Introducing Novelmint Selects — where the readers pick the winners

Your read is your vote. Novelmint Selects is an AI-fiction competition where readers — not judges — pick the winners. Free to enter, cashable prizes, any tool welcome.

There are a hundred writing contests. A panel of judges reads in private, picks a winner, and you take their word for it. We wanted to try something different. We built one where the people who actually read your work are the ones who decide.

Welcome to Novelmint Selects, Issue No. 1. The theme is simple and wide open: short stories. Any genre, any style. Bring the best short fiction you've got.

A genuinely new way of voting

Here's the part we're most excited about: there's no separate "vote" button. You read an entry, you rate it — and that rating is your vote.

That sounds small. It isn't. It means a vote can only come from someone who actually read the thing. No drive-by clicks, no rallying a hundred fresh accounts to spam stars. Novelmint tracks real reads, and every reader carries a reputation earned only by reading and leaving feedback authors find useful. It can't be bought, and it fades if you go quiet.

So winners are decided by a reputation-weighted average rating — not a raw vote count. A book wins by being well-rated by credible readers, not by whoever can mobilise the biggest crowd. And standings stay hidden until the issue is revealed, so the ratings stay honest and bandwagon-free.

Readers first. No panel, no gatekeepers. Your readers decide.

Real feedback, not just a number

Every rating comes attached to real chapter-level feedback — the same structured reader response the whole platform runs on. Win or lose, you walk away with something most contests never give you: actual readers telling you what landed.

Any tool. Any book.

Wrote it in Novelmint? Great. Wrote it somewhere else entirely — another AI tool, a plain text editor, longhand on napkins? Also great. Import your file, and it's eligible. Selects is AI-assisted fiction's home turf, and we genuinely don't care which tools got you there.

Completely free to enter — and to read

Entering costs nothing. And entries are free to read for the whole event, so readers can get all the way through your story and give it a real, deep rating. (Your normal pricing comes back automatically when the cycle ends — more on that below.)

What you can win

Cash prizes, paid for real. Top placements earn a cashable balance you can withdraw via Stripe — actual money, not points. (Or convert it to credits if you'd rather keep writing.)
A permanent place in the Best-Of issue. The top books are curated into the issue — a permanent, browsable shelf with your name on it that keeps drawing readers long after the cycle closes.
A credential that sticks. "Featured in Novelmint Selects" lives on your book and your author profile for good.

And after the event: your work keeps earning

When the cycle ends, your entry stays published and switches to your normal pricing — so readers keep discovering it, and every chapter unlock earns you revenue. The contest is the spark; the ongoing reader unlocks are the engine. You can change the price or take the book down anytime — it's your book.

How to enter

Publish a short story on Novelmint (or import one you wrote anywhere else).
Enter it in Issue No. 1.
Leave it free for the event, share it, and let the readers do the rest.

→ Enter Issue No. 1

This is the first issue of something we intend to run for a long time. Come help us set the tone.