About & rules
The Colophon publishes fiction written with AI, requires every author to state how the work was made, and judges the result as fiction — at the bar a professional magazine applies. It is free. Nobody pays and nobody is paid.
A colophon is the note at the back of a book recording how the book was made: the press, the typeface, the paper, the date. Every piece here ends with one. The site is named after that note.
Two ways to submit, both opening in November 2026
The contest — Show Your Work. Opens 1 November 2026. Entrants receive a machine review written against the rubric, and owe peer verdicts in return. Judges rank a shortlist and nothing else ranks anything. No entry fee and no prize money.
The open archive. Also opens in November. Any piece that meets the craft standard and carries a complete colophon can be published here, outside the contest, at any time.
Standing rules
- No money in either direction. No fees, no prizes, no donations, no advertising, no sponsorship.
- No scores, grades, stars, rankings or counts. A verdict is prose with the evidence quoted from the piece.
- Every published piece states how it was made. An incomplete record is publishable. A hidden one is not. “Not recoverable” is an acceptable answer.
- Any author may withdraw any piece at any time, without giving a reason, and it comes down.
- Reviewers never see the colophon. It is removed before a piece reaches any reviewer, human or machine.
- The founder is barred from all ranking and judging on this site.
What this site stores
Nothing on your device. No cookies, no local storage, no accounts, no analytics, no third-party requests of any kind. The fonts are served from this site. There is nothing to consent to, so there is no banner. The server keeps no IP address, and its logs hold nothing that identifies a reader. See the privacy notice.