This is the most-asked question in our inbox, so here is the
blunt version, with nothing smoothed over.
Before anything else: export your data. A deletion cannot be
reversed once it finalises, and afterwards there is nothing left
to download. See
Downloading a copy of your data.
If what you actually want is your personal information removed
while keeping the account, you want the other path instead —
Erasing your data.
Two ways in, one outcome
- The Danger Zone on My Account
(/profile/account) has a delete button. /profile/close-accountwalks you
through the same closure with the consequences spelled out.
Both start the same thing, and neither is a lighter version of the
other. Both ask you one question: what should happen to your
comments. They stay as they are by default, or they can be
hidden and shown as "[deleted]". That question is only about
comments — what happens to your stories is the same either way.
How long the grace period lasts: 30 days, or 90
Deleting does not take effect immediately. Your request sits for a
grace period first, and a daily sweep at 04:00 UTC finalises
the ones that are due.
- 30 days if you have never published a story.
- 90 days if you have at least one published, readable
story — so readers have time to find and finish your work.
The test is account-wide: if any story under any of your pen names
is published, the whole account gets the 90 days. There is only
ever one date — your account, all of your pen names and all of
their stories go together on it.
Nothing is hidden while the clock runs
This is the part people expect to be worse than it is. During the
grace period:
- your account keeps working — you stay signed in and can read and
write as usual, and - your published stories stay fully discoverable: in the
catalogue, in search, on your author profile, exactly as before.
The one change is a notice added to each story's detail page
and to your author profile page, saying the work will become
unavailable and giving the date. The notice does not say why. A
reader cannot tell an account closure from a retired pen name by
looking at it, so do not assume anybody can.
Call the deletion off and those notices come off with it.
Signing back in does NOT cancel it
This is the single most expensive misunderstanding on this page.
Logging in again does nothing to a pending deletion. The
clock keeps running exactly as before.
To stop it you must sign in, open My Account
(/profile/account) and press "Cancel
Deletion". Nothing else counts — not signing in, not reading,
not writing.
No email is sent. At any point.
There is no confirmation email, no reminder before the
grace period ends, and no receipt afterwards. If you are
waiting for a message to arrive, you will wait forever. Note the
date yourself if the deadline matters to you.
What happens on the date
If you had published, then when the grace period ends:
- your stories and your author profile page become
unreachable. They are not handed to anyone else and they do
not stay up under another name. - both are taken out of our own search index, dropped from the
sitemap, and their addresses answer 410 Gone — the
standard signal for a page that has been permanently removed.
Bing is told directly rather than left to find out on its next
crawl; Google does not take that kind of notification, so it
picks the removal up from the 410 and from the sitemap no longer
listing the page. Either way the entry leaves their results. - this applies to every story, serialised or not. A serial
does not survive because it has instalments left to release.
What is deleted, and what is only made unreachable
These are not the same thing, and we would rather be exact than
reassuring.
- Your author record is deleted outright. That is the rule
now, not anonymisation. The exception is where a financial or
moderation record is legally bound to it — chiefly the
revenue-share and tax records, which carry a statutory
10-year retention (AO § 147, HGB § 257). Where such a record
exists, the author row is anonymised to a "Deleted user"
placeholder instead, so the retained record still has
something to hang from. - Your story and chapter rows are not erased from our
database. Every ad-impression and revenue-share row points at
a story record, and that same 10-year retention needs the chain
intact. What ends is public access: the stories are marked
deleted, their addresses stop serving them, and nobody can read
them any more — you included. - Unpublished drafts are in the same position. Closing your
account does not by itself permanently delete a story row, so
drafts and their chapters may stay in our database —
unpublished, unreachable, visible to nobody — for as long as a
financial or statutory record is bound to your account. If you
want a draft gone for good, delete it yourself from My
stories before you close your account.
The full list, with the retention periods and the reasons, is in
the privacy policy and in
Erasing your data.
Pen names
Closing your account takes all of your pen names with it, and
all of their stories, on the single shared date above.
You can also retire one pen name on its own, without touching
your account. Open Profile → Pen names
(/profile/pen-names) and press Delete
on that pen name. Everything above then happens to that pen name
only:
- it gets its own grace period, worked out from its own
published state — 90 days if at least one story published
under it is readable, otherwise 30, - it is a separate event with its own date, unrelated to your
account or to any other pen name, - its stories carry the notice, and afterwards its stories and its
profile page become unreachable and are de-indexed the same way,
and - your account and your other pen names are untouched and keep
working normally throughout.
To call a pen-name deletion off, press Restore on the Pen
names page before the date arrives.
They are not substitutes for each other. Deleting a pen name
is not a way to close your account, and closing your account is
not a way to retire one pen name. People get this the wrong way
round more often than anything else on this page.
One honest limitation
If you have chatted with the in-app assistant, transcripts of
those conversations are also held by the voice provider we work
with, and we cannot delete those remotely. We would rather
tell you that plainly than imply a clean sweep we cannot
perform. The providers we work with are listed in the
privacy policy.
Short checklist
- Download your data.
- Decide: erasure, or deletion — and if it is really only one pen
name you want gone, use the Pen names page instead. - Work out your date: 30 days, or 90 if anything of yours is
published and readable. - Expect no email — write the date down.
- Changed your mind? Press "Cancel Deletion" on
/profile/account, or Restore on the
Pen names page, before that date arrives.