Competition Rules & Publishing Terms

Public draft / 8 September 2026
This document explains the intended rules for the inaugural Manuscript Incident. Entries are not yet open. The promoter’s legal name, registration details, contracted judges and final guaranteed figures will be inserted before payment is accepted. The final version displayed on the opening date will govern the competition.

The short version: submit a complete human-written speculative novel. A paid human reader will assess it. The winning author receives developmental editing and professional audiobook publication under an author-friendly contract. The longer version follows because trust is lovely, but specific nouns and numbers are better.

1. Key facts

• Prize: The Manuscript Incident, presented by Minor Human Error Books.
• Promoter: The Australian legal entity and ABN will be stated here before entries open.
• Opening: proposed for November 2026 through Submittable.
• Closing: 11:59 pm AEST on 31 July 2027.
• Founding Entry Rate: USD $60 until 30 April 2027 or for the first 150 paid entries, whichever occurs first.
• Standard entry: USD $100 thereafter.
• Winner announced: scheduled for 30 September 2027.
• Prize: one audiobook publishing agreement and a production package with a proposed guaranteed minimum value of USD $20,000.
• Contact: hello@minorhumanerror.com.

2. Eligibility

An entrant must be 18 or older on the closing date and may live anywhere participation is lawful. Employees, contracted judges and readers, production partners directly involved in the prize, and their immediate families may not enter.

The manuscript must:

• be an original novel written by the entrant, or by all named co-authors;
• be written in English and contain between 50,000 and 100,000 words, with manuscripts between 80,000 and 100,000 words particularly welcome;
• be complete at the time of submission;
• be written for a young adult, adult or crossover readership;
• fall substantially within science fiction, soft SF, fantasy, LitRPG, progression fantasy, speculative comedy, weird fiction or a related genre hybrid;
• be suitable for an unabridged English-language audiobook; and
• have worldwide English-language audiobook rights available for licensing.

Previously self-published print or ebook editions are eligible if the manuscript has not been commercially released as an audiobook and no agreement prevents the entrant from licensing the required audio rights. Agented writers may enter. Unagented writers are extremely welcome. Simultaneous submissions are allowed, but the entrant must withdraw promptly if the audio rights cease to be available.

Fan fiction using protected characters or worlds is not eligible unless the entrant can prove the necessary permissions. Public-domain source material may be used where lawful. Each manuscript may be entered once. An author may enter no more than two manuscripts, with a separate fee or waiver for each.

Co-authors must enter jointly, consent to these rules and nominate one contact person. Any advance and royalties will be divided among them as they instruct in writing; Minor Human Error will not decide who did the difficult chapter.

3. Entry fee and access

The Founding Entry Rate is USD $60 until 11:59 pm AEST on 30 April 2027 or until 150 paid entries have been received, whichever occurs first. The standard fee is USD $100 thereafter. Any taxes or payment-processing charges will be clearly disclosed at checkout. Entrants are responsible for currency-conversion charges imposed by their own bank or card provider.

USD $100 is not nothing. It is deliberately restrained for a prize that accepts an entire novel, pays human readers and commits at least USD $20,000 to the winning book. The founding rate also helps manuscripts arrive while reading is underway, reducing the traditional literary technique of placing several hundred novels beside one exhausted person at midnight. The fee enters the manuscript into the competition; it does not purchase editorial feedback or guarantee that every page will be read in the first round.

A limited pool of 20 fee-waived entries will be available for writers for whom the fee is a genuine barrier. Applicants will provide a brief request, not documentary proof or a small memoir about their bank balance. Waiver requests will be separated from judging and will not be disclosed to readers or judges. Details and dates will be published before entries open.

The USD $60 rate is limited to 150 paid entries. Submittable will display the applicable fee before payment. The prize may also cap the total number of entries; any overall cap will be published before opening. A successfully paid and confirmed entry will not later be excluded merely because a cap has been reached.

4. Reading and judging

Judging is based on literary merit, originality, narrative control, emotional force, audiobook potential and the likelihood of finding an identifiable audience. “Unusual” is not a substitute for accomplished. “Commercial” is not a request to remove the soul.

1. Eligibility check: staff confirm that the submission and rights declarations satisfy the published rules.
2. First reading: a paid human reader assesses the synopsis and opening 50 pages of every eligible entry. Borderline or conflicted entries may receive a second reading.
3. Full-manuscript stage: selected manuscripts are read in full by at least two members of the reading or editorial team.
4. Longlist and shortlist: the strongest complete manuscripts proceed to the announced industry panel.
5. Final decision: the panel considers the shortlisted manuscripts in full and recommends the winner. Minor Human Error confirms rights availability and eligibility before making the offer.

At least one literary agent and one audiobook or publishing professional will sit on the final panel. Judges and material production partners will be announced before the closing date. Readers and judges must disclose actual or reasonably perceived conflicts of interest and will be recused where appropriate. Judging will not be determined by sales, social following, public voting or the author’s existing access to publishing.

Names and identifying biographical information will be withheld during the first reading where reasonably practicable. No generative or automated system will rank, score, summarise or judge manuscripts. Decisions are final except where an administrative error or undisclosed conflict materially affected the result. Individual feedback is not provided.

5. Guaranteed prize value

The proposed minimum value of the winner’s package is USD $20,000. Before entries open, the full production funding will be secured and this will become a contractual minimum—not an optimistic estimate involving “exposure” and a calculator with emotional problems.

The author pays none of these production costs. They are not deducted from royalties. If an item costs less than its allocation, the balance will be moved to another part of the production or paid to the author so that the total commitment does not fall below USD $20,000. If the manuscript requires more, the publisher bears the additional approved cost.

Service components cannot be exchanged for cash. The winner may decline the publishing agreement after receiving independent advice; if so, no cash substitute is payable and the promoter may offer the prize to the next eligible manuscript.

6. Publishing contract summary

The complete form of publishing agreement will be available before entry. The summary below is a promise about its minimum author protections, not a replacement for reading the actual contract with a suitably qualified adviser.

• Ownership: copyright remains with the author.
• Rights licensed: exclusive worldwide English-language audiobook rights for the full term of copyright applicable to the work in each territory, unless those rights revert earlier under the agreement.
• Rights retained: print, ebook, translation, film, television, stage, podcast adaptation, game, interactive, merchandising and all rights not expressly licensed.
• Format: an unabridged professional audiobook, subject only to edits approved through the developmental process and reasonable performance preparation.
• Advance: USD $2,000, payable according to the contract and recoupable only from the author’s royalty account.
• Royalty: 50% of the publisher’s net receipts from exploitation of the licensed audiobook rights. Net receipts means money actually received after retailer, distributor, platform, tax and refund deductions—not after charging the author for editing, production, artwork, marketing or overhead. The conventional benchmark for digitally delivered audiobooks is 25% of publisher net receipts; the Authors Guild’s Model Trade Book Contract identifies 25% as the current standard while arguing authors deserve more. Minor Human Error’s proposed 50% rate is twice that benchmark.
• Accounting: statements and payments twice yearly, with a reasonable audit right.
• Production: the publisher pays for developmental editing, narrator casting, recording, post-production, cover art, distribution and launch. The author will be consulted in good faith on editorial changes, narrator and cover.
• Release deadline: commercial publication no later than 18 months after acceptance of the final edited manuscript, unless the author agrees in writing to an extension.
• Reversion: the full-term grant does not permit the publisher to warehouse an inactive audiobook. Rights return earlier if the publisher fails to release on time, materially breaches the agreement without remedy, becomes insolvent or fails to make the audiobook commercially available for 90 consecutive days after written notice. After the first three years following publication, the author may also request reversion if their audiobook royalties total less than USD $300 across two consecutive six-month accounting periods. Unless the author agrees otherwise in writing, rights revert 90 days after a valid request.
• No hidden claim on the future: no automatic rights in sequels, series, characters or the author’s next book. Any future project requires a new agreement.
• Moral rights and credit: the author will be prominently credited and their moral rights respected.

The selected author will receive the complete agreement and at least 21 days to obtain independent advice and negotiate in good faith. Winning is not consent obtained by ambush.

7. Human-authorship declaration

By entering, each author declares that the manuscript is their own human-authored work. Generative AI must not have been used to create or materially rewrite its prose, scenes, dialogue, characters, plot or submitted synopsis.

Ordinary spelling and grammar checking, find-and-replace, dictation, screen readers and accessibility technology are permitted. Tools that generate expressive language or rewrite passages are not. An author may confidentially ask whether a particular assistive workflow is eligible before entering; disability and access needs will not be treated as evidence against authorship.

Human editors, writing groups, sensitivity readers and translators may have contributed, provided the author can accurately describe their role and holds all necessary rights. If the English text is a translation, the translator must be human, named and properly authorised.

A false or materially misleading declaration may result in disqualification, withdrawal of an offer or termination under the publishing agreement. Any investigation will involve notice to the author and a reasonable opportunity to respond. We will not use unreliable AI-detection scores as proof. A person will consider the evidence, because this policy would otherwise have failed unusually quickly.

8. Withdrawals and refunds

An entrant may withdraw at any time by emailing the organiser, but fees are normally non-refundable once a valid manuscript has entered the reading process. A change of mind, later rights sale, failure to follow the rules, withdrawal or disqualification for a false declaration does not ordinarily create a refund entitlement.

A full refund will be provided where:

• the entrant was charged twice for the same manuscript;
• a technical failure prevented Minor Human Error from receiving a usable entry and the problem cannot reasonably be corrected;
• the organiser identifies that an entry is ineligible before substantive reading begins;
• the prize is cancelled without a winner; or
• Australian Consumer Law or another applicable law requires it.

If the closing date or winner announcement is postponed by more than 90 days, entrants may withdraw and request a full refund before judging resumes. Minor schedule adjustments, a corrected file supplied by the stated correction deadline or a production delay agreed with the winning author do not trigger an automatic refund.

Nothing in these rules excludes, restricts or modifies rights or remedies that cannot lawfully be excluded.

9. Privacy and manuscript treatment

Minor Human Error will treat entrants’ personal information in line with the standards of the Australian Privacy Principles, whether or not every obligation technically applies to the business at its current size.

We collect only information reasonably needed to administer the prize: identity and contact details, country, age and eligibility confirmations, payment status, manuscript, synopsis, declared conflicts and any voluntarily supplied access information. Payment providers process card details; Minor Human Error does not intend to store complete card numbers.

Information and manuscripts may be accessed only by authorised staff, paid readers, judges and service providers who need them to administer the competition. Some may be outside Australia. They will receive only the information needed for their role and will be required to keep unpublished work confidential. We will not sell entrant data, add entrants to marketing lists without separate consent, upload manuscripts to generative AI services or use them to train models.

The entrant keeps copyright. Submission grants Minor Human Error a limited, non-exclusive permission to store, copy and share the manuscript solely for administration and judging. It grants no publication right. Shortlisted authors will be asked separately before their name, biography or manuscript extract is made public.

Unsuccessful manuscripts and local judging copies will ordinarily be deleted within 12 months after the winner is announced, with residual encrypted backups expiring through the provider’s normal cycle. Entry, payment, consent and decision records may be retained for up to seven years where reasonably required for tax, accounting, dispute or legal purposes. The winning manuscript is retained as required by the publishing agreement.

Reasonable technical and organisational safeguards will be used, but no internet submission system can promise absolute security. Entrants may request access to or correction of their personal information, or ask a privacy question, by emailing hello@minorhumanerror.com. Deletion requests will be honoured where possible, subject to legal recordkeeping, active disputes and the integrity of judging already completed. Eligible data breaches will be handled under applicable notification law.

10. General terms

Entrants warrant that their submission does not infringe copyright, confidentiality, privacy or other rights and that they have authority to enter it. The organiser may request reasonable evidence of authorship, publication history or rights control.

The organiser may correct obvious errors, extend deadlines or make changes required by law, security, platform failure or events beyond reasonable control. After entries open, no material change that disadvantages entrants will be made without reasonable notice and, where appropriate, an opportunity to withdraw for a refund.

If no manuscript reaches the published standard, the promoter may elect not to award the publishing contract only if every entry fee is refunded in full. The existence of an unusual premise does not obligate the panel to pretend the second act happened.

These rules and the competition are governed by the laws of Queensland, Australia. Entrants submit to the non-exclusive jurisdiction of Queensland courts, without losing any mandatory consumer protection available in their own jurisdiction.

Questions and accessibility requests may be sent to hello@minorhumanerror.com. Requests will be handled confidentially and will not be shown to judges.