Legal
The short version: your child keeps their story. We ask for permission to print it if it is chosen, and we ask you to promise it is really theirs. Everything below is the long version of that.
The Kitchen Table Book is run by Kevin Tan, trading as a sole trader (ABN 91 131 105 235), Balwyn, Victoria. In these terms, "we" and "us" means Kevin Tan trading as The Kitchen Table Book, and "you" means the parent or guardian entering on a child's behalf.
By submitting an entry, you confirm:
Your child keeps copyright in their story. Entering does not transfer ownership of anything.
If a story is one of the ten selected for a round, entering gives us permission to print it in that round's anthology, include it in the personalised ebooks sent to every entrant, and use short excerpts to promote the competition, for example on this website or in materials for schools. This permission does not stop you from using, publishing, or sharing the story anywhere else.
Selected stories are published under the child's first name and last initial only. Full surnames are never printed or published.
If your child's story is not selected, it is read and judged, but is not published, printed, or shared beyond our editorial panel.
Round One does not ask for or use any photo of a child. If a later round wants to use a photo, for example of a winner holding their printed book, we will ask for separate written permission at that time. Nothing here grants photo permission in advance.
Every entry is read and scored against the criteria published on our full judging criteria page. Final selection is at our editorial discretion. We do not enter into correspondence about individual scores or the reasoning behind a selection, though every entrant receives a personal result and, where useful, a short note on their story.
Stories that are offensive, that identify a real person without their consent, or that raise a genuine welfare concern for the child who wrote them, may be set aside from the competition. If something in a story concerns us, we will contact the parent or guardian on the entry directly.
Entry is free. The suggested contribution shown on the entry form goes toward the costs of running a round: printing and posting the selected paperbacks, generating every entrant's ebook, and the website and payment processing itself. Setting the contribution to zero does not affect whether a story is read, judged, or selected in any way, and we do not know what a family contributed when we are reading their child's story.
Contributions are processed by Stripe. We never see or store card details. A contribution is a voluntary payment toward running costs, not a purchase, and cannot be refunded.
The ten selected families each receive one printed paperback copy of that round's anthology, posted free within Australia, plus a personalised ebook. The overall winner also receives five additional paperback copies. Every entrant, selected or not, receives a personalised ebook of the anthology with their own story included as its final chapter.
Once a round's anthology is published, additional paperback copies can be ordered directly from Amazon by anyone, at Amazon's own price. That purchase is between you and Amazon and is covered by Amazon's own terms, not ours.
You can withdraw your child's entry at any time before results are announced by emailing kevin.tan@thekitchentablebook.com. If a story has already been selected and printed, we cannot recall copies already sent, but we will remove the entry from any future publication or promotion.
We reserve the right to change these terms at any time. If a change affects entries already submitted, it will not apply retroactively: you are covered by the terms in place when you entered.
These terms are governed by the laws of Victoria, Australia.
Email kevin.tan@thekitchentablebook.com and we will get back to you.
Last updated 24 August 2026.
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