terms of use

Version of 29 September 2026. This is a translation of the Italian terms: if the two differ, the Italian text prevails.

who provides the service

Albera (albera-books.com) is provided by Gianclaudio Spena, sole proprietorship (ditta individuale), via Mariano Stabile 43, 90139 Palermo, Italy, VAT number IT02936750849. For any request: info@albera-books.com; certified email (PEC) gianclaudio.spena@pec.it.

what Albera is

Type an author's name and Albera grows a tree of resources for getting to know them: it finds them on the web with search engines and language models, judges them with automatic questions, filters and ranks them, and adds the bibliography from public catalogues. The resources belong to whoever published them: Albera points to them and takes you there, it doesn't copy them.

Everything is done automatically, and it can get things wrong: a resource may be inaccurate, off topic, gone or attributed to the wrong author, a bibliography incomplete. Albera is a starting point for study, not a source to cite: before you rely on a resource, open it.

account

• To use Albera you need an account and must be at least 18 years old.
• Signing up is open and free. The account is personal: don't hand it over, and keep your password to yourself.
• You can also sign in with a Google account. If its email, verified by Google, already belongs to an Albera account, they become the same account.
• You can download your data and delete your account whenever you like, from your profile. How we handle data is set out in the privacy notice.

plans and credits

Reopening a tree that already exists is always free. What costs is a new search: an author never looked up with that engine, «regrow», «enrich».

• Each engine costs a number of credits per new search: today Exa and Perplexity 1, Grok 3, ChatGPT 8.
• Credits are valid for the calendar month (UTC) and start again on the first of the month: unused credits don't carry over, aren't refunded and can't be transferred.
• When others open a tree you have enriched, during the launch period 5% of the credits you spent comes back to you, once per reader, up to half of those credits and a quarter of your plan's credits per month.
• With a base or medium subscription you can buy extra credits: 10 for €3, 25 for €7, 50 for €13, VAT included. They are used after the month's credits, from the pack that expires first, and are valid for 12 months from purchase. If your subscription ends they remain yours until they expire and become usable again with a new subscription. A refunded pack loses the credits not yet used.
• Weights, engines and credits may change: if they change to your disadvantage we'll tell you by email at least 30 days in advance, and the change applies from the next renewal.

subscriptions and payments

• Paid plans are bought through Stripe Checkout with Managed Payments: the seller to you is Link (Stripe), which collects payment, applies your country's VAT, issues receipts and handles refunds and disputes under its own terms, which you see and accept when you pay.
• The subscription renews automatically, every month or every year, until you cancel it.
• Cancelling: from your profile («manage your subscription») or from link.com. Cancellation takes effect at the end of the period already paid for: until then your plan stays; after that you go back to the free plan.
• You change plan from the same place; deleting your account also closes the subscription.
• If a payment fails, Stripe tries again for a few days and your plan stays; if it fails altogether, you go back to the free plan.

what belongs to everyone, and what is yours

Trees are shared: what you grow goes into the great forest and anyone can reopen it, without knowing who looked it up. Your forest, collections, books, library and labels are yours and private. If you turn the humus on, your votes help calibrate the filters for everyone, without your name.

Sharing a tree (link, QR code, file, gift) shows that tree to whoever receives it: never your books or your labels.

what you may not do

• use Albera automatically (programs, scripts, mass collection) or get around the limits of plans and attempts;
• look up names for purposes other than getting to know an author, or use Albera against a person;
• try to get in where you aren't allowed, or disrupt the service or the people who use it;
• resell Albera or what it produces as a service to third parties.

If this happens we may suspend the account, after writing to you where possible. If you have a subscription and the suspension isn't your fault, we refund the part of the period you couldn't use.

availability

Albera is a young service. It may stop for maintenance or because of a fault, and external engines may not respond: a search that fails doesn't use up credits. If we decide to close Albera we'll tell you by email at least 30 days in advance: you can download your data, and subscriptions will no longer renew.

liability

We answer for what depends on us with due care. We aren't responsible for the content of the pages Albera leads to, nor for damage arising from using a resource without checking it. Nothing in these terms limits the rights the law gives you as a consumer.

changes

If these terms change in a way that affects you, we'll tell you by email at least 30 days before they take effect. If you don't agree you can cancel and delete your account; continuing to use Albera after that date means accepting them.

law and disputes

Italian law applies, and the courts of your place of residence if you are a consumer resident in Italy; if you live in another country of the European Union, the protections of your country's law remain. First of all, write to us: most things get sorted out that way.