Content rules

These rules apply to everything published on Kpnovel: books, chapters, pen names, bios, comments and reviews. They are part of the terms of service and of the writer agreement.

Every chapter is read by a person before it goes live. That is slow and it is the point.

Never, under any circumstances

Anything that sexualises a person under 18. In any form, in any framing, including where a character is stated to be older, including where it is described as a dream, a flashback, a fantasy or a memory, and including drawings and cover art. There is no artistic exception and no appeal. An account that does this is ended and the material is reported to the authorities where the law requires it.

Real people in sexual content. Named or identifiable, living or recently dead.

Pornographic writing. Explicit, anatomical sexual description, or a scene written to arouse rather than to tell a story. See "Allowed, with an age rating" below for where that line sits and why it is not ours to move.

Content that exists to harass a real person, or to incite violence against real people or a real group.

Instructions for causing serious harm weapons, explosives, poisons, or how to hurt somebody in a way a reader could follow.

Suicide, self-harm and eating disorders written as a way out. A character can be in despair. A character can think about ending their life, can have a history of cutting, can be starving themselves and hiding it, and the story can take every bit of that seriously that is some of the most important writing there is and we are not asking anybody to look away from it. What we will not publish is the turn where it stops being suffering and becomes a solution: suicide written as peace, as release, as the inevitable end, as the answer to what the character cannot carry; self-harm or starving written as control, as discipline, as the thing that finally worked. And never a method in enough detail to follow not the substance, not the dose, not the place, not the sequence, not for suicide, not for self-harm, not for losing weight.

The test is not whether the subject appears. It is whether a reader already in trouble could close the chapter holding a reason, or a means, they did not have when they opened it.

This sits in the never list rather than behind an 18 rating on purpose. UK law treats this material as content children must be prevented from reaching, not merely age-graded away from, and the only method the regulator accepts as prevention is identity or face-based age checking of every reader. We are not putting a romance reader through a passport scan. So we do not publish the content, and nobody has to prove who they are to read a book here. That is the trade, and it is deliberate.

Somebody else's writing passed off as yours. Including a machine's. See "Your own work" below.

Allowed, with an age rating

Kpnovel publishes romance, and romance has sex in it. What is allowed is sex as part of a story: wanting somebody, going to bed with them, waking up beside them and having to say something. A scene can be sensual, a morning after can be frank, and the door can close wherever the story is better for its closing. What is not allowed is writing whose point is the sex itself, explicit anatomical description, or a scene that exists to arouse rather than to carry the story on.

That line is not squeamishness, and it is not ours to move. Apple will not sell an app containing graphic sexual content at all, not behind an age rating, not behind an age gate, not in a book nobody has opened. Google treats it much the same. One explicit chapter does not get that book rated higher; it gets Kpnovel removed from both stores, and every writer on it paid nothing. That is why it sits above with the things we never publish rather than down here among the ratings.

• 13 — the default. Mild peril, no sexual content, no graphic violence.
• 16 — attraction and sex referred to or fading to black, violence with consequences, drug use, strong language.
• 18 — sex written without explicit detail, strong language throughout, adult themes, violence with real weight and real consequences.

Rate your book honestly. A book rated below what it contains is the fastest way to lose the trust of readers and of the app stores, and it is the rating, not the content, that the stores judge us on.

We will change a rating we think is wrong, and tell you why.

Your own work

The work must be yours. If you use AI tools as an aid, for a synopsis, for a stuck paragraph, for tidying a line, the finished work must still be substantially your writing and your judgement.

Declaring roughly how much assistance you used is a field on the book, and an honest number there is never held against you.

Passing off somebody else's work as your own ends the agreement and forfeits unpaid earnings on the work concerned.

Pen names

A pen name is not a disguise for impersonation. Do not take the name of a real author, a public figure, or another Kpnovel writer, and do not adopt a name intended to make readers think a book is somebody else's.

Comments and reviews

Argue about the book. Do not attack the person, not the author, not another reader, not the moderator. No spam, no advertising, no links to pirated copies, and no posting of somebody's personal information.

When we act

We remove work, we lower a rating, we mute an account, and we end accounts. Which one depends on what happened and whether it happened before. We will always tell you what rule was broken. A takedown with no reason is how a platform loses the people who keep it alive, and we would rather explain ourselves than save the message.

If you think we got it wrong, say so the contact form at kpnovel.com/contact, or info@kpnovel.com.