Terms and Conditions

1. These terms

These Terms and Conditions are an agreement between you and Flickwick, a sole proprietorship operated by Mac Parish (“Flickwick”, “we”, “us”). They govern your use of the Flickwick website, web app, and printed book service (together, the “Service”).

By creating an account or using the Service, you agree to these terms. If you do not agree, please do not use the Service. Our Privacy Policy forms part of this agreement and explains what we do with your information.

2. Who can use Flickwick

You must be at least 18 years old and able to enter into a binding contract to hold a Flickwick account. The Service is intended for parents, guardians, and carers who create stories and read them aloud to children.

Children must not create accounts or use the Service unsupervised. If you let a child use the Service while you are present, you remain responsible for everything done through your account.

3. Your account

You are responsible for keeping your password secure and for all activity under your account. Please give us accurate information when you register, and tell us at flickwick@agentmail.to if you believe someone else has gained access.

We do not currently offer automated password reset or account deletion. If you need either, email us and we will handle it for you.

4. Paying for a book

There is no subscription. Flickwick is charged for one book at a time, and nothing recurring is ever set up on your card. Current prices are on the pricing page.

• Making an account and designing a book is free. You can add your characters, approve how they look, and see the cover illustrated without paying anything or entering a card.
• $3.99 per book, charged once through Stripe, illustrates the remaining pages. That book is then yours to read online for as long as we operate the Service, with no further charge and no expiry.
• Prices are in US dollars and exclude any taxes that may apply where you live.
• Because the pages are generated for you as soon as you pay, the $3.99 is not refundable once the illustrations have been produced. If the book fails to generate, or generates something you cannot use, email flickwick@agentmail.to and we will re-run it or refund you — your choice.
• Redrawing pictures and rewording pages afterwards is included. We do not charge for revisions.
• Books you have paid for stay in your account. There is nothing to cancel, so there is no tier to fall back to and nothing that expires.

Printed copies are a separate, optional purchase — see section 5.

If we change our prices, the change applies only to books you start afterwards. A price is fixed at the moment you pay it.

5. Printed book orders

Printed books are one-off picture books that you design, review, and approve before they are manufactured by a third-party print provider and shipped to you.

• You approve the book before you pay. You can read every page and view every illustration, revise the text, and redraw images until you are happy. A book cannot be ordered until you have approved it.
• Current prices are $49 for hardcover and $34 for paperback, plus $7.99 shipping. Prices are in US dollars and are confirmed at checkout, which is the price that applies to your order.
• We currently ship within the United States only.
• Production and delivery times are estimates. Printing and shipping are performed by our print partner, and we cannot guarantee a delivery date. Please do not order at the last minute for a birthday.
• Printed colours and paper may differ slightly from what you see on screen. Screens are backlit and paper is not; some variation between the preview and the printed book is normal and is not a defect.

We may decline or cancel an order, with a full refund, where the content breaches section 10, where the order appears fraudulent, or where a price was displayed in obvious error.

6. Cancellations and refunds

Each book is manufactured individually for one child, and production begins as soon as your payment is confirmed. Because these are personalised, made-to-order goods, they cannot be cancelled, returned, or refunded once the order is placed. This is why we ask you to review and approve every page beforehand.

If your order never arrives, contact us and we will chase it with the printer and either reprint or refund it.

Nothing in this section limits any statutory rights you have as a consumer that cannot be excluded under the law that applies to you.

7. Your content and who owns it

What you provide

“Your Content” means everything you give us: names, ages, themes, character descriptions, written guidance, feedback, and any photographs you upload. You keep ownership of Your Content.

You grant us a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free licence to host, store, reproduce, and process Your Content, and to transmit it to the service providers listed in our Privacy Policy, purely so that we can operate the Service and produce what you have asked for. This licence exists only to run the Service and ends when you delete the content or your account.

We will not use Your Content for marketing, publish it publicly, or show it to other users without asking you first.

What the Service creates

“Generated Content” means the stories, chapters, illustrations, character artwork, and book files the Service produces for you. To the fullest extent we are able to grant it, Generated Content is yours. You may read it aloud, print it, share it with family, and give it as a gift, including for personal commercial-free use, without paying us anything further.

Two honest caveats. First, the copyright status of AI-generated material is unsettled in many countries and may not be protectable at all — we cannot promise you an enforceable copyright in it. Second, we retain the right to use Generated Content internally to operate, debug, and improve the Service.

What belongs to us

The Flickwick name, logo, website, software, and design remain ours. Nothing in these terms transfers them to you.

8. Photographs and likeness

If you upload a photograph so that a character resembles a real person, you confirm that:

• You are the parent or legal guardian of the child shown, or you have the express permission of the person shown (or their guardian)
• You have the right to give us that photograph for the purpose described
• The photograph does not infringe anyone else’s rights

You must not upload photographs of people who have not agreed to it. We handle photographs as described in the Privacy Policy: they are stored privately, used to generate one stylised character illustration, and deleted once you approve that illustration.

Illustrations are stylised interpretations, not portraits. They will resemble the person to a degree, but they will not be an exact likeness, and a book cannot be refunded on the basis that the resemblance was not close enough. This is another reason we let you redraw images before you order.

9. The nature of AI-generated stories

Flickwick writes and illustrates using artificial intelligence. You should understand what that means before reading a chapter aloud to a small child:

• Stories are generated automatically and are not reviewed by a human at Flickwick before you see them.
• We apply safeguards to keep content gentle and age-appropriate, but no automated system is perfect. Occasionally a story may include something inaccurate, odd, or not to your taste. Read ahead if that would trouble you.
• Nothing generated by Flickwick is educational, medical, psychological, or developmental advice.
• Generated Content is not guaranteed to be unique. Another family asking for a similar story may receive something similar. Themes, tropes, and turns of phrase recur.

If a story produces something you think is genuinely inappropriate, please tell us at flickwick@agentmail.to. Reports like that are how the safeguards get better.

10. Acceptable use

You agree not to use Flickwick to create, request, or order anything that:

• Sexualises a child in any way, or depicts a minor inappropriately
• Is hateful, harassing, or promotes violence against a person or group
• Infringes someone else’s copyright, trademark, or likeness rights
• Depicts a real, identifiable person without their permission
• Is unlawful, defamatory, or intended to deceive

You also agree not to resell the Service, attempt to circumvent tier limits, scrape or bulk-extract content, reverse engineer the Service, probe its security, or use it to build a competing product.

We may remove content and suspend or close accounts that breach this section. Content that sexualises children will be removed and reported to the appropriate authorities.

11. Sharing and co-parents

You can invite a co-parent to a story series, which lets them read chapters and generate new ones. Invite whoever you like, but remember that they will be able to see the whole series, including your child’s name and everything in it.

You can also create a share link for a story or a book. The link is unlisted rather than private: anyone holding that URL can read it, without an account and without a password. We keep shared pages out of search engines, and you can switch a link off yourself at any time from the story or the book — the old URL then stops working for everyone. Section 8 of the Privacy Policy explains this in more detail.

12. Availability and changes

We work to keep Flickwick running, but we do not promise uninterrupted availability. The Service depends on third-party providers for hosting, AI generation, email, payments, and printing, and an outage at any of them can interrupt it.

We may add, change, or remove features. If we plan to discontinue the Service altogether, we will give account holders reasonable notice and a way to export their stories and books first.

13. Disclaimers

To the maximum extent permitted by law, the Service is provided “as is” and “as available”, without warranties of any kind, whether express or implied, including implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, and non-infringement.

We do not warrant that the Service will be uninterrupted, error-free, or secure, that Generated Content will be accurate, appropriate, or original, or that any defect will be corrected.

Some jurisdictions do not allow the exclusion of certain warranties, so parts of this section may not apply to you.

14. Limitation of liability

To the maximum extent permitted by law, Flickwick will not be liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential, exemplary, or punitive damages, or for lost profits, lost data, or loss of goodwill, arising out of or relating to your use of the Service — even if we were told such damages were possible.

Our total aggregate liability arising out of or relating to the Service is limited to the greater of (a) the amount you paid us in the twelve months before the event giving rise to the claim, or (b) US $100.

Nothing in these terms excludes or limits liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, or for anything else that cannot lawfully be excluded. If you are a consumer, these limits apply only so far as the law where you live allows.

15. Indemnity

You agree to indemnify and hold Flickwick harmless from any claim, demand, loss, or expense (including reasonable legal fees) brought by a third party and arising from Your Content, your breach of these terms, your misuse of the Service, or your uploading of a photograph you did not have the right to provide.

16. Termination

You can stop using Flickwick at any time, and you can ask us to delete your account by emailing flickwick@agentmail.to.

We may suspend or terminate your account if you materially breach these terms, if we are required to by law, or if keeping it open would expose us or another user to harm. Except where a breach is serious — content involving children being the obvious case — we will normally warn you first and give you a chance to put it right.

If we terminate your account without cause, we will refund any book you have paid for but not yet received, and any printed order not yet manufactured. Sections 7, 13, 14, 15, and 17 survive termination.

17. Governing law and disputes

These terms are governed by the laws of the State of California, United States, without regard to its conflict of laws rules. You and Flickwick agree to the exclusive jurisdiction of the state and federal courts located in San Francisco County, California for any dispute that is not resolved informally.

If you are a consumer resident in the United Kingdom or the European Union, this does not deprive you of the protection of the mandatory consumer laws of your country of residence, and you may bring proceedings in your local courts.

18. Changes to these terms

We may update these terms from time to time. If we make a material change, we will update the date at the top of this page and notify account holders by email at least 14 days before it takes effect. Continuing to use the Service after that means you accept the revised terms. If you do not accept them, you may cancel and ask us to delete your account.

19. Contact us