Terms and conditions

1. Eligibility

• The Awards are open to authors, publishers, and self-published writers unless otherwise stated.
• Book can be published on any date in the past, or in the future, as long as you can supply the cover and a sample.
• Entrants must be aged 18 or over.
• We are sorry, we do not accept erotica or pornography.
• By entering, you confirm you hold all rights to submit the work.

2. Entries

• All entries must be submitted via the official website with full payment of the entry fee.
• Entry fees are non-refundable, unless outlined in the website (we occasionally offer to refund the entry fee if you don't win an award, but this is completely at our discretion and a good will gesture).
• You maintain all of the rights and responsibility to your work.

3. Judging

• All books will be judged against a set list of criteria.
• We will not make the individual scores, or the total score available, just if you are successful or not successful in winning an award.
• The judging panel's decisions are final and no correspondence will be entered into with regards to the decision.
• There will be no refunds if the entrant is not happy with their award / not being awarded a prize.
• Awards may be given at the discretion of the organizers, and no challenges are available.

4. Intellectual property

• You retain all rights to your work.
• By entering, you grant the Open Book Awards the right to use your book cover, title, and your name for promotional purposes in relation to the Awards.

5. Prizes

• Winners will be notified by email.
• No cash alternatives are available.
• The Awards reserve the right to change or substitute prizes if necessary.
• The Awards may offer different entry prices at any time.

6. Website use

• You agree not to misuse this website or attempt to interfere with its operation.
• We do not guarantee uninterrupted or error-free access to the site.

7. Liability

• The Awards accept no liability for technical failures, incomplete entries, or events beyond our reasonable control.
• Participation is at your own risk and please get in touch with contact@openbookawards.com if you have any issues.
• At any point, the openbookawards.com may stop operating, and we reserve the right to do this at any time at our own discretion. Please download everything you need at any point in case we stop operating the website. We may stop operating without notice. If we do, your award will still be valid. We will try to give people notice when we are going to stop operating.
• We follow the Online and distance selling regulations in the UK. Please be familiar with the rules in your country.

8. Privacy

• Personal information will be collected for the purposes of administering the Awards only.
• We will never sell or share your personal data without your consent, except as required by law.
• Please see our Privacy Policy for more details.

9. Changes to terms

• We reserve the right to amend these Terms & Conditions at any time.
• Any changes will be posted on this page with an updated date.
• We will communicate to everyone as much as possible, but there is no obligation to communicate.

10. Contact

If you have any questions about these Terms & Conditions, please contact us at contact@openbookawards.com.

11. Judging criteria

Entering the awards, and accepting these terms and conditions is also confirmation that you are happy with the following judging criteria, which will be applied to each entry. We will not communicate individual scores to an entrant concerning the individual categories, or the total that leads to an award (or not).

12. Final decisions

Any decision that is made by openbookawards.com is final and we will not change the decision on a book once the final result is communicated. By entering your book, and accepting these conditions you agree that if you are given the award, the entry fee is non-refundable for any reason.

13. Promotions

We often run promotions on pricing, and will not offer refunds if you pay a higher price then see a discounted price.

14. Refunds and your award

If for any reason the entry fee is refunded, you are no longer entitled to refer to the book as an openbookawards.com winner, or use any of the materials.

15. Refund decisions

It is completely the choice of openbookawards.com as to whether your entry fee is returned for any reason. If your entry fee is refunded for any reason, it will be the decision of the Awards to do so. In this event, you will not be able to use the awards branding or any materials from our website, and you won't be able to refer to the awards in any future marketing/communications. Any use of the branding up to the point of refund does not need to be redacted. The Awards can decide to return your fee and request that you no longer refer to the award as its own decision, even if you are in disagreement. If for any reason we offer a refund we will refund the fee minus the transaction fee imposed on us by whichever payment method you used, which will normally be 10%.

16. Using your badge

Having entered the awards, if you win an award, you have complete commercial rights to use your award badge in publications.

17. Press releases

18. Suitability

If at any time the Awards thinks that our award is no longer suited to your publication we will offer a refund and ask that you do not refer to the awards at any point in the future (following clause 15).