A few rules, kept short on purpose

The Reading Room works because readers treat it like a good library: warm, a little opinionated, and careful with each other. These are the house rules. There are not many, and most of them boil down to the first one.

Be kind

Disagree with the take, not the person. Snark about a villain is fine; snark about another reader is not. If a post would make you wince said out loud across a table, do not post it.

Watch your spoilers

Every read-along thread has a progress mark, like "through 25%". Inside a thread, anything up to that mark is fair game. Anything past it, or anything from later books, stays out. The lobby thread is spoiler-free, full stop. When in doubt, say less.

Pen names only

Everyone here posts under a pen name. Keep it that way: no posting anyone's real name, address, workplace, or socials, yours included. No impersonating another reader, an author, or anyone else. Your pen name is yours; leave everyone else's identity alone.

Forgot your secret word? If your pen name has a recovery email attached, ask through the Suggestion Box from that email and we will reset it by hand. No email on file means no way to prove the name is yours: the posts stay, but the name is lost, so attach an email while you remember. Staying signed in with "Keep my chair on this device" is optional and per device, and it never needs an email.

No self-promo or link drops

The Reading Room is for talking about books, not marketing them. No plugging your own store, channel, or newsletter. Links are disabled in posts anyway, so a pasted URL will simply bounce. Mention a book by title in braces, like {Fourth Wing}, and it turns into a proper book card.

Spice stays behind the ratings

Plenty of shelves here run hot, and that is fine. But explicit, 18+ discussion belongs in threads for books that carry the spice ratings, not in general threads or the lobby. Assume a teenager reading over your shoulder in the all-ages spaces.

No pirated copies

Do not share pirated books, ask where to find them, or point anyone toward them. Authors eat off these pages. Library cards and Kindle Unlimited trials exist; use those.

Fan art

The Fan Art Wall hangs your work, not your rights. You keep the copyright to anything you upload; by uploading you grant Ink and Fables a nonexclusive license to display it on the site. Upload your own work only: no tracing, no reposting someone else's piece, no AI passes over another artist's art. Fan art of copyrighted worlds is hosted in good faith as transformative fan work, and if a rights holder asks us to take a piece down, we will (see the takedown page). Want your own piece removed? Ask through the Suggestion Box and down it comes.

On nudity: fan art with nudity is welcome here the way it would be in a gallery, but it always arrives blurred, everywhere it hangs. Lifting the blur is a choice each reader makes for themselves, one image at a time, by confirming they are 18 or older; nothing about that choice is saved or follows you around. Explicit sexual content, sex acts and the like, is a different matter: we do not accept it, and the librarian will decline it with a kind word.

On AI: AI-created and AI-assisted fan art is welcome here, no label required. What we celebrate is the rarer thing: if a piece was made by human hands with no AI in the chain, say so with the "Made by human hands, no AI" checkbox when you upload, and it will wear a small gold Human-made badge wherever it hangs. The badge is an honor system; nobody audits brushstrokes, and we take your word for it. Falsely claiming human-made is the one thing that gets an AI piece removed.

Community boards

The Forums hold two kinds of boards. Official boards are opened by us and wear an Official badge. Community boards are opened and named by readers, and they are yours to shape. The same house rules apply everywhere, official or not. A board that keeps breaking the rules gets locked or hidden, and a board name with a spoiler in it gets quietly renamed by the librarian.

What we do with reports

Every post has a Report link. Reports go straight to a human, the librarian, not an algorithm. When a report comes in we hide first and ask questions after: the post disappears from view while we look, and it comes back if it turns out to be fine. Reporting your own post is also the fastest way to ask for its removal.

Break the rules once and the post gets hidden with a quiet word. Keep breaking them and the pen name is retired, permanently. That is the whole enforcement policy.

Questions about a call we made, or a rule you think is wrong? Tell the Suggestion Box. The rules are community property too.