Competition Rules & Terms of Entry

1. Eligibility

You must be aged 18 or over to enter. The competition is open to writers based in the UK and internationally, except where entry would be unlawful under the laws of your country of residence. Employees, contractors, or immediate family members of the Promoter, Aito, or Dutch Harbour may not enter.

2. How to enter

You enter by submitting a manuscript through the Aito Stories platform, completing all steps of the submission process: story upload, author information, AI declaration, and payment. Entries must be submitted in .docx, .pdf, .txt, or .pages format, up to 10MB.

The Promoter reserves the right to reject, remove, or disqualify any entry, at any stage, that it reasonably considers contains unlawful, defamatory, hateful, or otherwise harmful content, or that infringes the rights of a third party. Where an entry is rejected on these grounds, the entry fee is non-refundable, save as set out in the Refund Policy below.

3. Entry fee

Each submission costs £12.00, payable by card or PayPal. The fee covers platform costs and contributes to the prize fund. Your entry is published on the platform regardless of whether it is shortlisted or wins.

You may submit more than one manuscript, with a separate entry fee payable for each.

4. Categories and AI declaration

At entry, you must honestly declare your manuscript as Standard, Assisted, or Prompted, reflecting the extent of AI involvement in its creation, as defined at the point of entry. Misrepresenting your category may result in disqualification at any stage, including after a prize has been announced.

5. Judging

Entries are judged by our volunteer reading panel — amateur writers and readers who are looking to reflect how much they enjoyed the story, how much it made them think, and how they felt about the story a few days later, but skilful writing and story construction are still vital. The winning entry will require things like originality, structure, characterisation, and high prose quality. Judging is based entirely on the quality of the submitted work as assessed against these criteria. No entry is selected by random draw, and completing a valid entry does not itself grant any chance-based right to a prize.

The judging panel's decision is final. The competition closes at midnight on 31 December 2026. Shortlisting and final places will be announced via the website no later than 28 February 2027.

6. Prizes

The winner of the main category prize will receive £250 in cash. The winner will be drawn from a shortlist of 3 entries. The two non-winning shortlisted entries will each receive £100 in cash.

7. Winner notification

Winners will be notified by email within two calendar months of the closing date and announced on the website. If a winner cannot be contacted or does not respond within 14 days, the Promoter reserves the right to select an alternative winner.

8. Rights to your submission

You retain copyright in your manuscript. By entering, you grant the Promoter a non-exclusive licence in perpetuity to publish your entry in full on the Aito Stories platform, and in hard print via Dutch Harbour Publications, and, where relevant, to use excerpts for promotional purposes, whether or not it is shortlisted or wins.

Where a manuscript is entered in the Prompted category, the entrant acknowledges that UK copyright law may not recognise copyright in output generated by AI without significant human authorship, and that the statement above regarding retained copyright may not apply in the same way to such entries. The Promoter's licence under this clause extends to the fullest extent the entrant is legally able to grant.

9. Data protection

Your personal details are used to administer the competition and are handled in line with our Privacy Policy.

10. Right to amend or cancel

The Promoter reserves the right to amend these rules or cancel the competition at any stage for reasons outside its reasonable control, and will communicate any material changes to entrants.

11. Governing law and jurisdiction

These terms are governed by the law of England and Wales.

The courts of England and Wales shall have exclusive jurisdiction over any dispute arising from these terms or your entry to the competition.

Limitation of liability. To the fullest extent permitted by law, the Promoter's liability to you in connection with the competition, however arising, is limited to the amount of your entry fee(s). The Promoter is not liable for any indirect or consequential loss. Nothing in these terms limits liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, or for fraud.

12. Refund Policy

Entry fees are non-refundable once a submission has been successfully received and confirmed, except in the following cases:

• Duplicate or failed payment: if you were charged more than once for the same entry, or charged without your submission being recorded, contact admin@aitodidactia.co.uk within 14 days with your payment reference and we'll refund the error.
• Technical failure on our side: if the platform fails to record your entry despite a successful payment, you're entitled to a full refund or, if you'd prefer, we'll manually process your entry instead.
• Withdrawal before the closing date: no refunds can be issued for voluntary withdrawal before the closing date.

By submitting a paid entry, you acknowledge that the Promoter begins performing the service (processing and publishing your entry) immediately, and you expressly agree to waive your statutory 14-day right to cancel under the Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013 from the point your entry is confirmed.

Refund requests should be sent to admin@aitodidactia.co.uk with your order reference. We aim to process valid refund requests within 7 working days.