How spoiler safety works

Every series on Readertrail is a trail of books. What comes later stays out of your way.

Pages that hold no spoilers

The home, the lists, the page of a book, the page of a series, the who’s who of a series and the page of a pen name are open to everyone, and nothing on them gives a story away. They say what a book is like, who it is for and where to get it. The who’s who shows only the names and roles that are safe before you start. Where the publisher’s description of a later book would give away how an earlier book ends, the page leaves that description out and says so.

Pick where you are

The companion of a series has one stop for every book: “After Book 1”, “After Books 1–2” and so on. A stop is a page of its own. It shows what you know once you have finished that book: who is who, the places, the words and motifs that matter, the recaps of the books up to it and your next step.

The page of a series asks “Where are you in the series?” and has a row for each book, with a door to the stop before it (“I’m reading it”) and a door to the stop after it (“I’ve finished it”).

A stop shows everything up to its book and, as your next step, what the next book is about. Nothing else from a later book is on the page, and nothing of it is hidden behind a button.

Your place is not saved

Readertrail has no accounts and stores nothing on your device. Your place is the page you have open, and the bookmark is the saved place: bookmark your stop and you land right back there next time. The site does not know which book you have finished, and nothing about it travels in the address.

What a stop tells you

Every stop opens with a line that says which books it spoils, such as “Spoilers for Books 1–2”, and the address of a stop has after in it. Stops are kept out of the site search and out of the sitemap, and search engines are asked not to list them or show snippets of them.

If someone sends you the link to a stop, you see that stop at once. The line at the top tells you which books it spoils, so you can decide before you read on.

One click for the long parts

Some long texts on a stop, such as a recap, sit behind one click. That is a courtesy, not a lock: the text is part of the page, so some browsers open it when you search the page for a word inside it (Ctrl+F), or when you follow a link that points at a word inside it. Everything on a stop is something you can know after the book it is named for.

Who checks the pages

Every page about a book is checked by a person and approved by the book’s author before it goes live. How we make these pages explains the badge.