Hello everyone. I’m delighted to announce the results of the inaugural 300-word competition on the theme of ‘The Opening’. There were 14 entries from 12 writers providing a pot of £36.85 after PayPal fees.
Half of that (£18.43) goes to the Self-Pub Fest charities (see https://self-pub-fest.co.uk/charities), leaving £18.42 for the prize pot.
However, a new (anonymous) fan of short stories has promised to top up the prize portion of the pot whenever it falls below £30 so each two-month round ~ including April/May! ~ will have the following split: Winner £15 ~ Second £10 ~ Third £5.
Obviously if there are more entries than a £60 total then the entire pot will be split 50:50 as originally promised but with this guarantee it’ll hopefully mean more entries as time goes on. Please do share the main https://self-pub-fest.co.uk/300-words-a-day/competitionlink on your social media profiles/pages. Thank you!
As with most competition judging I go through each story once, slotting them where I think they may go. I often rejig when going through them in order from the ‘winner’ down to ‘highly commended’ and beyond (where there are more entries than places).
This is a writing competition so, in theory, the more polished stories fair better, wherever there’s a theme I do take this into account. Where I might place two stories equally the one closer to the theme usually has the edge. It’s also how I react to a story. If I go “wow” then the chances are that story will come in the top three, not always but often.
So the results are… <drum roll>
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What a wonderful day we had on Sunday 5th July 2026 at the second online festival! The schedule was:
