Eligible Projects
The Realm Awards honor the best in speculative storytelling across multiple media. The contest began solely for novels, but has expanded for 2025. Media types we judge include:
- Novels
- Short stories
- Audiobooks
- Cover Art
- Christian Comics/Graphic Novels
- For more information on each category, click here.
Publication Date
For novels, short stories, audio, and cover art, entries must have been published between January 1, 2025 and December 31, 2025—either traditionally or independently.
For Christian Comics/Graphic Novels, Comic Strips, works can have been published between January 1, 2022 and Dec 31, 2025.
Subsequent editions and/or republications are not eligible. This includes books that were independently published in a previous year but then published by a traditional publisher in the contest year.
Both eBooks and print editions qualify, but the earliest publication date of any format is used to determine eligibility.
Audio books may be entered in the year they were released even if the eBook or print edition was published in a prior year.
Cover art for a subsequent edition of a previously published book may be entered into the Cover Design category.
For short fiction, if the work was part of a collection or anthology, or published an online it is still eligible for consideration in the year it was first published.
Authorship
Realm Makers Faith Statement
We believe…
We believe in the Holy Scriptures as originally given by God: divinely inspired, infallible, and entirely trustworthy.
We believe there is one God, eternally existent in three persons: the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
We believe in our Lord Jesus Christ, God manifest in the flesh, and in His virgin birth, His sinless human life, His divine miracles, His vicarious and atoning death, His bodily resurrection, His ascension, His mediatorial work, and His personal return in power and glory.
We believe in the salvation of lost and sinful man only through the atoning sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ.
We believe in the Holy Spirit, by whose indwelling the believer is enabled to live a holy life, to witness and work for the Lord Jesus Christ.
Content
Mature Content Guidelines:
Books with mature content will be accepted, but gratuitous content could result in disqualification at our judges’ sole discretion. On the entry form, you will be prompted to indicate if your book contains sex, profanity, or intense/frightening content. When in doubt, flag your content with a very conservative eye. This will ensure your book gets judged by people able to score a book that contains grittier content impartially .
No erotica. No gratuitous gore. No glorification of violence or other flagrant sin.
Submission Period
Submissions must be the work of Christian creators.
Does that mean it must have an obvious Christian message? Absolutely not. It means the author will need to agree to our Statement of Faith. We’re looking for amazing speculative projects by Christians. That’s it.
Both publishers and authors can submit their books into the contest, but every submitting author must acknowledge our Statement of Faith.
Co-authored works are eligible for the contest. The submitting author will be the one to receive the physical award.
For the Cover Design, Audio, Graphic Novel, Comics, Interactive Media, the artists and narrator(s) do not have to be Christian, but the writer must acknowledge our Statement of Faith. If you are submitting on the behalf of an writer, please be able to affirm the Statement of Faith with confidence.
Artificial Intelligence Policy
Submissions for the awards open on December 15th and run until January 21, at 12 midnight (EST).
Artificial Intelligence:
We acknowledge that the realm of artificial intelligence is changing rapidly, and constructing a loophole-free policy is extremely difficult.
Regarding story text:
The spirit of the restriction is this: if the phrasing, story progression, or bulk of writing was generated with AI, it does not belong in the same category as work that was written and edited entirely by human effort, thought, and creativity. If the creation of the work involved training or prompting, that is a sign it’s probably not eligible.
Tools powered by AI are a subtly different subject. For example, we’ve all been using things like spelling and grammar check for a long time. The AI policy is not intended to exclude books whose authors ran a spelling or grammar check and then corrected flagged errors.
It’s mostly a question of inception: did the author or artist have an idea and then enter prompts to do the heavy lifting of story generation or image creation? Or did the author build the story word by word?
Visual Art:
In the case of cover artists and comics, images created with any of the various image generators such as Firefly or Midjourney are examples of work that would not be admissible. We expect the images entered will have been hand built by the artist. (This policy does not impact the use of stock art unless that stock was AI generated.)
Audio:
All audio submissions must have been recorded in their entirety by a live narrator. Services that use sampled voices, even if the voice actor who provided the sample is paid in any way, are not eligible.
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At the heart of our AI policy is our identity as Christian creators. The difference in the work we create and the product of AI is that the artist pours his or her soul into the creation of a work, but you cannot train a soul into generative tools. This distinction should be abundantly true for those of us who serve the Lord and seek to live as examples of his grace.
When you check the box on the entry form, this affirms the project you are entering into the contest was initially created by entirely human effort, and all corrections, changes, and revisions were undertaken and executed by the creator in accordance with their own analysis and intent.
Again, we acknowledge the creation of a policy leaves some gray area that cannot exhaustively be spelled out. Only you know what tools you used and to what extent, and we ask that you consult your conscience in good faith as you determine whether your work is the right fit for the Realm Awards.
A note on mixed use:
If you submit a book for judging in a genre or audience category, an AI generated cover would not disqualify the book, but the cover art is not eligible or the cover design category. The opposite would also be true for non-AI covers on AI manipulated text in the story.
Recipient
Unless otherwise directed, we will give/send the physical award for any winner to the individual who submitted the entry.
For example, if you are an author submitting an audiobook, but you want the award to go to the narrator, please email awards@realmmakers.com to make us aware upon submitting your entry.
Realm Makers reserves the right to combine categories at its discretion if the minimum number of entries is not received. Likewise, categories that receive very large numbers of submissions may be split into subgenres for judging and awards.
Judging
Projects entered into the Realm Awards will undergo multiple rounds of judging to arrive at three to five finalists in each category. The number of finalists is based on the number of entries received.
Judges are selected through an application process, but all judges involved are avid readers, reviewers, experienced artists, authors, editors, and agents. We provide detailed training to our judges to ensure they understand the expectations related to their participation in terms of fairness, impartiality, and professionalism. No project will be scored by an individual with a conflict of interest. We go to great lengths to ensure the judges who read entries are the right fit for the works, based on genre, content triggers, project type, and more.
Books will be scored by no fewer than three judges each round, and scores will be reviewed by the category leads and director for anomalies. Any results that do not meet our standards for fairness will be thrown out and the work will be reassigned for a new score.
Judges scores and comments will not be provided to the participants in the Realm Awards.
The finalist round that determines the winner of each category will be judged by individuals with relevant experience and demonstrated quality of evaluation. Most of those judges for novels have been multi-published authors, prior Realm Award winners, agents, and editors for whom judging is not a conflict of interest.