Questions, answered plainly

No. You sign in with your email or a Google account, and a secure library is created for you. There are no seed phrases to write down and nothing to install. The blockchain works quietly in the background to protect your ownership; you never have to think about it.

You own it. Ownership is recorded on a public ledger rather than inside one company's private database, so it does not depend on any single store staying in business. You can keep a book indefinitely, lend it, or pass it on.

No, and that is the point. Each copy has exactly one current holder at a time, just like a paperback. When you lend a book, reading access moves to your friend and leaves your shelf until it comes back.

Straight in your browser, on a phone, tablet or computer. When you open a book, Ownbound confirms you are the current holder and unlocks the pages on your own device. The file is never handed over unprotected and nothing is saved to your disk.

Yes. Send it to a friend and set a due date of up to a year. They get full reading access while they hold it; when they return it or the loan ends, access comes back to you automatically. No expiry tricks, no permission slips.

Yes. You can pass a finished book on to a new reader and recoup some value, the way you would with a used paperback. The author earns a royalty on that resale too, so reselling supports the people who wrote the book.

Yes. Authors keep the majority of the first sale and earn a perpetual royalty every time a copy changes hands afterwards. See For authors for the details.

Because ownership lives on a public ledger and your books are encrypted rather than trapped in our servers, your ownership is not tied to us alone. Our committed direction is decentralised storage and key custody so that a book you own outlives any single company, including ours. We are in early access today and honest about that: this is where we are heading, and the design already points that way.

Your books are decrypted on your own device, so the content is not read off our servers. Activity such as ownership and transfers is recorded on a public ledger against a wallet address rather than your name. We take privacy seriously and design to keep personal detail out of the public record.

PDF and EPUB read in-app today, in any modern browser on phone, tablet or computer. More formats are on the way. There is no separate app to download.

Ownbound is in early access on a public test network, so it is free to try while our first author pilot runs. Sign in, browse the shelf, and tell us what you think; your feedback shapes what ships next.