Mail Terms & Conditions

These terms apply to the Inside Story Mail feature — the newsletter and email broadcasting tools available on paid author accounts. They sit alongside our main Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy. By sending any email through Inside Story Mail, you agree to everything below.

1. Who Can Use Inside Story Mail

Inside Story Mail is available to authors on Starter and Pro subscription plans. Your sending access is tied to your pen name — each pen name gets its own dedicated sending identity on our email infrastructure.

If your Inside Story subscription lapses or is terminated, your mail sending access will be suspended. Any scheduled or queued sends will not be delivered after suspension.

2. Email Allocations, Rollover & Top-ups

Each paid plan includes a monthly email allocation — the number of newsletter and personal emails you can send per month:

• Starter: 100 emails per month
• Pro: 500 emails per month

Rollover: Unused emails from your monthly allocation roll over automatically. Rolled-over emails are retained for up to 3 months, giving Starter accounts a maximum balance of 300 emails and Pro accounts a maximum balance of 1,500. Emails beyond the maximum balance are not carried forward.

Top-ups: If you need more sends than your allocation provides, you can purchase additional emails as a one-time top-up. Top-up emails do not expire and do not count toward your rollover balance cap. Pro accounts receive a better per-email rate on top-ups. Current top-up pricing is shown in your newsletter settings.

Top-up purchases are non-refundable. If your subscription lapses or is terminated, any remaining top-up balance will be forfeited and is not transferable to a new subscription.

3. Your Sending Identity

Your emails are sent from a subdomain of mail.insidestory.app using your pen name slug (e.g. [email protected]). This slug is locked the first time you confirm your sending identity and cannot be changed without contacting us.

You may not impersonate another author, brand, publication, or person. Your display name and from-address must accurately represent who you are. Deceptive sender names — including anything that could mislead readers into thinking an email comes from Inside Story itself — are not permitted.

4. Who You Can Email

You may only send newsletters to readers who have explicitly opted in to receive emails from you through Inside Story — for example, by signing up to your newsletter through a campaign or your website.

You may not:

• Email readers who have not explicitly opted in to hear from you specifically
• Email readers who have unsubscribed, even if you believe their original opt-in still applies
• Purchase, rent, or harvest email lists from any source and use them through Inside Story Mail
• Add readers to your list without their knowledge or consent

Importing an existing list: You may import email addresses you have collected outside Inside Story, provided every person on that list has explicitly opted in to receive emails from you. By importing a list, you are confirming that you have that consent on record. We may ask you to demonstrate this if complaints arise. Importing a list of addresses for whom you do not have clear consent is a violation of these terms.

This isn't just our rule — it's the law in most countries. See Section 6 for more on that.

Violation of this section may result in immediate suspension or permanent termination of your mail access, with or without prior notice depending on the severity. See Section 11 for more detail.

5. Content Rules

We trust you to send genuinely useful, relevant content to your readers. Inside Story Mail is designed for author communications and newsletters — book updates, new releases, behind-the-scenes content, reader community content. It is not a general-purpose marketing or sales platform.

You must not send emails that:

• Are deceptive, misleading, or use false or misleading subject lines
• Contain phishing attempts, malware, viruses, or malicious links
• Promote illegal products or services
• Contain unsolicited commercial advertising outside the reasonable expectations of your readers
• Harass, bully, or threaten recipients
• Violate any applicable law
• Contain pornographic content (unless all recipients have explicitly consented to adult content)

Your subject line must honestly reflect what's in the email. Clickbait or manipulative subject lines that mislead readers into opening an email are not permitted.

6. Legal Requirements

Email marketing is regulated by law in most jurisdictions. You are responsible for complying with all applicable laws, including but not limited to:

• New Zealand Unsolicited Electronic Messages Act 2007 — requires consent, accurate sender identification, and a functioning unsubscribe mechanism in all commercial emails
• US CAN-SPAM Act — requires a physical mailing address, a clear unsubscribe mechanism, and prohibits deceptive headers or subject lines
• Canada's Anti-Spam Legislation (CASL) — one of the stricter laws; requires express consent before sending commercial emails
• EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) — requires lawful basis for processing personal data (email addresses), including the right to erasure
• Any other local or national laws that apply to your readers' locations

Email laws vary by jurisdiction and depend on where your readers are located — if you're unsure what applies to you, it's worth checking with a legal professional. Compliance is your responsibility as the sender.

7. Required Elements in Every Email

Every email you send through Inside Story Mail must include:

An Unsubscribe Link

Every email must include a clear, working unsubscribe link. Inside Story Mail automatically appends an unsubscribe footer to all outgoing newsletters — you must not remove or obscure this. Unsubscribe requests must be honored promptly (within 10 business days as a maximum, though our system handles this automatically).

You must not re-subscribe a reader who has unsubscribed, whether manually or by any automated means. A reader may re-subscribe themselves at any time of their own choosing — but that decision must come from them, not from you.

A Physical Address

Commercial email law (including CAN-SPAM) requires a valid physical mailing address in every email you send. This can be your home address, a PO box, or a registered business address.

If you do not yet have a suitable address to use, you may use our address in the meantime:

Inside Story
79 Station Road
Auckland, New Zealand

Using our address is a temporary accommodation only. You take full responsibility for any correspondence or legal notices received at that address in connection with your newsletter. We strongly encourage you to set up a PO box or use a registered mail address of your own as soon as possible.

8. Sending Etiquette

Beyond the legal minimum, here's what good email citizenship looks like — and what we expect from Inside Story authors:

• Send at a reasonable frequency. Emailing your list multiple times per day is almost certainly a bad idea. Weekly is fine for most authors; more than that should have a clear reason. If your open rates are tanking, that's a signal your readers are overwhelmed.
• Send what readers signed up for. If someone joined your list for ARC updates, don't pivot to daily promotional emails about unrelated products. Keep it relevant. You can segment your reader list using Groups.
• Don't email a cold list. If a reader hasn't heard from you in a long time (say, six months or more), consider a re-engagement email before sending normally — unsubscribes from a cold list are healthy; spam complaints are not.
• Respect the unsubscribe. If someone unsubscribes, don't try to re-add them, email them from a different list, or contact them through other means to ask why. They made their choice.
• Test before you send. Send yourself a test email. Check your links work. Typos happen to everyone, but a proofread doesn't hurt (don't we know it, as authors!).

9. Spam Complaints & Deliverability

Inside Story Mail runs on shared email infrastructure. If you send from @mail.insidestory.app, spam complaints and bounces affect the shared sending domain — which means your sending behavior can impact deliverability for every author on the platform. If you use a custom domain, your domain reputation is isolated, but all senders still share the same underlying mail servers, so severe or sustained abuse can affect platform-wide IP reputation. We take this seriously either way.

Complaint thresholds: Industry standard considers a spam complaint rate above 0.1% (1 in 1,000) to be a yellow flag, and above 0.3% a serious problem. Google and Yahoo now enforce sender reputation at these levels. If your complaint rate consistently exceeds these thresholds, we may restrict or suspend your sending access while we investigate.

We will notify you if your complaint rate or bounce rate reaches concerning levels, and you may have the opportunity to address the issue. Repeated or severe violations will result in permanent suspension of your mail access.

10. Our Email Provider

Inside Story Mail is powered by Postmark, a transactional and broadcast email service. By using Inside Story Mail, you are also subject to Postmark's Terms of Service and their acceptable use policies, in addition to ours.

Postmark reserves the right to suspend sending for accounts that violate their policies. If Postmark suspends a sending server associated with your pen name, Inside Story may be unable to restore it, and we may not be able to give you advance notice in this situation.

11. Suspension & Revocation of Mail Access

We may suspend or permanently revoke your mail sending access if:

• You violate any section of these terms
• We receive credible complaints of spam, phishing, or harassment from your recipients
• Your spam complaint rate or bounce rate consistently exceeds acceptable thresholds
• Your account is in arrears or your subscription has lapsed
• We are required to do so by Postmark or any regulatory authority
• We believe continued sending would damage the deliverability or reputation of the platform

Where possible, we'll warn you before taking action. For serious or repeated violations, we may act immediately without notice. If you believe your access was suspended in error, contact us at [email protected].

Suspension of your mail access does not entitle you to a refund of any subscription fees.

12. Data & Your Readers' Privacy

The email addresses in your Inside Story reader list belong to real people who trusted you with their contact details. You must:

• Only use reader email addresses for the purposes they signed up for
• Not share, sell, or transfer your reader list to any third party
• Not export your list and use it outside of Inside Story for any purpose other than direct author communications (e.g. your own mailing list tool, not marketing platforms)
• Honor deletion and data removal requests from readers promptly

Our full Privacy Policy covers how we handle reader data on the platform side.

13. No Liability for Email Outcomes

Inside Story provides email sending infrastructure in good faith. We are not responsible for:

• Emails that are filtered to spam by recipients' email providers
• Deliverability issues caused by your content, subject lines, or sending patterns
• Any legal consequences arising from the content of emails you send
• Loss of subscribers, engagement, or revenue resulting from suspension of your mail access
• Delays or failures caused by Postmark or any downstream email infrastructure

14. Changes to These Terms

We may update these terms from time to time, especially as email laws and platform capabilities evolve. We'll notify you of material changes by email or via a notice in your Inside Story account. Continued use of Inside Story Mail after the effective date of any changes means you accept the updated terms.

15. Questions & Support

If you have questions about these terms or your mail access, we're happy to help: [email protected].