Familiar

Acceptable Use Policy

Last updated: October 12, 2026

This Acceptable Use Policy explains what you may and may not do when you use Familiar, the services operated by Infernal Moose Publishing, LLC (doing business as Familiar) ("we," "us," or "our"). It applies to everyone who uses Familiar: publishers and their staff, authors and other contributors, agents, ARC readers, people who submit manuscripts, and anyone who fills in a form on a page hosted by Familiar.

This policy is part of our Terms of Service. If you break it, we may take the actions described in Enforcement. If you manage an organization on Familiar, you are responsible for how the people you invite use it.

We do not review content before it is published, and we are not obliged to monitor what you do. When we learn that something breaks this policy, we act on it.

Contents

  1. Content that is never allowed
  2. Author pages, book links and other public pages
  3. Email to readers and other contacts
  4. ARC campaigns: rules for publishers and authors
  5. ARC campaigns: rules for readers
  6. Submissions and reading fees
  7. AI features
  8. Connected accounts and distribution
  9. Security and fair use of the service
  10. Copyright and other intellectual property
  11. Enforcement
  12. Reporting a problem
  13. Changes to this policy

1. Content That Is Never Allowed

Wherever you put it on Familiar (a public page, a manuscript, a message, a contract, an email or a file), you may not upload, publish or send content that:

  • sexually exploits or endangers children, in any form, including fiction, drawings or AI-generated images;
  • is illegal where you are or where it is shown, or promotes or facilitates illegal activity;
  • threatens, harasses or bullies anyone, or encourages others to do so;
  • attacks people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, caste, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability or age;
  • publishes someone's private information without their permission, such as a home address, phone number, financial or tax details, or government identification numbers;
  • shares intimate images of a person without their consent;
  • defames a real person, or presents false statements of fact about them as true;
  • infringes someone else's copyright, trademark, right of publicity or other rights;
  • contains malware, or links to phishing, malware or sites built to deceive the people who follow them.

Books can deal with difficult subjects. A manuscript that depicts violence, crime or abuse as part of a story is not a violation by itself. What this section prohibits is using Familiar to harm real people or to do something illegal. Child sexual abuse material is the exception: it is never allowed in any context, and we report it to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children as the law requires.

2. Author Pages, Book Links and Other Public Pages

Some things you create on Familiar are public: author pages (familiar.pub/p/…), universal book links (familiar.pub/b/…), press kits, contributor bios, cover polls, submission window listings and ARC listings. Anyone can see them, and search engines and social networks can index and preview them. On these pages you may not:

  • Impersonate anyone. Only create a page for an author, pen name or publisher you are, represent, or have permission to promote. Some author-name addresses are reserved, and we release them only after verifying who is asking. Do not try to get around that reservation with a misspelling or a lookalike name.
  • Mislead readers. No fake reviews, testimonials, endorsements, awards, bestseller claims or sales figures. No pricing, preorder or release-date information you know is false. Book links must lead to the book they name.
  • Hide what a link is. Links, buttons and embedded media must go where they say they go. Do not use a page to redirect readers to unrelated offers, collect passwords or payment details, or distribute downloads other than the files you describe.
  • Embed content you don't have the right to share. Embedded videos, audio and newsletters must be your own or shared with permission, and must follow the hosting service's own rules.
  • Rig cover polls. Don't vote repeatedly, script votes, or present a poll's results as something they are not.

Contact forms, signup forms and ARC applications on public pages exist so readers can reach you. Use what they send only for the purpose the reader gave it for (see the next section).

3. Email to Readers and Other Contacts

Familiar sends some email on your behalf, such as signup confirmations, reader magnets, release-day reminders, ARC invitations, contributor notices and submission replies. It can also sync reader signups to an email service you connect (MailerLite, Kit or Mailchimp). For the email lists and contacts you manage through Familiar, you are the sender. You are responsible for complying with the email and privacy laws that apply to you and your recipients, including the US CAN-SPAM Act, Canada's Anti-Spam Legislation (CASL), and the GDPR and UK GDPR where they apply. In particular:

  • Only add people who agreed to hear from you, or whom you are otherwise legally allowed to contact. Do not upload, import or invite purchased, rented, scraped or borrowed lists, including as ARC invitations or reader-list imports.
  • Use an address only for what the person signed up for. A reader who asked for a release reminder has not joined your newsletter.
  • Honor unsubscribes and opt-outs everywhere you hold that person's address, not just in Familiar.
  • Do not use forged headers, misleading subject lines, or a sender name that hides who you are.
  • Do not use Familiar to send bulk unsolicited email, or anything that pushes our bounce or complaint rates high enough to harm delivery for other customers. We may pause sending from an account to protect delivery while we investigate.

4. ARC Campaigns: Rules for Publishers and Authors

Advance reader copies (ARCs) are free copies given in exchange for an honest review. US law treats the free copy as a material connection between you and the reviewer. The Federal Trade Commission's rule on consumer reviews and testimonials (16 CFR Part 465) and its Endorsement Guides (16 CFR Part 255) govern how you may ask for and use those reviews. When you run an ARC campaign on Familiar:

  • Ask for honest reviews, not positive ones. You may not make a copy, a future invitation, a giveaway entry or any other benefit depend, openly or by implication, on a review being positive or reaching a certain rating.
  • Don't penalize honest reviews. You may decline or block a reader for not reviewing, for sharing files, or for abusive conduct. You may not block, deny or downgrade a reader because their honest review was negative, or tell readers that you will.
  • Let reviewers disclose. Never ask a reader to hide that they received a free copy. Retailers and the FTC expect that disclosure.
  • Don't write or edit reviews. Don't give readers text to post, ask them to change a review, or review your own book through someone else's account.
  • Follow retailer review rules. Amazon, Goodreads and other platforms have their own rules on incentivized and related-party reviews, and some do not allow reviews of free copies at all. Don't ask readers to post where it would break those rules.
  • Only send files you have the right to distribute. And only invite readers you are allowed to email (see section 3).

Review verification in Familiar, whether automatic or done by your team, only confirms that a review was posted for your book. It does not judge whether the review, or how you asked for it, complies with any law or retailer policy. That is your responsibility.

5. ARC Campaigns: Rules for Readers

If you receive advance copies through Familiar:

  • Keep the files to yourself. An ARC is licensed to you alone for reading and reviewing. Don't share, upload, sell, trade, post or lend it, and don't list a print ARC for sale. ARC files carry an identifying watermark that can be traced back to the account that downloaded them. Don't try to remove it.
  • Say that you got a free copy. In each review, state that you received an advance copy, for example "I received a free advance copy of this book."
  • Review honestly, as yourself. Reviews must reflect your own experience of the book. Don't post reviews for other people, use more than one Familiar account, or submit links to reviews you didn't write.
  • Keep your profile accurate. Your review profiles, Kindle address and linked Amazon account must be your own.
  • Respect embargoes. If a publisher sets a date before which reviews or spoilers should not be posted, follow it.

Publishers can decline or block readers from their own campaigns. Separately from that, we may suspend an ARC reader account across all publishers for sharing files or breaking this policy.

6. Submissions and Reading Fees

If you open a submission window on Familiar, you set its terms, and writers rely on them. You must:

  • describe accurately who you are, what you publish, and what happens to a manuscript after it is submitted;
  • follow the terms you publish, including deadlines, response commitments, how manuscripts will be used, and any refund terms for reading fees;
  • not use a window or a reading fee to mislead writers, for example by charging for consideration you don't intend to give, promising publication in exchange for a fee, or using the window to sell unrelated paid services;
  • use submitted manuscripts only to evaluate them, unless the writer agrees to something else;
  • keep any automated screening, such as AI-detection scores, as input to a human decision. Those scores can be wrong, so don't tell a writer that a tool proved their work was machine-written.

Reading fees are paid to you through Stripe, and Stripe's own terms and prohibited-business rules also apply to them. We may disable fees on a window that breaks this section.

If you submit a manuscript, it must be your own work or work you are authorized to submit, and the information you give about yourself must be true.

7. AI Features

Familiar's editorial, contract, cover and marketing tools use AI models. When you use them:

  • Only submit manuscripts, contracts, images and other material you have the right to use this way.
  • Don't use the tools to produce content this policy prohibits, or to get around the safety limits built into the underlying models.
  • Don't present AI output as something it isn't. That includes passing off a generated cover as a commissioned illustrator's work, or an AI-generated summary or evaluation as a named person's review.
  • Check AI output before relying on it. It can be wrong, especially about legal and financial matters such as contract terms.

Retailers such as Amazon KDP require you to say whether a book's text, images or translations are AI-generated. Those disclosures are yours to make accurately, including when someone at Familiar prepares a retailer listing for you.

8. Connected Accounts and Distribution

Familiar can connect to accounts you hold elsewhere: distributor accounts through our browser extension (such as Amazon KDP, IngramSpark and Lightning Source), Shopify stores, email services, Stripe, and the retailers and libraries we deliver files and metadata to. You may only connect:

  • accounts that are yours, or that belong to an organization that has authorized you to connect them to Familiar;
  • to send books, metadata and files you have the right to distribute in the places you send them.

Each of those services has its own terms, and you remain responsible for following them. If a service restricts third-party access or automated reporting, it is your decision whether to connect it to Familiar.

9. Security and Fair Use of the Service

You may not:

  • access another person's account, organization or files without permission, or try to;
  • share your login, or create accounts in bulk or by automated means. Invite colleagues to your organization instead; that costs nothing extra;
  • probe, scan or test our systems for vulnerabilities without our written permission, or get around authentication, rate limits, bot checks or access controls;
  • scrape Familiar or collect information about other users, including reader profiles, author pages and submission listings, except through features we provide for that purpose;
  • overload the service, or send traffic designed to disrupt it;
  • reverse engineer the service, except where the law allows it despite this restriction;
  • use Familiar to build a competing product, or resell access to it without our agreement.

If you find a security problem, please tell us at help@familiar.pub instead of testing it further. We won't pursue action against good-faith research reported to us promptly and kept confidential while we fix it.

10. Copyright and Other Intellectual Property

Only upload, publish and distribute work you own or are licensed to use. To report content that infringes your copyright, follow our Copyright Policy. In appropriate circumstances we terminate the accounts of repeat infringers.

11. Enforcement

If we believe something breaks this policy, we may do one or more of the following, depending on how serious it is:

  • ask you to fix it;
  • remove or unpublish the content, or disable a page, link, form or file;
  • pause email sending, ARC delivery, reading fees or a connected integration;
  • suspend or close the account or organization involved;
  • report it to law enforcement or the affected platform when the law requires it or when someone's safety is at risk.

We will usually tell you what we did and why, unless doing so would be illegal, would put someone at risk, or would interfere with an investigation. We may act first and explain afterward when we need to stop ongoing harm.

If you think we got it wrong, email help@familiar.pub within 30 days with "Appeal" in the subject line, explaining why. We will look at the decision again and tell you the outcome.

12. Reporting a Problem

To report content or behavior that breaks this policy, email help@familiar.pub with "Abuse report" in the subject line. Include the link to the page or listing, what the problem is, and how to reach you. You don't need a Familiar account to report something.

For copyright complaints, use the process in our Copyright Policy, which the law requires to include specific information. If someone is in immediate danger, contact your local emergency services first.

13. Changes to This Policy

We will update this policy as Familiar changes. When we do, we change the "Last updated" date above. If a change materially affects what you are allowed to do, we will tell account holders by email or in the app before it takes effect.