A shelf for the manuscripts you collect, judge, and publish.
For literary contests, playwriting prizes, fiction and poetry competitions — managing submissions shouldn't mean drowning in email attachments.
Built from running playwriting contests since 2018
Running a literary contest means juggling submissions scattered across inboxes, judges who can't tell who's reading what, and writers waiting on status updates that take hours of manual work.
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Submissions scattered across inboxes
Email attachments, Drive links, physical mail. Nothing in one place.
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Coordinating judges is chaos
Who's reading what? When are reviews due? Whose turn is it next?
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No visibility into review progress
Are we on track? Who's behind? Will we make the deadline?
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Communicating with writers is manual
Status updates require individual emails. The volume gets old fast.
A clean tool for messy work.
Structured submission collection
Writers submit through your portal. Everything lands in one place, organized.
Easy reviewer assignment
Assign manuscripts to judges with a click. Set due dates and balance workloads.
Real-time progress tracking
See who's reviewed, who hasn't, and which scores are coming in.
Built-in communication
Notify writers of status changes automatically. Send updates without leaving TextShelf.
Annotation on the manuscript
Judges highlight, comment, and score right inside the script.
We didn't build this from the outside — we built it because we needed it.
TextShelf was born from running an annual playwriting contest since 2018. We received hundreds of scripts from writers worldwide and needed a better way to coordinate reviewers, track submissions, and communicate with playwrights. Seven years later, we've refined that system into a platform that works for playwriting competitions, fiction and poetry contests, literary magazine submissions, and writing fellowship programs.
Starter — small organizations
1,000 submissions, 10 team members, 5 GB storage. Unlimited shelves. Full annotations.
Professional — growing teams
5,000 submissions, 25 team members, 25 GB storage. Custom branding. AI shelf setup.
Nonprofit discounts available. Enterprise pricing custom to your organization.