Terms of Use — Owlshelf

By using Owlshelf you accept the terms below. Owlshelf is a book-reading app published by Karakaş Digital; classic books are free, and Owlshelf Translations are read with an optional Owlshelf Plus subscription.

Nature of the service

Owlshelf lets you read English-language books for free on iPhone and iPad and download them to your device for offline reading. Free books always stay free. The app contains no ads and requires no membership. The library contains only works that may lawfully be published, and Owlshelf's own translations.

Owlshelf Plus subscription

What it includes: Owlshelf Plus gives you a larger monthly allowance of “Ask Owlshelf” explanations and the right to read in full, and download for offline reading, the Owlshelf Translations (English translations prepared by Owlshelf from public-domain works in their original languages). The first chapters of every translation can be read without a subscription.
How translations are made: Translations are prepared with the assistance of artificial intelligence, directly from the language in which the work was written, and go through an automated consistency check before publication; not every translation is separately read by a human editor. Translations may contain errors; errors you report are corrected.
Term and price: The subscription is monthly or yearly. The current price is shown in the app and on the App Store before you buy. If the free trial offered to first-time subscribers is canceled before it ends, you are not charged.
Payment and renewal: Payment is charged by Apple to the account linked to your Apple Account when you confirm the purchase. The subscription renews automatically for the same term and price unless it is canceled at least 24 hours before the end of the current period.
Canceling and managing: You can cancel the subscription at any time on your device under Settings › Apple Account › Subscriptions. Cancellation takes effect at the end of the current period; you keep access until then. Refunds are subject to Apple's refund policy.
When the subscription ends: Access to the full text of the translations you downloaded is closed; free sample chapters and free books remain readable.
Rights: The rights in Owlshelf Translations belong to Karakaş Digital; they may not be reproduced or distributed other than for personal reading.

Ask Owlshelf

In the reader you can select a word or a short passage and ask for its meaning or a short explanation. Explanations are generated with Anthropic's Claude AI; they may be wrong or incomplete, so do not rely on them as your only source where accuracy matters.
The feature is only for text in the books. Each device has a monthly allowance of explanations (currently 30; 150 for Owlshelf Plus subscribers); the remaining allowance is shown in the app and resets at the start of each month. Places that have already been explained, and requests for which no explanation could be produced, do not count against the allowance.
The feature is free; it may be limited or temporarily turned off to prevent abuse.

Use of content

The legal status of each book's text is stated in the app, in the “Source and rights” section on the book's page.
For openly licensed content, the terms of the relevant license (attribution, share-alike) apply.
The Owlshelf name, logo, interface design and original cover designs belong to Karakaş Digital; these are protected separately from the book texts.
Copyright status can differ from country to country. Every free book in the English library is in the public domain in the United States and its author died more than 70 years ago. If you are in another country, complying with that country's rules is your responsibility.

Acceptable use

You agree not to crawl the service with automated tools in a way that places excessive load on the server, not to attempt to bypass security measures, and not to use it for unlawful purposes. If you need bulk access, write to us.

Accuracy and liability

Texts are prepared with care; nevertheless there may be typographical errors or omissions arising from digitization. The service is provided “as is”, without warranties of any kind, and we do not promise that it will be uninterrupted or error-free. To the fullest extent permitted by law, Karakaş Digital is not liable for indirect or consequential damages arising from use of the service. If you report errors you see, we will correct them.

Copyright notices

If you believe that an item of content infringes your rights, follow the procedure on the Copyright and Content Removal Policy page. For valid notices the content is taken down without delay.

Changes

These terms may be updated; the new version is published on this page with its version number and date.

Governing law

These terms are governed by the laws of the Republic of Türkiye, without prejudice to any mandatory consumer protection rights you have under the law of the place where you live.

Contact

info@karakas.digital