What Does Ream's Limited License mean?

Ream is a subscription platform by fiction authors for fiction authors.

In order to empower our authors, you must have control and ownership over your stories. That's why we understand it may be jarring to read the section of our Terms of Service that discusses the Limited License our authors make to Ream.

With this limited license, we simply require your permission to host, resize, and display your stories worldwide. You keep full ownership over your stories and what you post on Ream. 

The state of copyright law requires us to receive a comprehensive license in order to operate Ream's services, including hosting your stories and providing and promoting stories to your readers. This is standard for any publishing platform, and our license is very similar to those of other publishing platforms.

We require a royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive, worldwide license for your creations while you have an author page on Ream. This allows us to store your stories on our servers and show them to your readers. We may also need to resize your stories to help show them to readers. 

Those three words in bold above can seem scary and confusing. Why do we need a royalty-free, perpetual, and irrevocable limited license to the content you share on Ream? Let's break it down and share the reasons behind it and why they are designed to ensure we can offer the best possible service to our authors and readers.

Perpetual

This license is perpetual so that if a backup copy of your story remains in our servers, we aren't liable for infringement. This very commonly takes place after an author unpublishes their work from Ream. They still may have a draft stored on the platform but it is not visible to any readers.

Irrevocable 

In addition, this license is irrevocable because Ream performs regular server backups to protect the data of our authors and readers. If you request to remove your story from the site, we won't be liable for infringement if a copy of your story remains unpublished on an old backup of our servers. 

Royalty-free

Lastly, this license is royalty-free which means that our authors can't ask us for payment just because we have copies of your stories on our site. This does not affect the revenue you generate from your readers. This simply means that Ream doesn't have to pay you simply for hosting a copy of your content on our servers. Without this agreement, it would be possible for authors to request payment from us for having a copy of their book on our servers even if they haven't made any money on the platform.

Please note that this license does not give us ownership or control over your stories. You can still license your stories to anyone else and publish them on any platform you desire.

We hope this article helped to alleviate your concerns. Please contact us if you have more questions.

Following is the direct quote from Ream's TOS:

"Limited License to Ream

In order to display your Content on Ream, and to allow other users to enjoy them, you grant us certain rights to your Content.

We may need to make some changes to your Content to make it compatible with different networks, devices, services, or media. This includes editing image resolution so it can be viewed on different devices.

When you share content with other users on Ream, you give us the right to display, perform, and distribute it, and you also give other users the right to access and use it as allowed by the features of Ream and your own publishing agreement with your readers.

For instance, if you publish chapters to a paid tier, then Ream has the right to share these chapters with readers who have paid for a membership in that tier. If you publish chapters for free and make them available publicly, then Ream has the right to share these stories/or sections of stories with all readers who access Ream.

Ream does not have the right to share your work with readers who have not paid for it on the payment terms that you set. In addition, this limited license has no effect on the income you make on Ream which is based on the payments readers make to you in exchange for access to your stories, community, and other content. Ream takes a simple 10% fee + payment processing from your net revenue.

These rights to share and distribute your content are granted to us and other users on a royalty-free, perpetual, non-exclusive, irrevocable, and global basis.

This is just a license - your ownership of the Content is not affected. We will never try to steal your stories, use them in an exploitative way, or seek to profit off of them by any means other than facilitating subscriptions and offerings you’ve configured on Ream.

In addition, you can unpublish chapters and delete content from Ream at any time and we will no longer be able to share your work with readers as it will be made unavailable to audiences on Ream both free and paid. You can also change who has access to your content at any time. Maybe you decide to publish a story to one tier one month and take it down from that tier the next month. 

This limited license is not exclusive to Ream and enables you to publish content on all other desired platforms."

If you have any questions, please contact our Support Team at support@reamstories.com.