Privacy Policy

Effective Date:

Chapter (“Chapter,” “we,” “us,” or “our”) provides tools for readers and book clubs to organize their reading, participate in book clubs, communicate with other members, track reading progress, vote on books, plan meetings, and discover books and nearby bookstores.

This Privacy Policy explains what information Chapter collects, how we use and share it, and the choices available to you.

1. Information We Collect

Account and Profile Information

When you create or use a Chapter account, we may collect information such as:

  • Your name or display name
  • Your email address
  • A unique account or user identifier
  • Profile information you choose to provide

Passwords are handled through our authentication provider and are not stored by Chapter in readable form.

Reading and Bookshelf Information

When you use Chapter's reading features, we may collect information such as:

  • Books added to your bookshelf
  • Want to Read, Currently Reading, and Finished status
  • Personal ratings
  • Reading notes
  • Reading dates
  • Reading progress, including page, percentage, chapter, or audiobook time
  • Library information you choose to import from supported services such as Goodreads or StoryGraph

Book Club Information

If you join or create a book club, we may collect information necessary to provide club features, including:

  • Club memberships
  • Club roles and ownership
  • Book recommendations and nominations
  • Votes and voting activity
  • Club reading selections
  • Meeting information
  • RSVPs
  • Club reading progress

Some club information is shared with other members of the same club as part of Chapter's normal functionality.

Messages and Other User Content

Chapter allows members of a book club to communicate with one another. We therefore store messages and other content you choose to submit through Chapter.

These communications are intended for members of the applicable book club and are not used for advertising or cross-app tracking.

Notifications and Device Information

If you enable notifications, Chapter may process:

  • Push notification tokens
  • Device registration information needed to deliver notifications
  • Notification preferences

Apple Push Notification service may also process information as necessary to deliver notifications to your device.

Location Information

Chapter may offer features that help you find bookstores or other relevant places near you.

If you choose to use a nearby-location feature and grant location permission, Chapter may process your device's location to provide nearby results. Location information may be transmitted to service providers that help fulfill the requested search.

Chapter does not use location information for advertising or cross-app tracking.

You can change Chapter's location access at any time through your device settings.

Technical and Service Information

Our systems and service providers may process limited technical information necessary to operate, protect, diagnose, and improve the service, such as network requests, error information, security events, and similar operational information.

2. How We Use Information

We use information collected through Chapter to:

  • Create and authenticate accounts
  • Maintain user profiles
  • Sync bookshelves and reading information
  • Save ratings and reading progress
  • Create and operate book clubs
  • Provide club messaging
  • Manage nominations and voting
  • Schedule meetings and process RSVPs
  • Deliver notifications
  • Import or export reading-library information at your request
  • Provide nearby bookstore features
  • Maintain the security and reliability of Chapter
  • Diagnose technical problems
  • Provide user support
  • Comply with applicable legal obligations

We do not use your personal information for cross-app advertising tracking.

3. Third-Party Services

Chapter relies on service providers to operate certain features. These may include:

Supabase

Used for services such as authentication, database storage, account information, and application backend functionality.

Google Books

Used to search for books and retrieve book-related information such as titles, authors, descriptions, identifiers, and cover images.

Location and Place Search Providers

When nearby bookstore functionality is used, Chapter may use third-party location or place-search services, such as Google Places, to return relevant nearby results.

Apple Services

Apple services may be used for functions such as App Store distribution and push notifications.

Third-party services may process information according to their own privacy policies and terms. We use service providers only as necessary to provide and operate Chapter.

4. How We Share Information

We do not sell your personal information.

We may share information:

  • With service providers that perform functions on our behalf
  • With other members of your book club when necessary to provide club features
  • When you expressly direct Chapter to share or transmit information
  • When required by law, legal process, or a valid governmental request
  • When reasonably necessary to investigate fraud, abuse, security threats, or violations of applicable terms
  • In connection with a merger, acquisition, financing, reorganization, or transfer of the Chapter service, subject to appropriate privacy protections

We do not share personal information with data brokers for cross-app tracking.

5. Book Club Privacy

Chapter includes both personal and shared information.

Personal bookshelf information, ratings, notes, and certain reading-progress details are associated with your account.

Some information is intentionally shared with members of your book club, including club membership, nominations, votes where applicable, messages, meetings, and other collaborative club activity.

Chapter may provide clubs with aggregated or anonymous reading-progress information. Individual private reading-progress values are not displayed to other members merely because a user participates in an aggregated progress summary.

6. Data Retention

We retain personal information for as long as reasonably necessary to provide Chapter, maintain your account, comply with legal obligations, resolve disputes, maintain security, and enforce applicable agreements.

When you delete your account, Chapter removes or de-identifies personal information associated with the account in accordance with our deletion process.

Limited information may remain temporarily in backups, security records, or system logs until those records are rotated or deleted.

7. Account and Data Deletion

You can request deletion of your Chapter account directly within the app:

Profile → Your Account → Delete Account

Account deletion removes your personal account and associated personal information, subject to limited retention required for security, legal obligations, or preservation of shared book-club history.

When shared information must remain so that a club continues to function, Chapter may remove your identity or preserve only non-identifying information. For example, anonymous final vote totals or a previously selected winning book may remain after an account is deleted.

If you own a book club with other members, Chapter may require you to transfer ownership before deleting your account. If you are the only member of a club you own, you may be asked to confirm deletion of that club as part of the account-deletion process.

8. Your Choices

Depending on the feature, you may be able to:

  • Edit your profile information
  • Update or remove bookshelf information
  • Change reading progress
  • Manage notification preferences
  • Disable notifications through iOS settings
  • Disable location access through iOS settings
  • Leave book clubs
  • Delete your Chapter account from within the app

You may also contact us regarding questions about your personal information.

9. Security

We use reasonable administrative and technical safeguards designed to protect information handled through Chapter.

However, no internet transmission or electronic storage system can be guaranteed to be completely secure.

10. Children's Privacy

Chapter is not directed to children under 13.

We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. If we learn that we have collected personal information from a child under 13 in circumstances where such collection is not permitted, we will take appropriate steps to delete it.

11. International Processing

Chapter and its service providers may process information in the United States or other countries where service providers operate.

Privacy protections and legal requirements may differ between jurisdictions.

12. Changes to This Privacy Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy as Chapter evolves or as legal and regulatory requirements change.

If we make material changes, we will update the effective date and make the revised policy available through our website and/or app.

13. Contact Us

If you have questions about this Privacy Policy or Chapter's privacy practices, contact us at:

Email: chapterforbookclubs@gmail.com
Website: https://chapterbookclub.com