Marketing Terms & Conditions

These terms apply to the Inside Story Marketing feature — AI-assisted content generation, social media publishing, scheduling, and comment-to-DM automation. They sit alongside our main Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy. By using Marketing, you agree to everything below.

1. What Marketing Does

Inside Story Marketing includes a set of free tools available to every author, plus a paid tier that adds AI-assisted content creation and social publishing.

Included free with your account:

• Short book links, for creating universal and editable links to your books campaign or sales page
• Dynamic QR codes you can generate, customize, and retarget — including campaign kits with codes for print, ebook, website, and social placements
• Basic click analytics on your links and QR codes

Included with the paid Marketing tier:

• AI-drafted social media images and reels, captions, post copy, and hashtag suggestions generated from your manuscript
• Connecting your Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok accounts to schedule and publish directly
• Comment-to-DM and reply-comment automation — automatically replying to readers who comment a keyword on your posts
• A content calendar and post performance analytics

The paid tier is an add-on to your Inside Story subscription, and is available on Inside Story free tier. Book and pen name limitations reflect your Inside Story account tier.

2. AI-Generated Content & Claude

To draft social media content, you'll need to "scan" your manuscript within the Marketing page. This will trigger Claude AI to scan your manuscript and copy excerpts and quotes to our Inside Story database, via the Anthropic API. When you generate social media content, these excerpts are analysed by Claude to create the relevant captions and hashtags.

• Retention: Content sent to Claude is retained by Anthropic for up to 30 days (for abuse and safety monitoring) and then deleted. It is not stored by Anthropic long-term.
• No training use: Under our commercial agreement with Anthropic, content sent through the API is not used to train Anthropic's models.
• It's a draft, not a final product: AI-generated captions and scripts can be generic, inaccurate, or miss the mark on tone. You choose what gets published — nothing goes out automatically without your approval.

You're responsible for reviewing any AI-generated content before you publish it, the same way you'd review anything else with your name on it. We are not liable for AI-drafted content that you approve and post — see Section 10.

3. Images, Video & Audio in Your Content

To help you build carousels and reels, Marketing pulls stock photos and video clips from Pexels, Pixabay, and Unsplash, plus background music from Pixabay's audio library, which we store in our own database so it's ready to drop into your posts. All three platforms license their content for royalty-free commercial use — you're welcome to read the details at the links above, but in short, you can use these images, clips, and tracks in content you publish through Marketing without paying royalties or crediting the source. The one thing none of these licenses allow is reselling or redistributing the raw files themselves as stock content.

• Some tracks in our audio library are AI-generated, sourced from Pixabay under the same license as their other music.
• We've chosen tracks that aren't fingerprinted in platforms' copyright-matching systems (like Instagram's), so posts using them shouldn't trigger a copyright claim. We held a valid license for each track at the time we added it to our library.
• Rights holders can update a track's permissions after the fact, which is outside our control and uncommon in practice. If a track you've used is ever flagged, let us know and we'll help you swap the audio and remove the track from the library.

4. Connecting Your Social Accounts

To publish or schedule posts, you'll connect a Facebook Page (with a linked Instagram Business or Creator account) and/ or a TikTok account. By connecting an account, you're also agreeing to that platform's own terms — including Meta's Terms of Service and TikTok's Terms of Service.

• We don't control Meta's or TikTok's platform policies, API availability, or review processes, and we can't guarantee approval for any permission they require.
• Meta or TikTok may suspend, restrict, or disconnect your account for reasons entirely outside our control. If that happens, we may not be able to restore your access or give advance notice.
• You're responsible for keeping your connected accounts in good standing under each platform's own rules.
• Disconnecting or reconnecting an account may pause scheduled posts or automations tied to it.

What we store from your connected accounts: when you connect a Facebook Page, linked Instagram account, or TikTok account, we store the account/page identifiers, display name, and access tokens that platform provides, so we can publish, schedule, and automate on your behalf. If you enable comment-to-DM automation, we also store the text and platform-assigned ID of comments that match your configured trigger keywords, so we can send the automated reply and avoid responding twice to the same comment.

This data is stored in our database (hosted by Supabase) and processed by our application servers (hosted by Vercel) — no other third party receives it. Disconnecting an account immediately and permanently deletes its stored connection record, access tokens, and any related automation triggers and comment records. Content you've already published (captions, images) is retained as your own content, though it's no longer linked to the disconnected account.

5. Your Content & Your Responsibility

As with our main terms, we don't claim ownership over your content. You're responsible for what you publish through Marketing, including:

• Confirming any excerpts, quotes, or images used are yours to publish
• Making sure captions and claims about your book are accurate
• Complying with each platform's content and advertising policies
• Any legal consequences arising from content you choose to publish

6. Comment-to-DM Automation

You can set up keyword triggers so that a reader commenting a word (like "ARC") on your post automatically receives a direct message (DM) reply, and optionally a public reply on the comment itself. This is a convenience tool, not a guarantee:

• You're responsible for the content of your automated replies — they must not be deceptive, spammy, or used to harvest information readers haven't agreed to give.
• Meta and TikTok both cap messaging volume and enforce their own automation policies. We can't guarantee every triggered reply is delivered, especially at high comment volume.
• Misuse of automated messaging (spam, harassment, misleading offers) may result in suspension of your Marketing access under Section 9, in addition to any action the platform itself takes against your account.

7. Scheduling & Publishing

When you schedule a post, we attempt to publish it at the scheduled time via Meta's and TikTok's APIs. If a publish attempt fails, our system automatically retries a limited number of times before flagging it as failed and notifying you.

We are not responsible for missed or failed publishes caused by platform outages, API changes, expired or revoked platform permissions, or an account being disconnected or restricted by Meta or TikTok.

8. No Guaranteed Results

Marketing is a tool to help you create and publish content more easily — it isn't a promise of engagement, followers, sales, or any other outcome. Reach and performance depend on factors we don't control, including each platform's algorithm, your existing audience, and your content itself.

9. Prohibited Use

You may not use Marketing to:

• Publish misleading, deceptive, or false claims about your book
• Spam readers, buy or fake followers/ engagement, or otherwise manipulate platform metrics
• Harass, bully, or threaten anyone through automated replies or DMs
• Publish content that violates Meta's or TikTok's platform policies
• Publish anything illegal, infringing, or that you don't have the rights to share

Violating this section may result in suspension of your Marketing access, with or without notice depending on severity, and may also be reported to the relevant platform.

10. Fees, Suspension & Limitation of Liability

Marketing is billed through the same means as your Inside Story subscription — via Stripe. Billing, cancellation, and refunds work the same way as described in our main Terms & Conditions.

We may suspend or revoke your Marketing access if you violate these terms, if we receive credible complaints about your use of the feature, or if Meta or TikTok requires us to do so. Suspension of Marketing access does not entitle you to a refund of subscription fees.

Inside Story provides Marketing in good faith and isn't liable for indirect, incidental, or consequential damages arising from its use, including lost sales, followers, or engagement, or the consequences of AI-generated or automated content you chose to publish. Consistent with our main terms, our total liability to you for any claim relating to Marketing is limited to the amount you've paid us in the 12 months before the claim arose.

11. Changes to These Terms

We may update these terms as the Marketing feature evolves — especially as we add new AI capabilities or platform integrations. We'll update the date at the top and notify active users by email for material changes. Continued use of Marketing after changes take effect means you accept the updated terms.

12. Questions & Support

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