Privacy policy

Well Read is made by Zossoz, Inc. (“Zossoz,” “we,” “us”). Well Read is built on a simple rule: your club’s discussions are yours, and we never see them.

The short version

• Well Read has no account and no sign-up.
• We operate no servers and collect no personal data.
• Your club, books, meetings, and notes live only on your device, unless you turn on sharing for a club.
• The only network features are an optional book-catalog search and optional per-club iCloud sharing — both off until you turn them on.
• The optional meeting-recap feature runs entirely on your device; discussion questions come from a fixed, curated list, not a model.
• No ads, no analytics, no tracking, no data sales. Ever.

What Well Read stores, and where

Your club roster, books, meetings, discussion questions, and notes are stored locally on your device, in the app’s own storage. Nothing is ever sent to Zossoz — we have no servers to send it to. Well Read connects to the internet only for the two optional features described below — sharing a club, and looking up book details — each of which you turn on yourself, and neither of which sends anything to us.

Sharing a club (optional)

You can share one club with the rest of its members so everyone sees the same roster, books, meetings, snack signups, and notes. This is off by default and turned on one club at a time — the clubs you don't share never leave your phone.

When you turn it on, that club's data is stored in your own iCloud account, using Apple's CloudKit. It is not sent to Zossoz, and we cannot see it — we operate no servers and have no access to your iCloud. Apple handles it under their own privacy policy. Only the people you explicitly invite can open the club; there is no public link, and Well Read still has no account of its own to create.

Your reading progress is never shared, even for a shared club. How far you've read is what the spoiler veil measures against, and it stays on your own device.

Turning sharing off for a club removes it from iCloud for everyone. Your own copy stays on your phone, unchanged.

Looking up book details

When you add a book, you can tap “Look up a book” to search Open Library, a free book catalog operated by the Internet Archive, and fill in the author, page count, and cover art automatically. This is entirely optional — you can always type a book in by hand, and Well Read works identically either way.

If you use it, here is exactly what happens. The only thing sent is the search text you type, plus a request for the cover image of whichever result you pick. Nothing about your club is included — not your club name, members, meetings, notes, ratings, nor any identifier for you or your device. Well Read has no account, so there is nothing for Open Library to associate a search with beyond an ordinary web request. The cover image is downloaded once and stored on your device, so it keeps working offline afterward and is never fetched again. Nothing you search for is sent to Zossoz, logged, or stored anywhere outside your phone.

Open Library is operated by the Internet Archive under its own privacy policy. Well Read asks you to confirm before its first search. Once you’ve confirmed, the same lookup also runs automatically to fill in a book you shared in from another app (see “Sharing a book from Safari” below) — it never asks a second time, and if you’ve never confirmed, a shared title is added by hand instead, exactly as if you’d typed it. Open Library, at its two addresses above, is the only place Well Read’s network requests ever go — there is no Zossoz server in the middle, and no other feature in the app makes a network request at all except the iCloud sharing described above.

Photo library

Well Read can use a photo from your library as a book’s cover image. This is the only reason Well Read ever asks for photo access, and it only reads the photo you choose.

Sharing a book from Safari

Well Read adds a Share Extension, so you can share a page for a book from Safari (or any app with a Share button) straight into your shelf, without switching apps by hand. The extension itself only reads the page’s title and web address — nothing else on the page, and nothing about your club — and hands that off to Well Read. It never contacts Open Library, Zossoz, or anyone else itself; it can’t, since a share extension runs as its own small process with none of the app’s data.

The next time you open Well Read, the shared title is added to your shelf. If you’ve confirmed the Open Library lookup (above), it’s used to fill in the author, page count, and cover automatically; if not, the title is added the same way a hand-typed one would be.

Reading reminders and calendar events

The “Remind me” option on a meeting schedules a local notification on your device for the morning of — nothing is sent anywhere to set or deliver it, and iOS will ask you to allow notifications the first time you use it. Declining just means no reminder; everything else in the app works the same.

“Add to Calendar” asks for write-only access to your calendar — Well Read can add the one event you tap for, and nothing else. It never reads your existing calendar, and declining the permission just means that meeting isn’t added; nothing else changes.

The widget

Well Read’s Home Screen widget shows your next meeting — its date, host, where you’ve agreed to read to, and the current reader’s claimed snack. It reads that handful of facts from a small on-device snapshot the app keeps for it (shared only between Well Read and its own widget, on your device); it does not talk to iCloud, Open Library, or Zossoz, and adding or removing the widget asks for no permission at all.

Siri, Shortcuts, and search

Well Read offers a few Siri phrases — whose turn it is to host, and where the next meeting is — and lets Shortcuts add a chapter note. It also indexes your books and meetings so they can turn up in iPhone search. Both are handled entirely on your device by iOS itself; nothing about your club, its members, or its books is sent to Zossoz, and using either feature doesn’t ask for any permission beyond the ones already described above.

On-device intelligence

The optional “Sum up the night” recap runs entirely on your device using Apple’s on-device models, drafted from your meeting’s ratings and checked-off questions. It never reads your club’s spoiler-veiled notes, and it lands in an editable draft you have to choose to save — nothing autosaves from it. Nothing about your club or its discussions is ever transmitted to Zossoz or any third party for this or any other feature. Discussion questions themselves come from a fixed, curated question bank, not from a model — so they can’t contain spoilers only you and your model would know about.

Purchases

Well Read is free, with a single one-time unlock (“Well Read Club”) for a second club and a few extra features. The purchase itself is handled entirely by Apple through the App Store — Well Read never sees or stores your payment details. It’s a one-time purchase, not a subscription, and it’s eligible for Family Sharing, so it can cover everyone in your Family group. If you reinstall Well Read or move to a new device, use Restore Purchases (in Settings) to unlock it again without paying twice.

What we don’t do

• No analytics or tracking SDKs of any kind.
• No advertising, and no data sales — we have nothing to sell.
• No collection of names, emails, contacts, or identifiers.

Children

Well Read is not directed at children under 13 and, consistent with the rest of this policy, collects no personal information from anyone.

Deleting your data

Delete individual items in the app at any time. Deleting the app removes all locally stored data.

Changes to this policy

If Well Read’s behavior ever changes in a way that affects your privacy, we will update this policy and note the new effective date above before the change ships.

Contact us

Zossoz, Inc.
Email: privacy@zossoz.com
Phone: (305) 788-2174