Plenty of help and plenty of cons (poetry.com)

Member Name: Donf18

Product:	poetry.com
Date:	03/11/08 (240 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Some very useful info

Disadvantages: Hassle

The idea of winning some serious money could quite easily tempt you into entering one of the many competitions run by Poetry.com. The competitions are legitimate and it is possible to win the prizes although it appears that your chances are much improved if you live on the other side of the pond.

I first got interested in the site due to an e-mail, which was enticing me to enter one of my poems into their $10,000 dollar competitions. I have entered three times now and came 3rd twice unfortunately there are no runner up prizes the 10K if for the winner. There are obviously a great number of entrants so I was actually quite pleased that I was at least in the top 5. All through the competition I was however pestered by e-mails and post that were offering publishing deals. Well actually at first it was just the addition of the placed poems into and anthology. Seeing your name in print is quite a nice thing and they play on this a bit by supposedly offering special deals on the final prints.

Apart from the entering of competitions the website has a host of goodies which are designed to help the budding poet. Most of the WebPages however have a large area geared to you entering the comps and being sucked into the web of purchasing your published works. You can in fact publish a book on the site should you choose, the process involved is quite simple and the software helps you design your book down to the last detail. There is however no mention of the cost until you have spent a great deal of time preparing you manuscript and having it edited. All this work although mostly done by you on the site means that someone somewhere has to proof read and check the content, more dollars added to the cost. I haven't actually completed this process yet since in attempting to do so I distinctly got the impression it was going to me far more expensive that I had initially thought.

You can search some of the poetry greats and read their works, whilst you can also browse short poems submitted for the daily, weekly and monthly competitions. The reader rates these poems, and the one, which has the highest rating, wins the associated prize, which can range from $25 gift voucher to more substantial amounts. All prizes are in dollars and since I haven't yet won any I have no way of being accurate about whether they are actually paid out, there is a list of winners published on one page of the site. All short poems entered into these comps are stored on Poetry.coms site and can be searched through their search engine. Unless you know exactly what you are searching for though it can be a bit of a hassle.

The site has some really good advice on poetry techniques, which helps up and coming poets understand the methods and styles used in this creative form of writing. There is also a rhyming database to find those elusive words. Famous poets biographies are available for browsing and overall the site is very well laid out with the exception of all the competition areas which do take up some considerable space. It is a site I visit frequently but no longer to enter the large competitions, since I have had enough of the hassle involved. I like to just enter a competition and patiently await the results be they good or bad, I don't want to be pestered by the publishers and those running the competitions just so they can con me out of my money for a book which only contains maybe one of my poems.

All in all though it is a very useful site if you are serious about your poetry, and it has a huge database of info, which is very helpful. It is definitely worth a visit if you are indeed into Poetry, and you will undoubtedly find many things, which will improve your writing.

Summary: A good site for info but avoid the comps