Ebook Author Agreement

This Ebook Author Agreement (the "Agreement") is the contract between you (the person or registered entity applying to publish ebooks on ChefSphere, the "Author") and ChefSphere OÜ ("ChefSphere", "we", "us") for the publication and distribution of cookbooks through the ChefSphere Ebook Marketplace. It is an addendum to the Platform Terms of Service, the Platform Privacy Policy, the Ebook Marketplace Terms, the Ebook Content Policy, the Ebook Fee Schedule, the Ebook Refund Policy and the Ebook Chargeback Policy. You must accept all of these documents to become an Author.

1. Who may become an Author

You may apply to become an Author only if all of the following are true:

• you are at least 18 years old and legally able to enter binding contracts in your country of residence (see the Children & Age Policy for the full four-tier age matrix);
• you will publish as an individual (a natural person) or as a registered business (a legal entity in good standing);
• you can complete identity verification by uploading a valid government-issued identity document (passport, national ID card, or driver's licence) of the type we accept in your country;
• you are not on any sanctions list, politically exposed person watchlist, or fraud blocklist that would prevent payout under Stripe's rules;
• you have not previously had an Author account terminated for cause, unless we have agreed in writing to reinstate you;
• for business accounts, you can provide a valid legal business name, type, tax identifier, and country of tax residence.

You may hold only one Author account per person or per legal entity. You may have one Author application pending at a time; attempts to submit multiple simultaneous applications will be rejected.

2. The author onboarding

Onboarding is a single request in the app that collects:

• Request type — individual or business upgrade / new application;
• Account type — INDIVIDUAL or BUSINESS;
• Display name — the public name that will appear on the ebook;
• Bio — a short public description;
• Business name, business type, and tax ID — only for business accounts;
• Contact email and contact phone;
• Website (optional);
• Tax country — your country of tax residence;
• Motivation, experience, and sample work descriptions;
• Expected number of books (a planning signal, not a commitment);
• Government ID document — uploaded through the app and scanned into encrypted storage;
• Author logo (optional);
• Legal agreements — explicit acceptance of the Platform Terms, Platform Privacy Policy, the data-protection notice (this Agreement plus the Platform Privacy Policy), Copyright Policy, Ebook Fee Schedule, Ebook Refund Policy, and Ebook Content Policy. Your acceptance is timestamped and stored as proof.

Submitting the onboarding does not create an Author account. Your request moves through the following statuses:

1. PENDING — created, awaiting our review;
2. UNDER_REVIEW — a reviewer is looking at the request;
3. APPROVED — your Author account is active and you may publish; or
4. REJECTED — you will receive a reason and may submit a new application.

Additional statuses that may apply to an existing account: SUSPENDED, DEACTIVATED, CANCELLED. We communicate status changes in-app and by email.

3. Content moderation and verification

Every ebook you submit goes through automated checks described in the Ebook Content Policy and uses the machine-learning moderation classifiers described in the AI Disclosure. In practice this means:

• metadata (title, description, cover image) is scanned before the listing goes live;
• the ebook file (PDF) is parsed to extract text; the extracted text is screened for prohibited content and for high-risk copyright signals;
• your author profile (display name, bio, optional business name, motivation) is scanned before the account is approved and whenever you edit it.

Automated decisions that restrict your content or account are subject to human review on request. You can request review by replying to the notice we send you or by writing to [email protected].

4. Licence you grant to ChefSphere

Subject to this Agreement, you grant ChefSphere a worldwide, non-exclusive, sub-licensable, royalty-free licence to host, reproduce, cache, reformat, transmit, display, distribute, and make your ebook and its metadata available through the ChefSphere apps and website; to generate derivative technical artefacts (thumbnails, text extractions, search indices, recommendation embeddings, a machine-readable table of contents, a short preview sample); and to use limited short-form excerpts, the cover image, and the author display name to promote the Marketplace and your ebook through our owned channels.

The licence lasts as long as the ebook is available on the Marketplace, plus the operationally reasonable period required to purge caches, search indices, and backups after removal. You retain ownership of your ebook at all times. Nothing in this licence transfers copyright or moral rights to ChefSphere.

You grant the same licence to buyers who purchase your ebook, subject to the personal-use restrictions in the Buyer License.

5. Author warranties

By submitting an ebook you represent and warrant to ChefSphere and to every buyer that:

1. you own all intellectual-property rights in the ebook or have obtained all necessary licences, including rights to every included recipe, photograph, illustration, typeface, font, quoted work, and musical or audio excerpt;
2. the ebook and its metadata do not infringe any third-party copyright, trademark, design, right of publicity, right of privacy, trade secret, or other right;
3. the content does not violate the Platform Acceptable Use Policy or the Ebook Content Policy;
4. recipes, ingredient lists, cooking instructions, allergen warnings, and nutrition claims are accurate to the best of your knowledge and do not omit information that would mislead a reasonably careful cook about safety;
5. if the ebook includes any content that was generated or materially edited by a generative AI system, you disclose that clearly on the ebook detail page in line with the AI Disclosure;
6. every price, tax classification, download sample, and promotional claim is accurate at the time of listing;
7. you are not violating any contract (for example, an exclusive publishing contract) by listing the ebook on ChefSphere;
8. (Commercial status disclosure — CRD Art. 6a(1)(b)). Your declaration in the Author dashboard of "professional" or "private" is accurate and, where required by your country of residence, you hold the relevant trader, self-employed, or business registration. Switching commercial status on the Author dashboard takes effect from the next published listing; listings already live continue to display the status that applied at the moment of publication until you re-edit them;
9. (EAA — Dir. (EU) 2019/882). The ebook file you submit meets the accessibility requirements in Annex I of the European Accessibility Act to the extent applicable to digital books, and aligns with the relevant criteria of EN 301 549 V3.2.1 and WCAG 2.2 AA: EPUB 3 with semantic markup, reflowable layout, navigable table of contents, compatibility with assistive technologies, alt text on cover and inline images, language identification of the primary and any secondary language, and no content that would prevent text-to-speech processing. Where a required feature is not yet available and disproportionately burdensome within the meaning of Art. 14 EAA, you document the reason inside the Author dashboard and agree that ChefSphere may display an accessibility-gap notice on the listing.

5a. DSM Copyright Directive — content-lifecycle obligations (Art. 17 of Dir. (EU) 2019/790)

Where ChefSphere's exposure under Art. 17 of Dir. (EU) 2019/790 ("content-sharing service provider" obligations) applies to an ebook — i.e. where the ebook includes material a third party may claim rights in — the following lifecycle applies:

• Best efforts to obtain authorisation (Art. 17(4)(a)). You grant ChefSphere the licences set out in section 4 so that, when the ebook is sold, the sale is authorised by you. You confirm you have obtained, or will obtain, any third-party authorisations needed for embedded recipes, images, fonts, or quoted text.
• Best efforts to prevent availability of notified works (Art. 17(4)(b)). If a rightsholder gives us "relevant and necessary information" about a work, ChefSphere will use reasonable technical measures (hash matching, metadata match, human review) to prevent the availability of that specific work in new listings. We will not impose general monitoring obligations and will not prevent the availability of non-infringing works (Art. 17(7)).
• Act expeditiously on a substantiated notice (Art. 17(4)(c)). Upon receipt of a substantiated notice under the DMCA / IP Policy or the DSA notice-and-action mechanism we will disable access to the notified ebook expeditiously and make best efforts to prevent its future upload.
• Counter-notice and redress (Art. 17(9)). You retain the right to contest a takedown through an effective and expeditious complaint-and-redress mechanism. Complaints are reviewed by a human moderator within the statutory deadlines. Where the law of an EU Member State provides an out-of-court dispute settlement body for Art. 17 disputes, we co-operate with that body.
• Freedom of expression safeguards (Art. 17(7)). Nothing in this procedure restricts your ability to rely on quotation, criticism, review, caricature, parody, or pastiche. If an automated measure flags content that you contend falls within one of these exceptions, the human review required by Art. 17(9) applies before any measure becomes final.
• Transparency (Art. 17(8) and Art. 19). Authors receive at least annually, on request, information on the modes of exploitation of the work, all revenues generated, and the remuneration due — ChefSphere's Author dashboard exposes this continuously (not only annually) and in machine-readable form.

6. Indemnity

You agree to defend, indemnify, and hold harmless ChefSphere, its directors, employees, and agents from and against any third-party claim, demand, loss, cost, or damage (including reasonable legal fees) that arises out of your breach of section 5 or out of any content you publish that infringes a third party's rights or violates a law. ChefSphere will notify you of a covered claim without undue delay and will co-operate reasonably in the defence at your cost.

7. Payouts and the Stripe Connect relationship

Payouts are paid to the bank account you register through Stripe Connect inside the Author dashboard. By completing the Stripe Connect flow you enter into direct agreements with Stripe (the Stripe Connected Account Agreement and the Stripe Services Agreement), which govern the financial service and are a condition of this Agreement. Stripe is the regulated provider; ChefSphere is not a bank or money-services business.

Earnings move through the lifecycle described in the Ebook Fee Schedule:

1. a sale's author portion enters your pending balance at the moment of purchase;
2. after the hold period set on your account (typical range 7–30 days depending on trust level and payment method) it is split into an available balance and a reserve balance;
3. the reserve is held for approximately 30 days as buffer against chargebacks and refunds, then moves to available;
4. available balance can be withdrawn according to your Stripe payout schedule.

Refunds, chargebacks, and negative adjustments are deducted from available, then reserve, then pending, in that order. If your combined balances are insufficient to cover an adjustment, you owe ChefSphere the difference, which ChefSphere may collect against future earnings or invoice you directly.

8. Trust-based and platform safety limits

Sales are subject to trust-based limits that protect buyers and the payment rail. Limits start conservative for new authors and increase as your activity history and card-on-file status improve, as set out in the Ebook Fee Schedule. Breaching a limit may block the sale or trigger a durable alert in our safety system. The Marketplace also enforces platform-wide daily ceilings on sales and refunds; we will not take any of those ceilings away without notice, because they exist to protect everyone.

9. Taxes

You are responsible for the taxation of your income from ebook sales and for providing accurate tax country and tax ID information. ChefSphere collects and remits VAT to buyers only where it is obliged to do so. EU Directive (EU) 2021/514 (DAC7) requires us to report certain seller data to the competent tax authorities; details are in the Tax Information document. If you are a non-EU author, additional withholding may apply at Stripe's side.

10. Support, communication, and suspension

• We use your contact email for transactional messages (submission confirmations, review decisions, payout events, safety alerts), legal notices, and service updates. You may not opt out of these; they are not marketing.
• If we suspect fraud, a breach of this Agreement, a safety risk to buyers, or an unsustainable chargeback rate, we may place your account in SUSPENDED status, pause payouts, increase your reserve percentage, or prevent new listings. We will tell you why and what you can do to resolve the situation.
• We may DEACTIVATE or terminate an Author account for repeated violations of the Platform Acceptable Use Policy or the Ebook Content Policy, for breaking a Stripe rule, for confirmed intellectual-property infringement, or if you lose eligibility under section 1.

11. Voluntary withdrawal and account deletion

• You can withdraw an individual ebook from sale at any time from the dashboard. Existing buyers keep access to copies they have already purchased. Where law requires removal (for example, a valid DMCA takedown that cannot be counter-noticed), we may also disable existing buyer access and refund affected buyers from your balance.
• You can delete your Author account from the dashboard. The system runs a strict pre-deletion check (open refund requests, pending balances, active chargebacks, DAC7 reporting obligations). Deletion proceeds only when the check passes. Deleting the Author account removes your listings, locks pending balances pending Stripe settlement, and does not delete the separate ChefSphere user account.
• We keep anonymised financial and compliance records as required by law (see retention in the Platform Privacy Policy).

12. Confidentiality of buyer data

Buyer personal data you see (for example in messages, reviews, or refund requests) is shared with you as a joint controller for a specific narrow purpose (fulfilling the sale and handling the buyer's requests). You must not use it for any other purpose, you must not export it outside the Marketplace, and you must respect every buyer's GDPR rights. If a buyer sends you a GDPR request that you cannot handle, forward it to [email protected].

13. Governing law and forum

This Agreement is governed by the law of Estonia. Disputes are referred to the Harju County Court (Harju Maakohus), Tallinn. If you are acting in the capacity of a consumer (for example, as an individual author on a very small scale), the mandatory consumer-law rules of your country of residence are not excluded by this Agreement.

14. Changes

We will post a new version of this Agreement when the Marketplace, the payment flow, or applicable law changes materially. Material changes take effect 30 days after we have notified you in-app and by email. If a change materially reduces your rights or increases your obligations and you do not accept it, your remedy is to stop publishing and withdraw your balance subject to the normal payout lifecycle.

15. Contact

• Author support: [email protected]
• Billing, payouts, and taxes: [email protected]
• Trust & safety / content reports: [email protected]
• Privacy / data-protection requests: [email protected]
• Data Protection Officer: [email protected]
• Legal notices: [email protected]