The plain-language deal

Longtold is a product of Wood Candle Co LLC, Verona, Wisconsin, United States.
Version 1.0.0 · Effective September 3, 2026 · Last updated September 3, 2026

1This agreement

In short: These terms are a binding agreement between you and Wood Candle Co LLC. Using Longtold means agreeing to them.

We are Wood Candle Co LLC, doing business as Wood Candle Co, a company registered in Wisconsin, United States, at 203 N Marietta St, Verona, WI 53593. We operate Longtold at longtold.life. In these terms, “we,” “us” and “Longtold” mean Wood Candle Co LLC, and “you” means the person agreeing to them.

Wood Candle Co LLC203 N Marietta StVerona, WI 53593United StatesPhone: 608-438-2800Email: hey@longtold.life

These terms are a legally binding agreement. By using Longtold you confirm you have read and agreed to them. If you do not agree with all of these terms, you are not permitted to use Longtold and must stop using it. We recommend keeping a copy for your records.

You agree to them by creating a Longtold account or by using the service. If you are only receiving a family’s stories — reading the emails, tapping a reaction, writing a note back — nothing is asked of you beyond tolerating our affection for serif fonts, though what you agree not to do, what we promise and the limits on liability still apply to what you send us.

They incorporate our Privacy Policy and, if you turn texts on, our SMS policy.

2Who may use Longtold

In short: You must be 18 or older to hold an account. Children appear in these books; children do not hold accounts.

You must be 18 or older and able to enter a binding contract to hold a Longtold account. Accounts are for individuals and families rather than organizations, and you may not create one on behalf of somebody else without their knowledge.

Longtold is offered from the United States. We do not currently offer it to families in the European Economic Area or the United Kingdom.

Children appear all over these books — a story about a father’s childhood is full of them, and grandchildren are on the family tree and often on the reading list. That is the product working as intended. What is not permitted is a child holding an account of their own.

3What Longtold is, and the three jobs in it

In short: One question at a time to a storyteller, the answers to the people you choose, a printed book at the end of the year.

Longtold sends a family’s storyteller one question at a time, shares the answers with the people that family chooses, and turns a year of answers into a printed book. A family in Longtold has three kinds of people in it, and they can do different things.

The storyteller: Answers the questions. The words are theirs: only they can edit a story, and only they can delete the family’s book. They also choose how often a question arrives and on which day.
The person who set the family up: Runs the year: manages the reading list, adds questions of their own, and — on a paid plan — is the only person who can see or change billing. They cannot edit the storyteller’s words and cannot delete the book, though they can undo a deletion.
Readers: Everybody the family sends stories to. They read, react, write notes back and can ask the storyteller a question. Readers never pay for anything, and neither does the storyteller unless they happen to be the person who set the family up.

We may add, change or withdraw features. If we withdraw something your family relies on, or change these terms in a way that matters, you get an email first — see changes to these terms.

4Your account

In short: Keep your password to yourself, do not share an account, and remember that a reader’s private link is a key.

Give us accurate details and keep them current. Keep your password to yourself, and tell us at hey@longtold.life if you think somebody else has got into your account. You are responsible for what happens under your sign-in.

Do not share one account between people. If two people in a family both need to be in it, they each get their own — that is how the roles in the three jobs work, and sharing a sign-in defeats every protection in this agreement.

Private reading links

Readers without an account reach their stories through a private link in their email. That link is a key: whoever holds it can use it. Forward one and you are handing on that access, so pass them on only to people your family would be glad to have reading. Sixty days after a link was last sent it becomes read-only, and any reader’s link can be replaced on request.

5Your family’s stories are yours

In short: Your family’s stories belong to your family. We get only the permission we need to run the service for you.

Everything your family writes and uploads — the stories, the photographs, the recordings, the letters, the notes relatives write back — belongs to your family. Nothing in this agreement transfers ownership of any of it to us, and we claim nothing in it.

You give us only the permission we need in order to run the service for you: a limited, non-exclusive license to store your content (encrypted at rest), send it by email or text to the readers your family has chosen, show it to your family inside their account, typeset it, and print and deliver the book. That license exists to operate Longtold and for nothing else. It ends when the content is deleted, except for copies still sitting in backups until they expire — which the Privacy Policy sets out precisely.

What we will never do with it, as a term of this agreement and not merely a preference: we will not sell it, we will not use it for advertising, we will not make it public, and we will not use it to train an AI model — neither our own nor anybody else’s.

6The people in your family’s book

In short: Add only readers who would be glad to hear from you, and take care with what your family records about people who never signed up.

This section covers the part of Longtold that involves somebody other than you, and it is the one worth reading properly.

Adding readers

When you add somebody to a reading list you are telling us they would be glad to hear from your family, and you are confirming that you have their address legitimately and have reason to think they want the stories. Add only people who would welcome them. Every story email carries a working one-click unsubscribe and we honor it immediately, for anyone, without asking the family.

People the stories are about

A family tree in Longtold holds people who never signed up for anything — relatives, neighbors, old friends, people who have died. You are responsible for what your family records about them, and for keeping it to what is true. If somebody asks to be taken off a reading list, or objects to being written about, tell us and we will help.

We will not edit anybody’s memories for them. What we can do is take a person off a list, stop any messages reaching them, and talk to the family. In a case where the law requires more, we will do what it requires.

Texts and phone numbers

Only enrol your own number. You may not enrol somebody else’s, and we only ever ask a person for their own. If a number is enrolled that should not be, reply STOP from that handset — it takes effect immediately and for good — or write to hey@longtold.life and we will remove it.

7Questions, with a little help

In short: Some questions are machine-written from your family tree and recent stories. Never used to train a model, and you can switch it off.

Some questions are chosen with the help of an AI service. Your family tree, short excerpts of recent stories, the questions already used, and a handful of other signals about what lands with your family — the era the storyteller grew up in, how long they like their stories, which questions they rated, what the family reacted to, the this-or-that answers, and any subject you have asked us to leave alone — are sent to Anthropic so that the next question is one your family has not been asked and is about their actual life. The Privacy Policy lists every one. Never anybody’s email address or phone number, and never a photograph, a recording or a document.

What we send is never used to train an AI model. You can turn curation off entirely, and then nothing is sent at all — the check happens before anything is gathered. You can hold back individual stories, and you can put subjects off-limits.

A second model checks every question before anybody sees it, and anything it refuses is thrown away. That is a strong guardrail and not a guarantee: a machine can still produce a question that lands badly on a particular family. If one does, skip it — and tell us, because that is how the guardrail gets better. The full detail is in the Privacy Policy.

8What you agree not to do

In short: Do not use Longtold to harass anybody, break the law, or store things that have nothing to do with your family’s stories.

Longtold is a small, quiet product for families. Do not use it to:

harass, threaten, defame or invade the privacy of anybody, in a story or anywhere else;
send anything to people who have not agreed to hear from your family, or use a reading list as a mailing list for anything but your family’s stories;
upload content you have no right to upload, or that infringes somebody else’s copyright;
store content that has nothing to do with your family’s stories — Longtold is not file storage, a backup service or a document archive;
upload sexual content involving minors, or anything unlawful. We report child sexual abuse material to the authorities;
break the law, or use Longtold to help somebody else break it;
probe, scrape, overload or reverse-engineer the service, work around a rate limit, or try to reach a family’s book that is not yours;
resell Longtold, or run it as a service for other people;
upload malware, or a file dressed up as something it is not.

We do not read your family’s stories to police them, and we do not want to. What we will act on is a report — from a reader, a person written about, or anybody else — and on anything we come across while fixing a fault.

9What you can upload, and how much

In short: 15 MB a file, 5 GB a family, photographs and documents and recordings. No video.

These limits exist so that one family cannot fill the disk the rest of them share. They may change; if we lower one, we will not delete anything already saved.

File size: Up to 15 MB for anything you upload yourself, and 10 MB for a photograph texted or sent in through a link.
File types: Photographs (JPEG, PNG, WebP, GIF, HEIC), documents (PDF and Word) and recordings. Video is not supported. Every file is identified by its actual contents rather than its name, and anything else is refused — including a Word file carrying macros.
Storage per family: 5 GB, which is a great many photographs. If a family reaches it, nothing already saved is affected and stories can still be written; get in touch and we will make room.
The photo line: A family can put a short code on the fridge so relatives can text photographs in. Up to ten per message and thirty per family a day.Nothing texted in reaches the reading list, the book or anybody ’s inbox until somebody in the family has reviewed it — the storyteller, or the person who set the family up.

10Emails and texts we send you

In short: Account email comes with having an account. Texts and notifications are optional and off by default.

Holding an account means getting the messages the service is made of: the week’s question, the stories, and the occasional account email about security or billing. Those are not marketing and cannot be turned off while you have an account, though you can leave a reading list at any time and you can change how often questions arrive.

Texts and phone notifications are optional, off by default, and governed by the SMS policy. Message and data rates may apply.

11Plans, payment and renewal

In short: Nobody is charged without picking a plan first. Paid plans renew until you cancel, and cancelling never takes your stories away.

Some families are on a free or complimentary year and some are on a paid plan. Whichever you are on, nobody is ever charged without choosing a plan first, and the price is shown in full before you pay anything. Current prices are on the pricing page and at checkout.

Only the person who set the family up can start, change, pause or cancel a plan. The storyteller never pays, and neither does anybody on the reading list.

It renews on its own until you stop it

Paid plans are subscriptions that renew automatically. A monthly plan renews every month and a yearly plan renews every year, at the price you signed up at, charged to the card you gave Stripe, until you cancel. Your price does not change because our list price changes — a family already subscribed keeps the price they started on.

Where a plan includes a free trial, the length is shown before you start it, and unless you cancel before it ends the plan begins and the first charge is taken at that point.

Stopping

You can cancel at any time from Settings, without ringing anybody or asking us. Canceling takes effect at the end of the period you have already paid for — the year, or the month, runs to its end and is not cut short. You can also pause a year, which stops both the questions and the billing until you start it again.

Canceling never takes your stories away. Every story already told stays readable, and you can download the whole archive at any time. What stops is the questions.

Refunds

If you take a yearly plan and it is not what you hoped, write to us within thirty days of the charge and we will refund it in full. After that, and for monthly plans, payments already taken are not refunded — you keep the service to the end of the period and it does not renew. If we are ever at fault for a charge, we fix it, and that is not limited by anything in this paragraph.

What lapses

If a payment fails we keep the year running for three weeks while it is sorted out, and we tell only the person who pays. After that the questions stop. Nothing is deleted, nothing is lost, and the family can start again whenever they want.

Taxes are added where the law requires. Prices are in US dollars.

12The printed book

In short: While Longtold is in beta the book is bought at the end of the year. On a paid plan it is included — outright on yearly, and on monthly if you stay the year. If a year ends early, the book is still buyable, with no deadline.

The book is the point of Longtold, so here is exactly what is promised.

While Longtold is in beta: The service is free and no plan is running, so nothing is included. The hardcover is a real object somebody has to print, and a beta family buys theirs when the year ends, at the extra-copy price below. Nothing is charged before you choose it.
On a yearly plan: The full-color hardcover is included, printed when the year ends.
On a monthly plan: The same hardcover is included if you stay the full year. That is the only difference between the plans.
If a year ends early: The book is never lost with it. The hardcover stays available to order at any time, with no deadline and no plan required, printed from the stories you did tell. Twenty stories bound in cloth is still a book your family will fight over.
Extra copies: Available to order at the price shown on the pricing page.

Printing is arranged with you when your year ends, and we will confirm the details and the delivery address before anything goes to press. We print to United States addresses; if you are elsewhere, write to us and we will work it out. Books are made to order, so a printed copy cannot be returned once it has been made unless it arrives damaged or wrong — in which case we replace it.

You can also download a print-ready file of your family’s book at any time and take it to a printer yourself. It is your book.

13Tips

In short: Voluntary, buys nothing, changes nothing. Tipped by mistake? We will refund it.

People sometimes want to chip in, and there is a tip jar for it. Tipping is entirely voluntary, buys nothing, and changes nothing about your family’s account or the service you get. It is a one-off payment and never a subscription. Tips are taken by Stripe; we never see or store card numbers.

If you tipped by mistake, or meant a different amount, write to hey@longtold.life and we will refund it.

14Taking your book with you

In short: You can download everything your family has made, any time, from Settings, without asking us.

At any time, from Settings, you can download everything your family has made: every story, photograph, recording and document, as ordinary files, with plain web pages to read them in that work on your own computer with Longtold switched off entirely. You do not have to ask us, and there is no charge.

We think everyone should do this once a year regardless. It is your family’s book, and a copy of it that does not depend on us existing is worth having.

15Ending it

In short: The storyteller can delete the book, with thirty days to change their mind. We would only close an account for serious misuse.

Deleting the book

The storyteller can delete their family’s book from Settings — the words are theirs, so the decision is theirs. Everything stops that day. For thirty days nothing is destroyed and one click brings it all back; during that time Longtold is closed to the family, though they can still download the whole archive, which we would urge anyone to do. After thirty days it is destroyed for good and nobody can bring it back, including us. The family’s sign-ins stop working — with one exception the Privacy Policy sets out: if somebody in your family also belongs to another family’s book, we keep their sign-in rather than damaging that book, and simply detach them from yours.

Either the storyteller or the person who set the family up can undo a deletion during those thirty days. Two things outlive it, and we would rather say so than let you find out: stories already emailed are in inboxes we cannot reach, and backups hold a copy until they expire. The Privacy Policy gives the exact periods.

Leaving without deleting

You can cancel a plan and keep the book (see plans, payment and renewal), or leave a reading list without affecting anything else. Write to hey@longtold.life if you want to close an account rather than a book.

When we would end it

We may suspend or close an account that breaks what you agree not to do, that is being used to harm somebody, or where the law requires it. We will tell you why, and — unless we are legally barred, or the matter involves harm to somebody — we will give you a chance to put it right and to take a copy of your family’s book before anything is removed. Where we close an account for something other than serious misuse, we refund the unused part of anything you have paid.

We may also stop offering Longtold. If we ever do, we will give families reasonable notice, refund the unused part of any plan, and make sure everyone can download their book before it goes.

16Feedback

In short: Tell us how to make Longtold better and we may act on it. That is not a claim on anything in your family’s book.

If you tell us how to make Longtold better, we may act on it without owing you anything for it. That is not a claim on anything you write in your family’s book — it means an idea in a bug report or an email about the product itself.

17What belongs to us

In short: The software, the design and the name are ours. Your stories and photographs are yours.

Longtold itself — the software, the design, the name, the wordmark, the questions we wrote, and the way the book is typeset — belongs to Wood Candle Co. You may use it to run your family’s year, and that is the whole of the permission granted. Your family’s own stories and photographs are covered by your family’s stories are yours and remain yours.

18What we do and do not promise

In short: We work hard to keep Longtold reliable, but it is provided “as is.” Please keep your own copy of what matters.

We work hard to keep Longtold reliable, and we take backups seriously because we know what is in it. But Longtold is provided “as is” and “as available.” To the fullest extent the law allows, we disclaim all warranties, express or implied, including merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, and non-infringement.

Specifically, we do not promise that the service will be uninterrupted or error-free, that a question written with AI help will always suit your family, that an email or text will always arrive — delivery depends on providers and carriers we do not control — or that a printed book will be free of every flaw.

Please do not let Longtold be the only copy of anything that matters to your family. We keep backups and we go to real trouble over them, but no service is immune to loss. Download your archive from Settings now and again — it takes one click, and it is the single best thing you can do to protect your family’s stories.

19Limits on liability

In short: Our liability is capped at what you paid us in the last six months, or one hundred dollars, whichever is greater.

To the fullest extent the law allows, neither Wood Candle Co nor anybody working with us is liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential or punitive damages, or for lost profits, lost data or lost goodwill, arising out of your use of Longtold.

Our total liability to you for any cause whatsoever, and regardless of the form of the action, is limited to the greater of the amount you paid us, if any, in the six months before the cause of action arose, or one hundred US dollars.

Some states do not allow the exclusion of certain warranties or liabilities. Where that is so, the exclusions above apply to you only as far as that state permits, and nothing here limits liability for fraud, for gross negligence, or for anything else the law does not permit us to limit.

20If something you posted causes a problem

In short: If a claim comes at us because of what your family posted, you cover our reasonable costs.

If a claim is brought against us because of content your family put into Longtold, because of somebody you added to a reading list, or because of a breach of these terms, you agree to cover our reasonable costs in dealing with it. We will tell you promptly if it happens, and we will not settle anything that puts an obligation on you without asking you first.

21Governing law

In short: Wisconsin law governs these terms.

These terms and your use of Longtold are governed by and construed in accordance with the laws of the State of Wisconsin, applicable to agreements made and entirely performed within it, without regard to its conflict-of-law principles.

22If we end up in a dispute

In short: Talk to us first for thirty days. After that, disputes go to binding arbitration rather than to a court or a jury, individually rather than as a class.

First, let us try to fix it

If a dispute arises, both of us agree to try to settle it informally first. Write to us with what is wrong and give us thirty days to put it right before starting anything formal. Almost everything is fixable by a person reading an email, and we would far rather sort something out than argue.

Binding arbitration

If that does not resolve it, the dispute will be settled by binding arbitration rather than in court. This means you are giving up your right to sue in court and to have a jury hear your case. The arbitration is conducted under the Commercial Arbitration Rules of the American Arbitration Association and, where they apply, its Supplementary Procedures for Consumer Related Disputes, which also govern and limit your share of the fees. It may be held in person, by phone, online, or on documents alone, and unless the rules or the law require otherwise it takes place in Dane County, Wisconsin.

Any arbitration is limited to the dispute between the two of us individually. To the fullest extent the law allows, it will not be joined with any other proceeding, there is no right to arbitrate on a class-action basis, and no dispute may be brought on behalf of the general public or anybody else.

No dispute related to Longtold may be started more than one year after the cause of action arose.

What is left out of that

Neither informal negotiation nor arbitration applies to a dispute about intellectual property rights, to allegations of theft, piracy, invasion of privacy or unauthorised use, or to a claim for injunctive relief. Those, and any dispute that for some reason proceeds in court rather than arbitration, go to the state and federal courts in Dane County, Wisconsin, and we each consent to their jurisdiction and waive any objection to that venue. The UN Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods and the Uniform Computer Information Transaction Act do not apply.

If any part of this section is found unenforceable, that part is severed and the dispute it covers goes to the courts named above instead. Nothing here stops you bringing a matter in small claims court, or complaining to a regulator.

23Corrections

In short: We may fix errors and update the service at any time.

There may be information on Longtold that contains a typographical error, an inaccuracy or an omission, including in descriptions, pricing and availability. We may correct any of it and update the service at any time, without notice.

24Doing this electronically

In short: Using Longtold and emailing us count as communicating in writing, and you agree to electronic signatures and records.

Using Longtold, emailing us and completing forms on the site are electronic communications. You consent to receive communications from us electronically, and you agree that agreements, notices, disclosures and other messages we send you electronically satisfy any legal requirement that they be in writing. You agree to the use of electronic signatures, contracts and records, and waive any requirement for an original signature or a non-electronic record — except where the law does not permit that waiver.

25Your data, and keeping your own copy

In short: We back things up and take it seriously. Keep your own copy anyway.

We keep the data you put into Longtold in order to run the service, and we take regular backups, because we know what is in it.

Please do not let Longtold be the only copy of anything that matters to your family. Download your archive from Settings now and again — it takes one click, it needs nothing from us to open, and it is the single best thing you can do to protect your family’s stories.

26California users and residents

In short: If a complaint is not resolved, California residents can contact the Complaint Assistance Unit.

If a complaint is not resolved to your satisfaction, you may contact the Complaint Assistance Unit of the Division of Consumer Services of the California Department of Consumer Affairs in writing at 1625 North Market Blvd., Suite N 112, Sacramento, California 95834, or by telephone at (800) 952-5210 or (916) 445-1254.

27Changes to these terms

In short: If we change these in a way that matters, account holders get an email before it takes effect.

We may update these terms. When we do, the “last updated” date at the top changes.

If we change them in a way that matters — anything affecting what you pay, what we may do with your family’s content, or your rights here — account holders get an email before it takes effect. If you do not agree to a change, you can cancel and download your book; carrying on using Longtold after a change takes effect means you accept it.

28The rest of it

In short: Severability, waiver, assignment, force majeure, notices, and the whole agreement.

If a clause fails: If any part of these terms is held unenforceable, the rest carries on, and that part is narrowed only as far as it has to be.
Not enforcing something is not giving it up: If we do not enforce a term straight away, we have not waived it.
Transfers: You may not transfer your rights under these terms. We may transfer ours if Longtold changes hands, on the conditions in the Privacy Policy.
Things outside anyone’s control: Neither of us is liable for a failure caused by something genuinely beyond our control — an outage at a provider, a natural disaster, a failure of the postal service.
How we reach each other: We write to the email address on your account; keep it current. You write to hey@longtold.life.
The whole agreement: These terms, the Privacy Policy and the SMS policy are the whole agreement between us about Longtold, and replace anything said before.

29Contact us

In short: hey@longtold.life, 608-438-2800, or 203 N Marietta St, Verona, WI 53593.

To resolve a complaint about Longtold, or for more information about using it, contact us at: