject to available functionality, serial.link will delete or return reader personal data and delete remaining copies, unless law requires retention. Active-system deletion and backup expiry follow the periods in the Privacy Policy. The author should obtain any needed export before closure and may contact us for reasonable assistance.

A.8 Audits

On reasonable written request, serial.link will provide information needed to demonstrate compliance with this DPA. If that is insufficient, the author may conduct an audit no more than once annually, or after a relevant breach, subject to reasonable advance notice, confidentiality, security safeguards, minimal disruption, and reimbursement of reasonable costs. The parties may satisfy this requirement through current independent reports or certifications where available.

A.9 Author obligations

The author is responsible for having a lawful basis and giving required notices and choices to readers; issuing lawful instructions; responding to data-subject requests; configuring the Service appropriately; and not uploading unnecessary or unlawfully collected personal data. The author must notify serial.link before using the Service for processing that presents unusual high risks.