1. Delete Your Account From the App
If you are signed in, you can delete your own account without asking us. The steps are the same in the mobile app and on the website:
- Sign in to Basic Bookish.
- Open your profile and choose Edit profile. On the website this is the page at /profile/edit.
- Open the Security tab.
- Scroll to Danger zone and choose Delete my account.
- Read the confirmation dialog and choose Delete account.
That single confirmation is the whole process. There is no typed confirmation, no password re-entry, no confirmation email and no waiting period, so treat the button as final.
2. Request Deletion Without the App
If you have uninstalled the app, cannot sign in, or would rather we did it, email us and we will delete the account for you:
Basic Bookish LLC - hello@basicbookish.com
Write from the email address on the account, use the subject "Account deletion request", and tell us the email address or username you want removed. We may ask you to confirm that the account is yours before we act, because a deletion cannot be undone once it runs. When we act, we run the same full deletion as Delete my account: your files are removed, you are unsubscribed from the newsletter, and your reviews and comments stay under "Deleted user". Sections 4 to 8 apply in full.
You can also use the contact form at /contact, which works without an account. One thing to know before you do: that form saves your name, email address and message in our support records, and those records are among the things account deletion does not remove. Email is the tidier route.
3. Delete Some of Your Data Without Deleting Your Account
You do not have to close your account to take things out of it. Most of what you create in Basic Bookish you can delete yourself, and it comes off Basic Bookish the moment you confirm. Where we still keep something afterwards, the item below says what.
Delete it yourself, in the app or on the website:
- Fan art you uploaded - open the piece and delete it. The image file goes with the entry.
- Discussions you started - open the thread and delete it.
- Comments you wrote - open the comment and delete it. It comes off Basic Bookish. We keep a copy of what it said when you deleted it, and its earlier versions if you had edited it, where only you and our team can see them.
- Reviews and ratings you wrote - choose Delete review from the review's menu in the Reviews tab of your profile. The review comes off Basic Bookish: its words, stars and spice level go, and any video you posted with it is deleted. To remove only a video, open Edit review and remove it there. We keep a copy of the review as it stood when you deleted it, its earlier versions, and a record of each deleted video's link, where only you and our team can see them. Pictures you put in the review are deleted from our file storage a day later, unless another review still shows them. Until then anyone who already has a picture's address can still open it, and afterwards the copy we keep shows a placeholder where each picture stood.
- Your shelves and reading history - use "Remove from my library" on a series. It takes the series off every shelf and stack and deletes your review of it and every read you logged for its books.
- Filters you saved - delete them from your saved filters.
- Your profile details - clear your bio, location, favourite books, about me, birth date, website or social links in Profile settings, then save. A birth date clears when you choose None in its month, day or year list. Your profile picture has its own Remove under it: once you confirm, the picture comes off your profile straight away, with no save needed, and its image file goes with it.
For anything else, ask us and we will remove it. Email hello@basicbookish.com from the address on your account and name what you want removed. Use this for anything a delete above leaves in our records, the gender recorded on your profile, a message you sent us, an order placed without signing in, or anything else you cannot reach from the app. We read every request, remove what you asked for, and reply to tell you what we did. You do not have to give a reason, and your account stays open.
If you want the whole account gone instead, sections 1 and 2 are the route, and sections 5 and 6 say exactly what that removes and what it leaves behind.
4. What Happens When You Confirm
Deletion is immediate, permanent and irreversible. There is no soft delete, no grace period, no recycle bin and no scheduled job that finishes the work later. The moment you confirm, your sign-in account is destroyed and everything listed in section 5 goes with it. We cannot restore an account afterwards, and neither can you. If you want your data, save it before you delete.
One caveat we would rather state than leave you to discover: your uploaded images and videos are removed from file storage in the moment before the account itself is destroyed. If that step fails, for example during a storage outage, the account is still deleted and a small number of files can outlive it. Tell us at hello@basicbookish.com if you find one and we will remove it. Your newsletter subscription is removed in that same moment and has a limit of its own, which section 8 sets out.
"Immediate and irreversible" is not the same as "complete". Section 6 lists what stays, and it is worth reading before you decide.
5. What We Delete
Deleting your account permanently removes:
- Your sign-in account - your email address, every active session, and any Google or Apple account you linked to sign in with.
- Your profile - display name, username, bio, about me, favourite books text, avatar and cover images, birth date, gender, location, website and social links, your role, and your account preferences.
- Your reading activity - your shelves, your custom stacks including the names you gave them, every read in your reading log, your reading goal, the record of your Goodreads imports, and your saved filters.
- Your follows and taste settings - the readers and series you follow, the readers who follow you, your favourite genres and tropes, and your blocked-user list.
- Likes you gave - the likes you cast on other readers' reviews. The like count on each of those reviews goes down to match.
- Your fan art and video reviews - the entries themselves and the image and video files behind them. Section 6 says what we keep about each video.
- Entries you made in events and suggestions - your event attendance, the events you submitted, and the books and series you suggested.
- Your notification inbox - every notification you had received, read or unread.
- Your push notification registrations - our record of the devices signed up to receive push notifications.
- Your newsletter subscription - we ask Kit, the service that delivers our newsletter, to unsubscribe your address, and we delete our own record of the subscription, however you signed up for it. Section 8 explains what Kit keeps afterwards, and what we do if Kit does not confirm the unsubscribe.
- Your newsletter delivery records - our log of which digest emails were sent to you.
- Shop orders that were linked to your account - deleted on purpose, so that somebody who later registers your email address cannot inherit your purchase history.
- Your uploaded files - avatar images, fan art images, review videos and their still images, and the pictures inside your written reviews, held in our file storage.
6. What We Keep, and Why
Some records survive the deletion. Each item below says why we keep it: removing it would damage something that belongs to another reader, it was never held under your account in the first place, or it is a security or moderation record.
- Reviews and ratings you wrote - the review stays published with your name removed and the author shown as "Deleted user". The rating, spice level, title, text and date are kept so the series keeps its rating and the reader who replied to you is not left answering nobody. The text is not edited, so anything in it that identifies you stays public. The pictures in it are deleted with your other files, and a placeholder shows where each one stood. The earlier versions of a review you edited, and any review you had already deleted, are kept as well, where only our team can see them.
- Comments you left, and discussion threads you started - kept for the same reason and in the same way, with your name removed. Replies from other readers stay attached to them. The earlier versions of any you edited, and any comment you had already deleted, are kept too, where only our team can see them.
- A record of each video review - when a video review is deleted, whether you delete it or it goes with your account, we keep a record of its link, its series, and when it was posted and removed, so that a moderator can still see what was taken down. Once your account is gone the record names no account, and only our team can see it. A video file you uploaded is deleted (section 5), but a link to a video on another site, such as YouTube, TikTok or Instagram, stays in the record.
- Notifications other readers already received about you - they stay in those readers' lists, unlinked from your account, and your name in them is replaced by "Deleted user". A notification about a comment you wrote still shows its opening words, because that text was written into the notification when it was sent.
- The sign-in security log - our authentication provider records sign-in and account events, and those entries hold the email address that was used. The log is kept as a security record and is not cleared by account deletion.
- Messages you sent us - a contact or support message keeps the name, email address and text you sent, so that we still have the correspondence.
- Shop orders placed without signing in - an order placed as a guest is tied to the email address used at checkout rather than to an account, so account deletion does not reach it. It stays visible to whoever signs in to Basic Bookish with that email address later.
- Staff invitations - if you were invited to a staff role, the invitation record keeps the email address it was sent to.
- Emails our team sent you - if a member of our team wrote to you from the admin, our record of that message is kept: its subject, its text, the date, and the username you had at the time. It stores no email address, so that username is what still names you, and your account is unlinked from it.
- Moderation and administration records - a report you filed keeps the text you wrote, unlinked from your account. A report about your account, and the log of administrative actions, keep the account identifier and the details recorded at the time, including any change our team made to your account, such as a new email address, so that a moderation decision stays auditable.
- Editorial content created by a staff account - if your account was a staff account, the books, series, guides, events, ads and other catalogue entries it created stay published. Only the link naming you as their author is removed.
7. How Long We Keep It
There is no additional retention period. We have not set an expiry on anything in section 6, and nothing in Basic Bookish removes those records on a schedule. They are kept for as long as the Site runs, unless someone removes them by hand.
If you want a specific retained record taken down - a review whose wording identifies you, a guest order, a message you sent us - email hello@basicbookish.com and name the record. We read every such request and will tell you what we did.
8. The Newsletter, and What Kit Keeps
Our newsletter list is keyed to your email address rather than to your account, so taking you off it is a separate step, and it runs in the moments before the account itself is destroyed. We ask Kit, the service that delivers the newsletter, to unsubscribe your address, and then we delete our own record of the subscription. You stop receiving the emails.
Kit keeps a cancelled subscriber record, and we cannot delete it through Kit. Kit gives us a way to unsubscribe an address and no way to erase one, so after the unsubscribe your address stays in Kit's own records, marked as cancelled and receiving nothing. Taking it out of Kit is a manual step, and we will do it for you: email hello@basicbookish.com and say so.
If that request to Kit does not go through, for any reason, your account is still deleted, and so is our record of your subscription. Your address goes into a queue of addresses still to be unsubscribed, and an hourly job asks Kit again. Once Kit confirms, we delete the address from the queue. If Kit has still not confirmed after a day of tries, we unsubscribe the address at Kit by hand. If you want to be certain the emails have stopped, write to hello@basicbookish.com and we will check.
You do not have to close your account to stop the newsletter. Every newsletter email carries an unsubscribe link, and it works without signing in.
9. Services Outside Basic Bookish
Account deletion runs almost entirely within Basic Bookish. The one request it sends outside is to Kit, asking it to unsubscribe your address. Nothing else leaves us, so copies held by the companies below are not otherwise affected by it:
- Kit, which delivers our newsletter, is asked to unsubscribe you when you delete your account. It cannot be asked to delete you: it keeps a cancelled record carrying your address until somebody removes it inside Kit by hand, which we will do if you ask. Section 8 has the detail.
- Our shop provider keeps its own record of any purchase you made, which is the shop's record of the sale rather than part of your Basic Bookish account.
- Our email provider keeps a delivery history of the messages already sent to you.
- Our error monitoring service keeps technical error reports. We do not tag those reports with your account.
Each of these companies handles removal requests under its own privacy policy. We are happy to point you at the right one, or to make the request on your behalf where we can.
10. Contact Us
For a deletion request, a question about this page, or a request to remove something we kept:
Basic Bookish LLC - hello@basicbookish.com
Our Privacy Policy explains what we collect and why.