These Speaker Terms set out the agreement between you, as a professional speaker, and OutaStory GmbH, the company that operates OutaStory's professional-narration marketplace. They explain how commissions, payments, escrow and payouts work, and what each side may expect of the other. They apply whenever you offer or deliver narration services through the platform, in addition to the general terms that apply to every member.
1. Scope and parties
These terms govern your use of OutaStory's professional-narration marketplace, which is operated by OutaStory GmbH. Through this marketplace, authors can commission a curated speaker to record professional narration for their stories, and you can offer your voice as a service in return for payment. By accepting an invitation to join as a speaker and offering your services, you agree to be bound by these terms; where a provision is invalid, the rest stay in force. Full details about the company that operates the platform are set out in our Site Notice (Impressum).
2. Becoming a speaker
For now, the speaker marketplace is curated and invite-based: we onboard speakers individually rather than opening registration to everyone. When you join, you create a speaker profile that may include your name, a short biography, the languages you narrate in, your specialties, an indicative rate and voice samples. This profile is how authors discover and evaluate you, so please keep it accurate and up to date, and make sure your voice samples genuinely represent the work you deliver.
3. How the marketplace works
When an author wants professional narration for a story, they commission you through the platform. You quote a price for the work, and once the author accepts your quote, OutaStory facilitates the engagement and holds the agreed payment in escrow. You then record and deliver the narration, the author reviews it, and on approval the payment is released to you. OutaStory acts as the operator of the marketplace and the escrow facilitator between you and the author; you provide the narration as an independent service.
4. Fees and commission
The author pays the price you quoted and they accepted. From that amount you receive your quoted price minus OutaStory's platform commission of 8% and minus the payment-processing fees charged by Stripe. In other words, OutaStory keeps an 8% commission on each completed engagement, the payment processor keeps its own fees, and the remainder is yours. All quotes, payments and payouts on the marketplace are in euros (EUR).
5. Escrow and release
When the author accepts your quote, their payment is captured and held in escrow so that the funds are secured before you begin work. After you deliver the narration, the payment is released to you when the author approves it — or automatically seven days after delivery if the author neither approves nor raises a concern within that window. If an engagement is cancelled before delivery, or a delivery is properly rejected, the escrowed amount is refunded to the author in line with the cancellation and refund rules we publish for the marketplace.
6. Payouts and verification
Payouts are made through Stripe Connect Express. Before you can receive any payout, you must complete Stripe's identity verification (KYC) and provide valid payout details; until that is done, released funds cannot reach you. You provide your narration as a self-employed, independent service provider — you are not an employee of OutaStory. You are responsible for your own bank account and for your own tax obligations, including income tax and, where applicable, VAT (for example whether you make use of the small-business exemption under § 19 UStG (Kleinunternehmerregelung)). Any prices, quotes and payouts are handled net of these obligations as between you and the tax authorities.
Draft: the exact tax and VAT treatment of speaker payouts — including invoicing, reverse-charge and Kleinunternehmer handling — is still being settled with counsel and will be confirmed before these terms take effect.
7. Delivery, revisions and approval
You deliver the narration as recorded audio, typically chapter by chapter, to the quality and specification agreed with the author. The author may ask for reasonable revisions where the delivery does not match what was agreed. Once the author approves your delivery — or the seven-day auto-release window passes — the narration is attached to the published story and made available to listeners on the platform. Please keep to the timelines you commit to, and let the author know promptly if anything affects them.
8. Your work and the licence you grant
You warrant that the recordings you deliver are your own work and that you hold all the rights needed to provide them, free of third-party claims. For each delivered and approved narration, you grant OutaStory GmbH and the commissioning author a non-exclusive, worldwide licence to host, store, reproduce, distribute and play the narration on and through the OutaStory platform, including in the app and on the website, so that it can be enjoyed by listeners alongside the story. This licence is what allows the platform to make your narration available; it does not transfer ownership of your underlying performance to anyone else.
9. Professional conduct and quality
We expect you to work professionally: to communicate clearly with the authors who commission you, to deliver the quality your profile and quote promise, and to treat everyone on the platform with respect. Because your narration becomes part of a community catalogue that includes younger listeners, the same standards that apply to everyone on OutaStory apply to your work and conduct, as set out in our Community Rules.
10. Account status, suspension and termination
Your speaker account can be Active (available for new commissions), Inactive (temporarily not taking new work) or Suspended (restricted while we look into a concern). Either side may end the speaker relationship: you may stop offering your services, and OutaStory may suspend or remove you from the marketplace where these terms or the Community Rules are seriously or repeatedly breached, or where the law requires it. Ending the relationship does not cancel engagements that are already in flight — any escrowed payment for accepted work is settled according to the delivery, approval and refund rules above before the relationship fully ends.
11. Changes, liability and governing law
We may update these terms — for example to reflect new features or legal requirements — and will give you reasonable advance notice of any material change. On liability, OutaStory GmbH is liable without limitation for damage caused intentionally or by gross negligence. For slight negligence, we are liable only where a material contractual obligation (a cardinal obligation) is breached — an obligation whose fulfilment makes the proper performance of the contract possible in the first place and on which you may regularly rely — and in that case our liability is limited to the foreseeable damage typical for this kind of contract. These limitations do not apply to liability for damage arising from injury to life, body or health, nor to mandatory liability under the German Product Liability Act (Produkthaftungsgesetz), which remain unaffected. These terms and your use of the marketplace are governed by the law of the Federal Republic of Germany, excluding the UN Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods; the place of jurisdiction is, to the extent legally permissible, the registered seat of OutaStory GmbH.
The European Commission provides a platform for online dispute resolution (ODR) for consumers, which you can find at:
https://ec.europa.eu/consumers/odr/
OutaStory GmbH is neither obliged nor willing to participate in dispute resolution proceedings before a consumer arbitration board.
Draft: this liability wording follows the usual principles of German law and, together with the legal characterisation of the speaker marketplace and the tax treatment of payouts, is subject to review by counsel before these terms take effect.