ScammingBastards.com (poetry.com)

Member Name: wampyrii

Product:	poetry.com
Date:	03/10/02 (241 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Umm

Disadvantages: Scam

Poetry.com is a well known scam site, I'm not going to waffle on too much about the site contents and what they offer etc. because it is simply that. A scam. If you visit you'll be hit by the promise of a $1000 poetry contest which is held at various periods throughout the year and one grand yearly prize of $10,000 for the best poem submitted all year. With the net seemingly packed with wannabee poets they're onto a winner straight away and it seems that, even with the wealth of information out there documenting this as one huge scam, they still manage to suck in enough people to make a killing year in year out. Enough to warrant the purchase of the undoubtedly veeeeery expensive "poetry.com" domain for starters. One site has done the maths and has calculated they make at least $9million a year from their activities...

Anyway, you submit your masterpiece online, sit back and wait and lo and behold, within a few weeks you'll receive a wonderfully over-the-top letter outlining how your "unique talent and artistic vision" has found your poem reaching the semi-finals of the contest. Imagine the joy and it gets better because they want to publish your poem in one of their anthologies - you could be a published poet!! Of course, EVERYONE who submitted a poem during this time period also reached the semi-final stages because of their "unique talent."..blah. Why? Simply because poetry.com wants you to BUY the anthology in which your poem appears...yes, that's right, you send them a poem, they pay you nothing for improving the quality of their site and anthologies with new content, then for an extortionate $60 you can buy it back! Add another $25 to include your own profile inside the volume, $11 international postage and...and you've been well and truly had! Congrats...

Of course, it gets worse because if you search around you'll find one complaint after another about this company. Those who do orde
r the books seem to rarely receive them, those who have received one complain of shoddy quality and their poem not actually appearing in them and so it goes on. Ultimately, you may like the sound of having your work published whether it's a scam or not, just to see your name in print, it might look cool on the bookshelf right? Well just remember they accept ANYTHING which gets submitted to them, so your masterpiece will be published alongside any old crap as long as the author pays for it to be there. The likes of my semi-final 'masterpiece' which took 90 seconds of 'thought' for example could be rubbing shoulders with yours (and this is nowhere near as bad as some of the others I've seen!)....

The leaves upon the tree turn brown
I know that soon they'll all fall down
'cos winter time is fast approaching
and trees go naked when it's snowing

Apparently I should be "genuinely proud of [my] accomplishment" and they want to invite me to The International Society of Poet's 2003 Spring Convention and Symposium which will be held in Florida next year. Haaaaaa! Apparently they read thousands of poems and only a fraction make it to the semi-final stage so I'm really special...alongside a whole class of 2nd grade school kids after their teacher decided to let them submit their poems to the site as well - they all got the stock letter too, every one of them.

Anyway, enough waffle, it's a scam, avoid them and if you need more info. or want a laugh at some of the other crap submitted by people for a laugh to see if they'd accept it then go here:

Go here, for more information: http://windpub.org/literary.scams/ilp.htm

Incidentally, there is one of those fridge poetry games on the site which is quite fun if you're into poetry and there are some excellent amateur poems to be found if you want to hunt them out, but I'm sure there are better places to look as
well. Just don't be sucked in by their scams if you do take a visit...although they are so sucky-uppy and cheesy that I'm sure you'd smell a rat anyway!

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