Last updated 15 September 2026
ShelfAbsorbed is a book club tracker. This page is the agreement between you and whoever runs it: what you can expect from the app, what it expects from you, and how paying for it works. Using ShelfAbsorbed means you accept what is on this page.
The short version. Joining a club is free. Hosting one is $2.99 a month or $29.99 a year after a free trial, and one subscription covers up to three clubs. Cancel whenever you like, wherever you started it. Be decent to the people in your club. If a subscription lapses nothing is deleted, and your club keeps its reading history.
ShelfAbsorbed is operated by Nathan Poulson, based in the United States. Questions, complaints, and anything this page does not cover: support@shelfabsorbed.com.
How your information is handled is a separate document: the Privacy Policy, which is worth reading alongside this one.
You need to be at least 13 to use ShelfAbsorbed. Signing in works by a six-digit code sent to your email address, which means anyone who can read your email can get into your account. Use an address you control and keep control of it.
Use one account, and keep the details on it accurate. What happens under your account is your responsibility, so if you think someone else has got into it, write in and it will be dealt with.
Joining is free and always will be. You need an invite code from somebody already in the club, and you can leave whenever you want.
Hosting needs a subscription. It belongs to you rather than to a particular club, and one subscription lets you host up to three clubs at once.
| Plan | Price | What happens first |
|---|---|---|
| Monthly | $2.99 a month | 7 days free, then billed every month |
| Annual | $29.99 a year | 7 days free, then billed every year |
Prices are in US dollars. The app stores sell in local currency, so what you actually pay is whatever that store lists for your country, and it is shown to you before you confirm.
New hosts get 7 days free. Cancel before the trial ends and you are charged nothing. It is one trial per person, not one per club, so opening a second club does not start another.
Subscriptions renew automatically until you cancel, and the next period is charged at the end of the current one. Cancel at least 24 hours before a period ends, or that next period will already have been charged.
Whoever took your money owns the subscription, so that is also who you cancel with. This is the stores' rule rather than mine.
| Where you subscribed | Where you cancel |
|---|---|
| The web | In the app, from your club's admin desk. Payments are handled by Stripe. |
| iPhone or iPad | Your Apple Account settings. Nothing in the app can cancel it for you. |
| Android | Subscriptions in the Google Play Store. |
Subscriptions bought through the App Store or Google Play are refunded by Apple or Google under their own policies, and I have no ability to refund those myself. For a subscription bought on the web, write to support@shelfabsorbed.com and it will be dealt with fairly. Wherever you live, this does not take away refund rights the law gives you.
You will be told before a price change affects you, with enough notice to cancel first if you would rather not pay it.
Nothing is deleted. The club stays readable by its members and is frozen against changes, so a missed payment never costs anybody their reading history. Subscribing again unfreezes it exactly as it was.
What you write and the photos you upload stay yours. To actually run the service, you give permission to store your content, make the copies needed to serve it, and show it to the members of the club you posted it in. That permission goes no further: your content is not used for advertising, not shown outside your club, and not sold.
You are responsible for what you post, which means only posting things you have the right to post.
If you delete your account, messages you wrote stay in the conversation with your name taken off them. The words belong to the discussion; the attribution does not need to outlive you being there.
Each club is moderated by its host, who can remove messages and remove members. Any member can report a message, which sends it to support@shelfabsorbed.com to be looked at.
An account that breaks the rules above can be suspended or removed. Except where something is serious enough to act on straight away, you will be told what happened and why, and you can reply to it.
Titles, covers, and descriptions come from Open Library, run by the Internet Archive, and from Apple Books. That information is not mine and is not guaranteed to be right.
Chat about a book is hidden past the point each reader says they have reached. That is a courtesy about spoilers, worked out from what people tell the app about their own progress, and it is not a guarantee. Do not rely on it to keep anything secret.
ShelfAbsorbed is worked on continuously, so features change and occasionally go away. Anything material that is being removed will be announced in the app first rather than disappearing overnight.
There is no promise that the service is available without interruption. It is also not a backup service, so keep your own copy of anything you would be upset to lose.
You can delete your account from Settings in the app at any time, without asking anyone. What that removes is set out in the Privacy Policy.
Your access can be ended from this side if you break these terms. If ShelfAbsorbed shuts down altogether, you will get notice, time to get your information out, and a refund of any subscription time you have paid for and not used.
ShelfAbsorbed is provided as it is. There is no warranty that it will be uninterrupted or error-free, or that the book information in it is accurate.
As far as the law allows, neither I nor anyone working on ShelfAbsorbed is liable for indirect or consequential losses, lost profits, or lost data. Total liability for any claim is limited to what you paid in the twelve months before it, or $50 if you paid nothing.
Plenty of places do not allow some of those exclusions. Where that is true where you live, they do not apply to you, and nothing on this page takes away rights your local law gives you.
Apple asks that a few things are said plainly, and they are all true of this app:
These terms are governed by the laws of the State of Utah, in the United States, without regard to its conflict of laws rules. If you are a consumer somewhere else, this does not take away the protection of the mandatory laws where you live.
If these terms change, the date at the top changes with them. Anything that materially affects what you are agreeing to will be announced in the app before it takes effect, rather than quietly edited in.