Bedtime story competition

Felice The reason this stipulation was originally made is that Walker want the winners to be available for publicity purposes in the UK when the book comes out - and they don't want to have to be flying people in from Australia

But we can see that this is annoying to people who live abroad so we've had another think and agreed that if the winners agree to make themselves available in the UK at their own expense for any press calls/publicity shots etc that are necessary, we'd be more than delighted to have their entries, of course.

We're in the process of amending the Ts&Cs but fyi this is the message we've had from Walker Books:

The UK residency thing was stipulated, it turns out, purely to ensure that the winners would be able to make themselves available for promotion and publicity when the book is published. However, we are willing to accept entries from overseas on the condition that you are willing and able to be available in the UK, at your own expense, for promotion and publicity, should your story be selected as one of the winners.

Hope that helps and you feel you can enter.

Bags, sorry, just caught up with this. It's a good point. I suspect the restriction here is a hangover from our usual comp Ts&Cs where there's a UK-constraint because of the postage costs involved in getting the prize to the winner. But basically, if people can get to the UK for publicity purposes, should they be needed, there's nothing to stop them entering.

There's been a fair bit of feedback on the comp over on The Other Place, with mumsnetters concerned that some authors could rig the voting by getting all their mates to support them or by creating fake email addresses and mass-voting for themselves (spooked by Christopher Maloney's incredible survival on X-Factor, possibly....)

We've now looked at the judging mechanism internally and with Walker books and we think the objectors have got a point (not that we imagine gransnetters doing such underhand things ) so we've decided that the top ten stories will now not be selected by public voting. The  judging panel will agree on the 20 shortlisted stories and, as chair of the judging panel, Michael Rosen will select the final ten stories for publication.

We think this is fairer and avoids any possibility or accusation of vote-rigging. We'll be announcing the 20 shortlisted stories in 'Won anything?' on 28th January as planned and the ten winners very soon after.

The Ts and Cs are here. And for those who entered - we're loving reading them .