A warning to anybody who submits poems to http://www.poetry.com. Do not enter any of their competitions because what happens is you get a letter back saying you have afvanced to the semi finals and they say they r publishing you, but the thing is, they want you to pay over $50 for the book. So just watch out people. I recieved a letter today and researched the net to find it happened to many people.

Is this you paying the purchase price of the book, or you paying for your poem to end up in the book?

This one’s been around for years. They get a bunch of people to submit poems, tell them they’re publishing them, and then make a book and sell it to all the authors and their families.

They’ve been doing it for a long time and nobody is obligated in any way to buy the book. In fact, the book is rather nice looking though I certainly wouldn’t pay fifty dollars for it. I might read it if it were on a coffee table in a waiting room, however.

They’re not actually doing anything illegal. They just exploit people by throwing around the word, “publish.” People don’t realize that being published itself is not that big of a deal. Just being on the internet makes us all technically published.



[EDIT - it appears upon research that they may in fact be breaking the law. Maybe someone will sue them successfully and set a precedent to make it much easier to stop these types of scams]

My wife had a similar thing occur with these guys. She knocked them back on paying the $50 but they have kept sending her annoying emails.

I remember someone coming on the boards a while, saying he won this prize.  I don't think he came back after the truth was revealed to him.


Phil

that bites! I submitted a bunch of poems to that website. thank god I didn't buy the book or the trophy

Hm. What an ingenius little scam. Put out a "contest" for poems. Pick the ones you like the most out of those and make sure there's enough to fill a book of poetry. Set them up to be bound into a book. Then charge the participants for the book. I'll bet he makes a fortune. Too bad the participants could scream roylaty violation on him unless the entry form is a cleverly disguised contract that waives all your rights to royalties related to sales as a result of the contest. That way, he could make a fortune on the books, and if he wanted to get an ISBN, sell the books on Amazon as well. Ingenius. Unethical, but ingenius.

Quoted from George Willson Pick the ones you like the most out of those...

George, I don’t know if they even turn anyone down. As far as I know, they may accept anyone. Poetry.com and Poets.com are two domain names for The International Library of Poetry. They were once known as the National Library of Poetry but went international.

Some interesting reading here:

http://windpub.com/literary.scams/ilp.htm

An entire second grade class received identical acceptance letters for their poems.

They also sometimes use the same poem in more than one collection. And yes, they probably make a fortune without paying royalties to the writers. That’s the only place to really snag them but it would probably take a class action lawsuit to stop them.

Here is an example of a poem they accepted for “publication:”

My Cat Has Fleas

My cat is chewing on her butt;
It makes me think she is a nut.
I try to drown the fleas in spray;
They jump and shout and just yell "Hey!"
I try to drown the fleas in powder;
they eat it like it's fine clam chowder.
I try to drown the fleas in gas;
that really burned my kitty's ass.

Haha -- that's beautiful, Brea.

Hey, Braksnen -- is that one yours?

I think it's one of Pepi's.


Phil

There's such a slew of ripoff outfits, trying to extract every fee they can from writers, artists and musicians. They must think we're really suckers!

There are legitimate competitions out there.  Visit http://www.moviebytes.com/directory.cfm for a list of competitions and people's reviews of them


Phil

http://www.winningwriters.com/contests/wergle/we_guidelines.php Heres a good little thing to enter to get back at these people. I read that someone actually submitted a poem about companies that exploit people's poetry and then it reached the semi finals in the "contest". Everybody advances. It's not right what these people are doing.

In a similar vein is The Screenplay Agency (see the sticky thread at:  http://www.simplyscripts.net/cgi-bin/Blah/Blah.pl?b-film_contests/m-1149266726/s-all/).  The company will tell you that your script is salable, but needs some work from a script doctor.  They then recommend their's which cost you $130.

If you pay for this, they'll hold onto your script and will soon tell you that it needs more work and send you back to their script doctor.

This agency does not turn anyone down.  I'm willing to bet that they would accept the Pepi script.


Phil

I checked them out, saw they were a big red flag, and told them to take a hike. I'm surprised they're still allowed to advertise this scam.

They work under multiple names.  Unfortunately, for the writer, they don't have to sell anything.  If things get hot for them, they can just change names again.

Phil