Terms of service

Who we are

Stray Book Society (“we”, “us”, “the Society”) is operated by [Company legal name], a [State] [limited liability company] with its registered address at [Business address].

These Terms of Service, together with our Subscription & Renewal Terms, Shipping & Returns policy and Privacy Policy, form the agreement between you and us. By creating an account, buying a subscription or gift, or otherwise using our website, you agree to them. If you don’t agree, please don’t use the service.

Accounts and eligibility

• You must be at least 18 years old to create an account or make a purchase, and you need a delivery address in the United States, its territories, or an APO/FPO/DPO address.
• Give us accurate information and keep it up to date, especially your email and shipping address.
• Keep your login details secure. You can turn on two-step verification in your account settings. Tell us straight away at [support email] if you think someone else has accessed your account.
• One account per person. You may add up to four reader profiles to your account for people in your household. If you add a profile for a child, you are responsible for choosing what is appropriate for them, and you are the account holder for everything we send.
• You are responsible for activity on your account unless it results from our failure to keep our systems secure.

What we send you

• We choose the books. Each box contains books selected from our inventory to match the preferences in your reader profiles. The element of surprise is part of the service, so you can’t pick individual titles.
• Books are pre-loved. Unless a book is described as Fresh Ink (new), it has had at least one previous owner. We grade every copy and only send books graded Like New or Very Good, or Good if you opt in to well-loved copies. Minor signs of age or handling are normal and are not defects.
• Content notes are best effort. We tag books with content notes drawn from our own reading and reader reports, and we never knowingly send a book carrying a content note you have marked as a hard no. Tags can be incomplete. If a book slips through, tell us and use the Bad Match Guarantee described in the Subscription Terms.
• Previously read lists. We exclude books you’ve told us you’ve read and books you’ve already received from us. Matching relies on the information you give us, so occasional duplicates can happen; see duplicates.
• The books are yours. Once delivered, every book is yours to keep, give away or trade back to us.

Subscriptions and billing

Paid subscriptions renew automatically at the price and frequency you chose until you cancel. You can skip a box, pause, change your plan or cancel online at any time from your account. Prices include shipping within the US; sales tax is added where required by law and shown before you pay.

Payments are processed by our payment provider, Stripe. We never see or store your full card number. The full rules for renewals, changes, cancellations and refunds are in our Subscription & Renewal Terms, which form part of this agreement.

Gift subscriptions

• Gift subscriptions are prepaid for 3, 6 or 12 boxes and never renew automatically. When the last gift box ships, the recipient can choose to start a paid plan, but nothing happens unless they do.
• Each gift has a unique code. Anyone with the code can redeem it, so share it only with the recipient. We can’t replace a code that has already been redeemed by someone else.
• Gift codes do not expire. [Confirm: gift expiry and unclaimed-property rules vary by state.]
• You can cancel a gift for a full refund any time before it is redeemed. Once redeemed, the gift belongs to the recipient, and refunds for unshipped boxes go to the original purchaser.

Credits, codes and referrals

• Account credit from referrals, trade-ins, the Bad Match Guarantee or goodwill gestures is applied to your future charges. It has no cash value, can’t be transferred or sold, and is lost if you delete your account.
• Promotional codes have the conditions shown when we offer them (for example, first box only, or an expiry date). Only one code applies per charge, and codes can’t be combined with a referral discount.
• Referral rewards are for genuine new members. Your friend gets a discount on their first box, and you receive credit when their first payment succeeds. Self-referrals, multiple accounts and posting codes on coupon sites to farm rewards aren’t allowed, and we may remove rewards earned that way.

Trade-ins

• Trade-in estimates are based on the condition and format you tell us. Final credit depends on our inspection when the books arrive, using the grading on our Our Story page.
• We provide a prepaid shipping label for trade-ins of 10 or more books. For smaller trade-ins, you pay the postage.
• Books we can’t accept are passed to our donation partners or recycled. We don’t return them.
• By sending books you confirm they are yours to give and that you transfer ownership to us when we accept them.

Book Passport and your notes

• Each book carries a passport code. Looking up a code shows the book’s journey: the cities it has been stamped in, how members rated it and any notes they chose to leave. We never show street addresses. You can switch off your city in your privacy settings, and your stamps will then show your state only.
• Notes, ratings and display names you submit are reviewed before they appear publicly. You keep ownership of what you write, and you give us a worldwide, royalty-free licence to display, reproduce and adapt it on our site, in our emails and on printed materials connected with the Society.
• Don’t post anything unlawful, hateful, harassing, sexually explicit, misleading or spammy, anyone’s personal information, or spoilers without warning. We can decline or remove any note.

Using the site fairly

You agree not to:

• access accounts or data that aren’t yours, or try to get around our security, rate limits or access controls;
• scrape, copy or harvest content or data by automated means without our written permission;
• interfere with the site’s operation, including by overloading it or introducing malicious code;
• use the service for fraud, including using stolen payment details or abusing refunds, gifts or credits;
• resell our boxes or books commercially without our permission.

If you discover a security vulnerability, please report it under our vulnerability disclosure policy. Good-faith research that follows that policy is welcome.

Our brand and content

The Stray Book Society name, logo, Dewey the dog, our site design, text, illustrations and software are owned by us or our licensors and protected by intellectual property laws. You may not use them without our written permission, except to refer to us honestly.

The books we send are works by their authors and publishers. The cover designs shown on our site are our own illustrations generated for display and are not the publishers’ artwork.

Disclaimers

We provide the service with reasonable care and skill. Beyond that, and to the extent the law allows, the website and service are provided “as is” and “as available”. We don’t guarantee that you will enjoy any particular book, that matches will always suit you, that content notes are complete, or that the website will be uninterrupted or error-free. Nothing in these terms limits rights you have under consumer protection laws that can’t be waived.

Limits on liability

To the extent permitted by law, we are not liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential or punitive damages, or for loss of profits or data, arising from your use of the service. Our total liability for any claim relating to the service is limited to the amount you paid us in the 12 months before the claim arose. These limits don’t apply to liability that can’t be limited by law, such as liability for fraud or for death or personal injury caused by negligence.

Disputes and governing law

If you have a problem, please contact us first at [support email] and give us 30 days to try to resolve it informally. These terms are governed by the laws of the State of [State], without regard to its conflict-of-law rules, and subject to any mandatory consumer protection laws of the state where you live. Either party may bring a qualifying claim in small claims court.

[Decide with your lawyer whether to include an arbitration agreement and class-action waiver. If you do, it needs clear disclosure, an opt-out window and attention to state rules.]

Ending the agreement

You can cancel your subscription online at any time and delete your account from your privacy settings. We may suspend or close an account that seriously or repeatedly breaks these terms, is used for fraud, or abuses our staff. If we close your account without cause, or because we stop operating the service, we will refund any prepaid boxes that have not shipped.

Changes to these terms

We may update these terms to reflect changes in the law or in how we operate. For material changes, we will email you and post a notice on the site at least 30 days before they take effect. If you don’t agree, you can cancel before the changes apply. The date at the top of this page shows when the terms were last updated.

Contact

Questions about these terms? Email [support email], use our contact form, or write to [Company legal name], [Business address].