Terms of Service

These Terms of Service (“Terms”) constitute a binding legal agreement between you (“you” or “User”) and Bookbloom LLC, a limited liability company registered in the United States of America (“Bookbloom,” “we,” “us,” or “our”).

Bookbloom operates the Knovia platform (“Knovia” or the “Platform”) — an online marketplace for verified academic study materials, accessible at knovia.co and any associated subdomains or applications. These Terms govern all use of the Platform, including browsing, account creation, purchasing materials, listing materials for sale, and all other interactions with the service.

By accessing or using the Platform, you confirm that you have read, understood, and agree to be bound by these Terms and all policies incorporated by reference, including our Privacy Policy, Copyright & DMCA Policy, Refund Policy, and Content Guidelines.

You may use the Platform if you meet all of the following conditions:

• You are at least 18 years of age, or you are aged 13–17 and have obtained the consent of a parent or legal guardian who agrees to these Terms on your behalf.
• You have the legal capacity to enter into a binding contract in your jurisdiction.
• Your use of the Platform does not violate any applicable law or regulation in your jurisdiction.
• Your account has not been previously suspended or terminated by Knovia for a violation of these Terms.

The Platform is primarily designed for users in Nigeria. Buyers from other countries may access and purchase materials, subject to available payment methods and applicable laws. Lecturers are required to be employed at or affiliated with an institution accredited by the NUC, NBTE, NCCE, or equivalent recognised body in their jurisdiction.

Knovia operates two account types with distinct roles and obligations:

• Buyer accounts: Created to browse the marketplace, purchase study materials, access purchased materials in the online viewer or offline, and submit ratings and reviews. No identity verification is required for buyer accounts beyond email confirmation.
• Lecturer accounts: Created to list, sell, and manage academic study materials on the platform. Lecturer accounts are subject to identity verification (Layer 1) and optional enhanced verification (Layer 2). A one-time non-refundable Educator Activation Fee of ₦5,500 is payable upon Layer 1 approval, before any material can be listed.

A single individual may hold one buyer account and one lecturer account, provided both accounts are registered under the same verified identity. Operating multiple accounts of the same type to circumvent policies or limits is prohibited and constitutes a Tier 3 enforcement violation.

To list materials for sale, lecturers must complete a two-layer verification process:

• Layer 1 — Identity verification: Submission of personal identity information and a hold-up photo (a photo of the applicant holding their government-issued ID). The photo is analysed using an AI system (Anthropic Claude Vision API). Applicants have a maximum of 3 attempts. If all attempts are exhausted, a manual review must be requested via support.
• Layer 2 — Institutional affiliation (optional): Provides a Verified Lecturer badge. Available via two paths: (A) institutional email verification, or (B) submission of employment documentation. Layer 2 is voluntary but required for the Verified badge to appear on listings.

By submitting verification materials, you warrant that all information provided is accurate, complete, and genuinely your own. Submitting false documents or impersonating another individual is a serious violation that will result in immediate permanent account termination and may be referred to law enforcement.

Lecturers retain full ownership of all materials they upload to the Platform. By uploading a material, you grant Bookbloom LLC a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free licence to:

• Store the material on our servers and make it available for purchase and access by buyers who have purchased it.
• Display metadata (title, description, category, institution, course code, material type) on the Platform and in search results.
• Generate, store, and display preview pages to prospective buyers.
• Generate a cover image for the listing if no custom cover is provided.
• Render each page with a buyer-specific watermark for access sessions.
• Cache watermarked page images in buyers' devices as part of the offline reading feature.

This licence is limited to the purposes of operating the Platform and does not authorise Knovia to sell, sublicence, or commercially exploit your content independently. The licence terminates when the material is deleted from the Platform, subject to the obligation to maintain prior buyers' access to materials they have purchased.

By submitting a material, you confirm and warrant that:

• The material is your original work, or you hold the rights necessary to distribute it on these terms.
• The material does not infringe any third-party intellectual property rights, including copyright, trademark, or database rights.
• Listing the material on the Platform does not violate any employment contract, institutional policy, or other legal obligation binding on you.

This warranty is made at every submission via a mandatory attestation checkbox. A breach of this warranty is a material breach of these Terms and is subject to enforcement action up to and including Tier 4 (permanent ban).

You indemnify Bookbloom LLC against any claim, cost, or liability arising from a breach of this warranty. See Section 20 (Indemnification).

Lecturers set the price for each material they list, subject to the following limits:

• Minimum price: ₦500
• Maximum price: ₦50,000

Knovia may apply promotional discounts to listings from time to time (for example, as part of platform-wide sale events). Where a discount is applied, a lecturer's earnings for that sale are calculated on the discounted price, not the listed price.

Prices are displayed and charged in Nigerian Naira (NGN) for Nigerian buyers. International buyers are charged in their local currency via Stripe, with conversion applied at the time of purchase.

When you purchase a material on Knovia, you are purchasing a personal, non-transferable, non-exclusive licence to access that material for your own private educational use through the Knovia platform. You are not purchasing a downloadable file, a physical product, or any form of transferable licence.

Delivery definition: Digital delivery is defined as the activation of account-based browser access to the material, which occurs immediately upon payment confirmation. By completing a purchase, you acknowledge that:

1. Delivery occurs through account-based browser access, not file download.
2. Access requires a registered and authenticated Knovia account.
3. Access is limited to two registered devices at any one time. Removing a device initiates a 72-hour hold before a new device can be added. Emergency device replacement is available through support — see our Privacy Policy, Section 2.
4. Every page you access is rendered with a permanent watermark containing your name, email address, and the access timestamp. This watermark is baked into the rendered image and cannot be removed.

Access equals delivery: Accessing any page of a purchased material through the Knovia viewer constitutes confirmation that the digital product has been successfully delivered and received. This applies equally to online and offline reading sessions. Session access logs recording your page access, timestamps, device fingerprint, and IP address are maintained and may be submitted as evidence in any payment dispute.

Offline access: Purchased materials may be saved for offline reading. Offline access is provided through cached watermarked page images stored in your browser's local storage. The raw PDF is never stored on your device. Offline page access is logged with accurate timestamps and synced to our servers when connectivity is restored. Offline access does not circumvent or suspend any access logging or refund eligibility obligations.

Prohibited use: You may not copy, reproduce, redistribute, screen-record, photograph, or share content from any material accessed on the Platform. The Platform applies technical measures to prevent printing, downloading, and text selection. Circumventing these measures is a breach of these Terms and may constitute a copyright infringement.

Refund eligibility requires that both of the following conditions are met simultaneously at the time of the request:

1. The purchase was made less than 24 hours ago.
2. You have accessed fewer than 20% of the material's pages across all sessions.

After 2 refunds in any 90-day rolling window, a restriction applies: the eligible window reduces to 7 days and the page access threshold reduces to 5%. You will be notified when this restriction applies to your account.

Refund requests are evaluated automatically. To request a refund, go to your Library, find the material, and use the Refund button. The result is displayed immediately. Refund requests cannot be submitted while offline — a live server connection is required to ensure all offline access events are synced before any determination is made.

Full details — including processing times, dispute resolution, and the content quality dispute process — are set out in our Refund Policy.

Lecturers earn a percentage of the net purchase price for each sale:

• Standard split: Lecturer receives 80%; Knovia retains 20%.
• Referred sale split: Where a sale is attributed to a referral link (lecturer referral, lecturer-recruits-lecturer referral, or ambassador referral), the attribution commission is paid from Knovia's 20% share. The lecturer's 80% is not reduced by referral attributions.
• Earnings hold: Each sale triggers a 24-hour hold before earnings are confirmed and added to the available balance.
• Payout threshold: Minimum payout balance of ₦5,000 required to initiate a withdrawal.
• Payout currency: All payouts are made in Nigerian Naira (NGN) to a registered Nigerian bank account, regardless of the buyer's payment currency.
• Refund impact: If a sale is refunded, the associated earnings entry is reversed from your ledger. Only earnings from non-refunded sales are payable.

Lecturers are solely responsible for all income tax obligations arising from earnings on the Platform. Knovia does not withhold tax on behalf of lecturers.

Knovia operates three affiliate and referral programmes:

• Lecturer referral programme: A lecturer who refers a buyer to a specific material earns an additional share of Knovia's platform fee on each purchase made through their referral link within a 7-day attribution window. Attribution uses last-click logic with a 30-day platform cookie.
• Lecturer-recruits-Lecturer programme: A lecturer who recruits another lecturer to the platform earns a commission from Knovia's share of each sale made by the recruited lecturer within a 3-month attribution window.
• Ambassador programme: Registered student ambassadors earn 8% of Knovia's platform fee on each purchase made through their referral link within a 30-day window. Ambassador commission is paid from Knovia's share only — it does not reduce the lecturer's earnings. Full terms are set out in the Ambassador Terms.

The following conduct is prohibited for all users:

• Using a purchased buyer account to purchase your own materials (“self-purchase fraud”).
• Transacting, or attempting to transact, outside the Platform to avoid Knovia's platform fee.
• Sharing account credentials or allowing others to access your account.
• Redistributing, reselling, or sharing any content accessed through the Platform.
• Circumventing any technical protection measure on the Platform, including the PDF viewer's copy and print restrictions.
• Using automated tools to scrape, crawl, or extract content or data from the Platform.
• Submitting fraudulent refund requests, or systematically requesting refunds after accessing substantial portions of materials.

Note on systematic refund abuse: Requesting refunds repeatedly after accessing content is a policy violation subject to the enforcement tier system — not merely a restriction on refund eligibility. Confirmed patterns of refund abuse escalate to enforcement action independent of the automatic refund eligibility checks.

Additional prohibited conduct for lecturers:

• Uploading materials that infringe third-party intellectual property rights.
• Listing inaccurate metadata (title, description, material type, course code) — intentional or negligent misrepresentation is a Content Guidelines violation.
• Soliciting buyers to transact outside the Platform.
• Requesting or obtaining buyer contact details through review replies or any other platform channel.
• Impersonating another lecturer or falsely claiming institutional affiliation.

Knovia operates a tiered enforcement system for policy violations:

Appeals for Tier 3 and Tier 4 actions must be submitted within 14 days of the enforcement notice to appeals@knovia.co. Enforcement decisions are made at Knovia's sole discretion. The tier applied to a given violation reflects the severity and pattern of conduct; we reserve the right to escalate directly to higher tiers for serious violations.

Knovia operates a five-layer content integrity system to detect and prevent copyright infringement before materials are published. This includes SHA-256 duplicate detection, SimHash near-duplicate detection, Copyscape plagiarism scanning, mandatory IP attestation, and the DMCA takedown process described below.

Rights holders who discover infringing content on the Platform may submit a formal DMCA takedown notice to dmca@knovia.co. Upon receiving a valid notice, we will immediately hide the material from the marketplace and conduct a review within 48 hours. Confirmed infringement results in permanent removal and a Tier 4 enforcement action against the responsible lecturer.

Two confirmed copyright infringement findings result in permanent account termination as a repeat infringer under 17 U.S.C. § 512(i).

Full details — including notice requirements, counter-notification rights, and the repeat infringer policy — are set out in our Copyright & DMCA Policy.

Buyers who have purchased a material and completed at least one access session may submit a rating and written review for that material. Reviews are subject to the following rules:

• Reviews must reflect a genuine personal experience with the material.
• Reviews must not contain offensive, defamatory, or discriminatory content.
• Reviews must not advertise competing platforms or contain promotional content.
• Each buyer may submit one review per material. Reviews may be edited but not deleted by the buyer after submission.

Lecturers may submit one reply to each review on their materials. Lecturers may not delete reviews, solicit removal of reviews, or use enforcement or legal threats to suppress genuine feedback. Attempting to manipulate the review system is a policy violation.

Knovia may remove reviews that violate these rules. Rating displays use a Bayesian weighted average to prevent manipulation by a small number of ratings.

Knovia is committed to protecting the privacy of lecturers who choose to use pen names or Anonymous Mode:

• Pen names: Lecturers may list under any pen name. The pen name is treated as the lecturer's publicly credible identity on the Platform. Knovia does not disclose the connection between a pen name and a lecturer's legal name to any third party.
• Anonymous Mode: Lecturers may activate Anonymous Mode to suppress institutional affiliation from their public profile and listings. In Anonymous Mode, no institution name is shown on any public-facing surface.
• Non-disclosure commitment: Knovia will not disclose any user's institutional affiliation, legal name, or other identity information to academic institutions, employers, or third parties in response to informal requests. Disclosure occurs only in response to a court order or binding legal process under applicable law. This commitment is detailed in our Privacy Policy, Section 14.

The following fields are locked after a lecturer completes Layer 1 verification and cannot be changed through self-service:

• Legal name
• Date of birth
• Primary email address
• Country of registration

Changes to locked fields require a support request with supporting legal documentation and are subject to the following limits:

• Legal name and date of birth: Maximum 2 changes per account lifetime.
• Primary email address: Maximum 3 changes per rolling 12-month period.

A legal name change approved through support triggers automatic Layer 1 re-verification. The lecturer must resubmit a hold-up photo with the updated government ID before the Verified Lecturer badge is reinstated. Bank account details may be updated up to 3 times per rolling 12-month period without additional approval. Further changes within the same window require super-admin approval.

Knovia accounts are non-transferable. The identity record on a Knovia lecturer account must at all times correspond to the individual who completed Layer 1 verification.

The Platform and all content on it are provided “as is” and “as available” without warranties of any kind, express or implied.

Knovia is a marketplace intermediary. We do not author, endorse, or guarantee the accuracy, completeness, legality, or quality of any material listed by lecturers. Each lecturer is solely responsible for the content they upload and for ensuring it accurately matches its listed description.

We do not warrant that: (i) the Platform will be available without interruption; (ii) the Platform will be free of errors, bugs, or security vulnerabilities; (iii) any material will meet your specific educational needs; or (iv) results obtained from use of the Platform will be accurate or reliable.

To the fullest extent permitted by applicable law, Bookbloom LLC will not be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive damages arising out of or related to your use of the Platform, even if we have been advised of the possibility of such damages.

Our total liability to you for any direct damages arising out of or related to these Terms or your use of the Platform will not exceed the higher of: (a) the total amounts you paid to Knovia in the 12 months preceding the event giving rise to the claim, or (b) USD 100.

Nothing in these Terms excludes or limits liability for fraud, death or personal injury caused by negligence, or any other liability that cannot be excluded under applicable law.

You agree to indemnify, defend, and hold harmless Bookbloom LLC, its officers, directors, employees, and agents from and against any claims, liabilities, damages, costs, and expenses (including reasonable legal fees) arising out of or related to:

• Your use of the Platform.
• Any content you upload, submit, or list on the Platform.
• Your violation of these Terms.
• Your violation of any third-party rights, including intellectual property rights.

This indemnification obligation survives termination of your account and these Terms.

These Terms are governed by and construed in accordance with the laws of the State of Delaware, United States of America, without regard to its conflict of law principles.

Before initiating any formal legal action, you agree to contact us at legal@knovia.co to attempt to resolve the dispute informally. If the dispute is not resolved within 30 days, either party may escalate to binding arbitration.

Any dispute that cannot be resolved informally will be settled by binding arbitration conducted on an individual basis. You waive the right to participate in any class action lawsuit or class-wide arbitration against Bookbloom LLC.

Nothing in this section limits your rights under the Nigeria Data Protection Act 2023 (NDPA 2023), which applies to the processing of personal data regardless of governing law.

We may update these Terms from time to time. For material changes — those that affect your rights or obligations — we will provide at least 14 days' notice via email to your registered address and an in-platform notification before the changes take effect.

For minor changes (corrections, clarifications, or changes with no meaningful effect on user rights), we may update this page without prior notice, updating the “Last updated” date above.

Your continued use of the Platform after the effective date of a material change constitutes your acceptance of the updated Terms. If you do not agree to the updated Terms, you must stop using the Platform before the effective date.

For questions about these Terms, contact our legal team:

legal@knovia.co