Listing a Member-Sponsored Contest

We’re happy to include your member-sponsored contest in our contest listing page.

Currently we only list contests sponsored by Scribophile members and groups that are only open to other Scribophile members, and in which submissions are posted through Scribophile. This is a community contest listing, not a public or general contest listing. That means we don’t list off-site contests or contests run by people who aren’t Scribophile members with a significant history of contributions to the Scribophile community. If you created a Scribophile account just to list your contest, we’ll decline to list it for that reason.

We only list contests that are open to all Scribophile members. If you’d like to host a group-only contest, you can post the details of your contest to your group forum. We do, however, list group-sponsored contests that are open to all Scribophile members.

If you’re interested in sponsoring a writing contest on Scribophile, read the following list, then contact us with a message containing the required information below. Your message must be numbered 1 through 8 with the information below. If your message is not numbered 1 through 8, we’re going to sigh and shake our heads and not list your contest.

Remember you can apply for cash prize money for your contest from the Scribophile writing contest prize fund.

Required items

  1. The contest name.

  2. The pen name and email address of the member people should contact with questions about the contest. This member’s pen name will be listed on the contest page, but their email will remain private.

  3. The contest deadline (All deadlines must be in UTC time, as that’s the time zone Scribophile operates in).

  4. A paragraph or two of at least 120 words describing the contest, including themes and a precise description of what entrants are expected to submit. You should aim to completely describe the background of the contest, what members will be submitting, submission guidelines, themes, and so on, in prose form.

  5. A list of prizes. The contest must have at least one prize. Note the following:

    • You may consider applying for cash prize money from the Scribophile writing contest prize fund, at no cost to you. This is not a requirement.

    • Members who are donating prizes (including donating karma points) and members who are judging the contest may not participate in the contest.

    • If you’re using this contest to secure submissions for a publication, then you must include a fair cash prize to compensate the authors whose rights you’re securing. Publication alone is not enough of a prize, and token amounts (like just a few dollars) or profit sharing in the publication are also not enough. We don’t want our community-supported contest listing to devolve into a list of non-paying markets.

    • If your prizes include karma points, you must have, at the time of listing, enough karma points to cover the entire prize amount. You may award up to a maximum of 20 karma points per place. Karma prizes will be withdrawn from your account and distributed by Scribophile administrators on your behalf. If your contest is sponsored by a group, we can withdraw karma from multiple members.

  6. A list of rules, written in the spirit of past contests. Please copy and paste the rules from a past contest and adjust them to fit yours. Don’t get creative here.

  7. A list of submission guidelines, also written in the spirit of past contests. Please also copy and paste these.

  8. A URL pointing to an image to use for the contest, that follows these guidelines:

    • Does not contain copyrighted material or brand marks.

    • Portrait-oriented (tall, not wide).

    • Is at least 800 pixels tall and 600 pixels wide.

    Images are required to have a clear copyright-free or permissive license visible on the URL you send.

    Here are some good free stock photo sites: