The Bookhabit Unpublished Writing Competition
Competition Overview and Rules

Copyright is retained by the author

The competition consists of three rounds detailed below. An author will earn revenue for each download during the competition, equal to 40% of the purchase price. This is detailed below in the downloads section.

Round 1 – 10 weeks with 5 books chosen by users + a Bookhabit wildcard each week
Dates: Competition Week runs from 0:00:00 GMT Monday to 23:59:59 GMT Sunday for 10 consecutive weeks. 

1st week is 3–9 March, 10th and final week is 5–11 May 2008. 

Each week the 5 most popular books, as rated by users, will go through to the Round 2, along with one Bookhabit wildcard book. A book’s popularity is measured by the number of points it has accumulated at the end of the competition week.

Points are earned from a combination of downloads and ratings. Each download of the book scores 5 points, and each rating star awarded to the first chapter or full book scores the author a further point i.e. 4 stars = 4 points. A user must be registered to vote, and can only vote once for each book.

A book can be uploaded at any time during the week, and remains available to be downloaded and rated until the end of that competition week. The first chapter of each book is made available as a free download.

The 5 weekly winners and Bookhabit wildcard will be posted on Bookhabit.com at the end of each week. Sixty books will advance to Round 2. 

Round 2 – Top 10 from 60
Dates: 12–25 May 2008

Round 2 will be open for 2 weeks for users to rank their favourite books.

Two chapters from each book will be free for reading in this round, and the book can also be downloaded in full.

The 60 books will be listed, and users can add any of the books to their ranking list. Users can move books higher or lower on their ranking lists. The overall ranking of the 60 books will be based on an aggregation of individual users’ rankings.

The aggregated results will be available on Bookhabit.com during Round 2. The top 10 ranked books at the end of Round 2 will be announced on 26 May 2008 on Bookhabit.com, and will advance to Round 3. 

Round 3 – One winner
Date: The winner will be announced on 24 June 2008 on Bookhabit.com 

The top 10 books from Round 2 will be scrutinised by the judging panel to determine which the best book is.

The Judges for the Bookhabit Unpublished Competition are:

• Geoff Cush - novelist, playwright and Journalist. Author of "Son of France"
• Susan Fogarty - author and comedian. Her book "Susan in the Suburbs" is available on bookhabit.com 
• Clare Tanner - of Bookhabit.com

More details on the judges are here. 

Rules

1. The minimum length for an entry is 50,000 words. Entries must be the original work of the entrant. The entrant must not have previously published the book in any country. (A self-published book may be entered in this competition as long no more than 500 copies of it have been sold.
2. When an entrant submits a book onto Bookhabit.com or enters it in the Bookhabit.com competition the entrant is agreeing to the Bookhabit.com terms and conditions.
3. At the end of each competition week, books will be moved to the main site of Bookhabit.com. Authors can remove their book from the site at any time after that, should they not wish them to remain available for sale. However, once the book has been moved to the main Bookhabit.com site any subsequent ratings or downloads will not be a factor in the competition.
4. Copyright is retained by the author.
5. All subjects, genres (categories) of fiction and non-fiction books are eligible.
6. Entries must be written in English and uploaded to Bookhabit.com in doc, docx or pdf format. (The file extension of the document indicates the format e.g. A Microsoft Word document will have an extension of “.doc” or “.docx”.)
7. A person is only allowed one username, and a user can vote/rate/download each book only once in each round. A book can be entered in only one competition week. An author may enter multiple books.
8. By submitting an entry the author also agrees to receive emails from Bookhabit.com. Bookhabit.com will not spam any entrants or users. Bookhabit.com will not pass on any personal details without the permission of the user.
9. Bookhabit Online Limited reserves the right to remove any users, books, points, ranking or ratings if it considers the voting to be outside of the rules or spirit of this competition.
10. The winners of Rounds 1 and 2 are determined by Bookhabit Online Ltd. In Round 3 the judges’ decision is final. The organiser of this competition is Bookhabit Online Limited, PO Box 11198, Wellington 6142, New Zealand. 

Download Information
To purchase a download on Bookhabit website, the user must have either a valid credit card or a PayPal account. The author must also have a Paypal account in order to be paid – they can be set up for free at www.paypal.com. The structure of the purchase price depends on the number of items previously sold. The pricing structure and revenue returned to the Author are as follows:

Please see the Bookhabit.com help section and Terms & conditions for a full explanation of the Bookhabit.com payment processes.