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Read Pulse

About Read Pulse

1. What is Read Pulse?

Read Pulse is a reading and interactive storytelling platform, built to offer more than one way to experience a story — from traditional reading, to choosing where the story goes, to interacting directly with characters through Gamification.

Read Pulse is available to users worldwide and currently publishes stories in English.

The content on Read Pulse focuses on fiction, with leading genres such as:

  • Dark Romance;
  • Romantasy;
  • Psychological Thriller;
  • Along with other genres that may be added as the content library grows.

2. The experiences Read Pulse offers

Read Pulse currently has three main ways to experience a story.

Timeless Tales — Novels

This is traditional reading. The reader follows the chapters in the order the author built them.

The reading features may include:

  • Reading progress;
  • Bookmarks;
  • A personal library;
  • Reading history;
  • Comments and reviews;
  • Audio/narration where the content supports it;
  • Sharing tools and Quote Image.

Choose Your Fate — CYOA

Readers can make choices at certain points in the story and follow different branches.

The choices and outcomes in this kind of story are determined by a story structure that was built in advance.

CYOA does not use AI to generate content in real time.

Living Worlds — Gamification

Gamification lets readers interact with characters and story worlds through dynamically generated responses.

This is an AI-powered experience and is kept clearly separate from Novels and CYOA.

Read Pulse displays AI information at the appropriate points so that users know when they are interacting directly with an AI system.

Details of how the AI works, what data is processed and the limitations of AI are set out in the Read Pulse AI Disclosure.

3. Where does the content on Read Pulse come from?

The stories and chapters published on Read Pulse can only be created and managed by accounts with the appropriate staff permissions, such as writer, moderator or administrator.

Ordinary reader accounts cannot publish stories or chapters on Read Pulse themselves.

Some other content on the platform is created by users, such as:

  • Comments and replies;
  • Reviews and ratings;
  • Theories;
  • Lore notes;
  • Reading lists;
  • Profile information;
  • Reactions, poll votes and other community interactions.

Users keep the rights they hold in the content they create. How Read Pulse is permitted to store, display and process that content is explained in the Terms of Service and in Copyright & Intellectual Property.

4. Content and publishing standards

Read Pulse uses a status system to manage content before it is shown publicly.

A story and its chapters must be in the appropriate status before public readers can access them. The system also applies technical and structural checks to a chapter before the content is processed.

Read Pulse uses three content ratings:

  • All Ages
  • Teen 13+
  • 18+

18+ content is subject to age-based access restrictions.

Stories may also use:

  • Genres;
  • Tags;
  • Tropes;
  • Content warnings;

to help readers better understand the kind of content they are about to encounter.

Read Pulse has moderation tools that let users report problematic content or behaviour. Moderation actions affecting content or accounts are reviewed by authorised personnel, and eligible users can submit an appeal through the Read Pulse process.

Note

Read Pulse does not describe its current process as a system in which “every story is approved by an editor before publication”, because the current workflow has no separate reviewer/approval status.

5. How Read Pulse uses AI

AI is currently used only in Gamification and in the activities that directly support that experience, namely:

  • Generating interactive responses;
  • Running certain automated safety checks;
  • Creating background summaries to help maintain the context of a long session.

The following features do not use AI/an LLM to produce their results:

  • Novels;
  • CYOA;
  • Search;
  • Recommendations;
  • Ranking;
  • Prediction;
  • Achievements and rewards.

Gamification is an optional feature. Users can still read and use the other parts of Read Pulse without using Gamification.

AI responses are generated automatically and may be inaccurate, inconsistent or unsuitable in some cases. Read Pulse applies its own safety mechanisms to Gamification and provides further information in the AI Disclosure.

6. Ownership and licensed content

The rights in the content on Read Pulse may belong to:

  • Read Pulse;
  • The author;
  • The creator;
  • The rights holder;
  • Or the relevant licensor.

The fact that a work appears on Read Pulse does not mean that Read Pulse claims to own every right in that work.

Read Pulse maintains internal information about the source and rights status of a story, to the extent the system supports it.

Content created by users continues to belong to those users or to the relevant rights holder.

The use, sharing, copying and reporting of content is set out in more detail in Copyright & Intellectual Property and in the Terms of Service.

7. The Read Pulse community

Beyond reading, Read Pulse provides features that help readers engage with the content and with the community, such as:

  • Comments;
  • Reviews;
  • Theories;
  • Lore notes;
  • Reading lists;
  • Follows;
  • Reactions;
  • Polls and predictions.

Read Pulse has a report, moderation and appeal system to help deal with content or behaviour that may break the rules of the platform.

Users are responsible for the content they post, and are asked to respect the rights, privacy and experience of others.

8. Privacy and safety

Read Pulse collects and processes the data necessary to:

  • Run accounts;
  • Save reading progress;
  • Provide the features users choose;
  • Maintain security;
  • Handle reports and moderation;
  • Run Gamification when a user uses that feature.

Read Pulse is funded in part by ads delivered through Google Ad Manager. Read Pulse does not give advertisers your account details; Google and its advertising partners see the page an ad appears on and use cookies to show and measure ads, and you can opt out of personalised ads.

The details are set out in:

Users can manage many kinds of data directly in Settings, or use the support channels Read Pulse provides.

9. Read Pulse is still growing

Read Pulse is a platform that continues to be developed.

Features, genres, reading experiences and community tools may change or be added over time.

Some features that already exist in the system may not yet be switched on publicly. Read Pulse only describes as “available” the features that users can actually use today.

When there are significant changes affecting how the service works, users’ rights or how data is processed, the relevant information pages and policies will be updated as needed.

10. Learn more

You can learn more about how Read Pulse works through:

If you need help or would like to contact Read Pulse, please use the Contact page or email [email protected].