Author Terms
These are the terms between Swear It Happened and the people who write for it. They are part of our Terms of Use and are written to be read, not skimmed: eight short sections, no surprises. Version 2026-08-a.
1. What you keep
You keep the copyright in everything you write here. We never claim ownership of your work and we never take exclusive rights to it. You are free to publish the same story anywhere else, at any time, without asking us.
2. What you grant us
By publishing a story on Swear It Happened you grant us a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free licence to host, display, format, excerpt and translate your text, to produce audio versions of it — including versions narrated by a synthetic voice — and video adaptations of it, and to distribute that audio and video through podcast platforms, feeds and video platforms such as YouTube, whether by us or by our distribution partners. This licence exists so that we can run the site and bring its stories to readers, listeners and viewers. Stories here are published as fiction told in the first person unless the author states otherwise, and the True / Fake reader vote is a guessing game, not a factual claim by you or by us.
3. Audio, podcast and video
Audio is an optional product of the site, and no story is guaranteed an episode. When a story is chosen, it is narrated by a synthetic voice, and one episode may contain several stories by different authors. Finished episodes and videos are released on our own pages and through external platforms — podcast apps, RSS feeds and video platforms such as YouTube — by us or by our distribution partners, and those platforms keep their own copies under their own rules.
4. What we never do
We do not sell your text to third parties and we do not licence it onward for anyone else's unrelated product. We do not charge you to publish and we do not claim your future work. We do not publish anything under your name that you did not write, and we do not edit your story into something you did not say.
5. Deleting your story
You can delete your story from the site at any time. Some things honestly cannot be undone: search engines and archives may keep a copy for a while, and if your story has already been released as a podcast episode or a video, those copies have been downloaded or mirrored and cannot be recalled from other people's devices. We will remove the episode from our own feed and our own pages on request, and we will not include the story in any future episode or video.
6. Your data
What we store about you and why is set out in the Privacy Policy. As proof of your consent to these terms we keep the date you agreed, the version you agreed to and the IP address the agreement came from. You can withdraw that consent at any time by deleting your account.
7. Age and identity
Authors must be at least 18 years old. Pen names are welcome — you may sign any story however you like — but impersonating a real person, writing under someone else's name or presenting another person's work as your own is not allowed.
8. Changes to these terms
When these terms change in a way that matters, the version line at the top changes with them and you will be asked to confirm the new version before submitting your next story — never silently. This page is part of our Terms of Use; questions go to webmaster@swearithappened.com.