Terms of use

We interview you, in your own language, over as long as it takes. We transcribe what you say, index it, and write it into a book in your voice. You read every chapter and can send any of them back.

We are a writing service, not a publisher. We do not print, sell or distribute your book unless you separately ask us to.

PenBliss is provided by NEOVIA SAS, Bureau 3, 9 rue de Condé, 33000 Bordeaux, France, RCS Bordeaux 990 188 724. The full company details are in the legal notice.

You can start without one. Answer a question and we make a place to keep it, tied to the device in your hand. That is deliberate: you should be able to see what this is before deciding whether we deserve your email address.

Until you add an address, that account exists only on that device. If you lose the phone, we have no way to prove the account is yours and no way to give it back. Add an address and confirm it; it takes a minute and it is the only thing standing between you and that outcome.

Your words are yours. Everything you say and write remains yours entirely, and nothing in these terms changes that.

The book is yours too. You own the manuscript we produce from your material, including the right to publish it, print it, sell it or give it away, without asking us and without paying us anything further.

You give us permission to hold and process your material only so far as it takes to make the book and to show it to you. That permission ends when you close your account. We will not use your story to advertise this service, as an example to anybody, or to train anything.

The chapters are written by a language model working from your answers, under instructions never to invent anything. It is not perfect. It can mishear a name, place a year wrongly, or press two memories together that belong apart.

That is why nothing is finished until you have read it. Where the instance records provenance, every paragraph can be held against the answers it came from. Check the names and the dates. We do not warrant that the book is accurate; you are the only person who can know that.

• A number of questions can be answered for nothing, so you can see what the book will be before paying anything.
• After that a plan is required to carry on. Prices are shown before you pay and in your own currency.
• A subscription runs until you stop it, and you can stop it at any time from your account. Stopping ends the next charge; it does not delete anything.
• If you are unhappy within fourteen days of a payment, write to us and we will refund it. You do not have to say why.

You may name somebody who can continue the interview and take the book out if you become unable to. They gain no access at all until they accept, and you can withdraw it at any time.

If you die without naming anybody, we will release the book and the recordings to your executor or next of kin on reasonable proof. We would much rather you named somebody, because that decision should be yours and not ours.

Record your own life, or the life of somebody who has asked you to. Do not record a person who has not agreed to it, do not upload material you have no right to, and do not use this to impersonate anybody.

We may suspend an account that is being used this way. If we do, we will tell you why and give you your material.

We take real care with this — it is somebody’s life — but we cannot promise the service is never interrupted, and we depend on other companies for transcription, writing and hosting.

Where we are liable, our liability is limited to what you have paid us in the twelve months before the problem. Nothing here limits liability for death, personal injury, or anything else the law does not permit us to limit. If you are a consumer, your statutory rights are unaffected by anything on this page.

You can close your account whenever you like. Take a copy of everything first — the book, the transcripts and the recordings are all downloadable — because thirty days after you close it, they are gone.

These terms are governed by French law. If you are a consumer, you may bring proceedings in the courts of the country where you live, and nothing here takes away the protection your own law gives you.