The door is open.
The winning author is offered an audiobook publishing contract. We do not first send them away to find someone qualified to introduce them back to us.
An international full-manuscript publishing prize
You finished the novel. That should count for something.
One writer receives a complete developmental edit and professional audiobook publication. No agent is required to enter, because requiring professional access before you can access the profession seemed like a loop worth interrupting.
01 / Why this exists
A brilliant novel can spend years being asked to become easier to explain.
Traditional publishing needs filters to survive the volume of submissions. Those filters make sense. They also exclude novels because the category is unclear, the risk is awkward or the author has not already acquired the access required to acquire access.
We spend money on the work.
The developmental edit, narrator, recording, mastering, cover and commercial release are funded by the publisher. The author is not the business model.
Risk is part of our job.
We are not asking unusual books to arrive with proof that somebody else was brave first. We are building the expertise to take the risk properly.
Case file MHE–001
The Manuscript Incident
You are not competing for a certificate, a workshop or an encouraging conversation near a publisher. One complete manuscript moves into professional development and audiobook publication.
- Submissions
- Scheduled for November 2026 to 31 July 2027 via Submittable
- Entry
- USD $60 founding rate; then USD $100. Twenty fee-waived places proposed.
- Prize value
- Proposed guaranteed minimum of USD $20,000, including a USD $2,000 advance
- Eligibility
- YA, adult or crossover speculative novels; 50,000–100,000 words; international
- Reading
- Staged human assessment with complete reads at longlist and shortlist
02 / Proposed calendar
A book takes time. We have put some aside.
Initial reading begins while submissions are open. After the deadline, the final stages move quickly; production does not. The winning author gets three months with a developmental editor before the microphone is switched on.
November 2026
Open
The prize and Submittable portal go live.
Complete rules, contract principles, guaranteed prize value and the reading process are published before entries are accepted.
November 2026–July 2027
Read
Human readers begin assessing entries.
Reading starts during the open period so several hundred novels do not suddenly become an emergency at midnight on closing day. Industry judges are announced during this period.
31 July 2027
Close
Submissions close.
Late manuscripts remain late even when their reasons are narratively compelling.
August–September 2027
Decide
Longlist, shortlist and final judging.
Complete manuscripts reach the final stages. The winner is selected by the announced industry panel and offered the audio publishing agreement.
30 September 2027
Announce
The winning author is announced.
The manuscript ceases to be one person’s private act of faith and becomes a shared professional responsibility.
October–December 2027
Develop
Author and developmental editor work on the book.
Three months are protected for a serious editorial collaboration. The unusual parts are not removed merely because they are unusual.
January–May 2028
Produce
Casting, recording and post-production.
The final manuscript is prepared for performance. We cast the narrator, record the work, edit and master the audio, commission the cover and prepare distribution.
June 2028
Release
The audiobook enters the world.
Professional release, launch campaign and the discovery of whether humanity was ready after all.
This calendar is proposed until production partners and judges are contracted. If the winning manuscript requires more editorial time, quality takes precedence over pretending a date is a moral virtue.
03 / Readers have form
Some enormous books entered through the side door.
The Martian, the Bobiverse novels and Dungeon Crawler Carl followed different paths, but none arrived through the tidy debut route usually drawn on publishing diagrams.
Readers found them.
Communities of readers and listeners recognised what early conventional pathways had not yet known how to value.
Audience before permissionAudio mattered.
Voice, humour and immersive worlds can become unusually powerful in performance. That is why our audiobook is central to the prize, not an afterthought.
The microphone is part of the planThis is evidence of possibility, not a promise of instant millions.
We cannot guarantee that one novel will become a phenomenon. We can guarantee that the winner will receive serious editorial work, professional production and a publisher committed to giving the book its best chance of finding the people who will love it.
04 / Desired anomalies
A fantastic book. One minor shelving emergency.
We care less about the accepted boundary of a genre than whether the novel has a compelling voice, narrative velocity and something recognisably human at stake.
Science fiction
Soft SF
Fantasy
LitRPG
Progression fantasy
Speculative comedy
Weird fiction
Genre hybrids
We want the manuscript that makes an agent say, “This cannot possibly work,” followed several hours later by, “I have missed my train.”Preliminary acquisition guidance
Human made / human read / human heard
05 / The human policy
Mistakes will be made personally.
A writer should know who is reading their work. The books we publish will be written, edited, illustrated and performed by people. Submitted manuscripts will not be ranked, summarised or judged by generative systems.
- Human authorship
- Paid human readers and editors
- Commissioned human cover art
- Human narration with no voice cloning
Further errors pending
The first incident is being prepared with unreasonable care.
The public draft now sets out eligibility, founding and standard entry rates, human judging, author rights, refunds, manuscript privacy and a proposed minimum prize value of USD $20,000. Judges and production partners will be named when the commitments behind them are real.
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