After posting information on several literary writing contests I came across some information on Poetry Contest scams. Now, poetry scams are not new, they’ve been around for a long time. Before the Internet they were published ads in writers magazines, newspapers and other marketing material geared toward writers, especially new writers. Since I’m not a poet I never entered one of those so-called-poetry-contests. But a friend of mine did and she won! Well, that’s what they wanted her to believe but of course there was a catch. What she won was the chance to win the grand prize (cash amount, don’t remember the amount) and just for getting into the semi-finals she would have her exceptional poem published in an anthology book, no purchase necessary. Such a deal, right? Wrong! The book was $49.99 plus shipping and handling and there was a deadline for ordering the book. There were other costs, depending on what you, the poet, might want, such as a bio and fancy typeset. It could easily have cost her $100 just to see her poem in print.
She did purchase the book but not with any of the extras and was disappointed at the quality of the poems. Her poem was very good as were a few others but the vast majority were terrible. Are these contests legit? Technically, they are as long as the cash prizes are awarded and apparently they are, though how much it cost the winner to receive the cash award may be more than the award itself. The anthology is published and sent out but only to those who purchased it before the deadline. The books were not marketed anywhere, meaning you could not go out and buy one, but now with the technology age, you can see/read the better poems published from past contests online.
One of the biggest online poetry contest marketers is poetry.com, which has also been known as The National Library of Poetry, Watermark Press, and International Society of Poets. What they all are is vanity press marketers. Essentially, you pay to be published along with hundreds of others and have a slim chance at winning the cash prize.
The National Library of Poetry was exposed on ABC’s 20/20 in January 1998. Read about it Here. Here is more information on poetry.com from WritersWeekly, an online ezine, that was posted in 2001 and updated in 2002. Then there’s this piece by David Taub, Failure is impossible at poetry.com — the website where every poem is a semifinalist, originally published in the Poetic Voices, an online magazine, in 2000.
Here is information on the Hollywoods Famous Poets Society Poetry scam. All the websites mentioned in this article are now apparently gone. Here is information on the other names this society had run their scam under, Famous Poets Society, amazing!
Here is a list of poetry/writing scams. And here is a WritersWeekly’s resent warnings. And here is an article written by Kurt Heintz, A Word to the Wise, on entering online poetry contests. It’s worth the read, especially if you are thinking of entering one in the near future.
The lesson here is to always research any online writing contest. Do a Google search for information on the organization, look at the whois information and see if the contact details match what’s on the site offering the contest, look to see if there is BBB information on the organization and last but not least, if it looks too good to be true, it probably is. I’ll probably be writing more on online writing scams and warnings, along with supplying information on what I believe to be legit writing contests. Contests can be a good motivation to write but they can also become a thorn in an otherwise empty pocketbook.
I happened to find your website through a google search and I’m glad to have stumbled upon your site. I host a warning page at http://www.todays-woman.net/poetry-scams.html. Thank you for educating web surfers about poetry.com. The more who are educated the better.
Take care and Merry Christmas
Rose, thank you for leaving a comment. I have seen your site and have planned on writing about the fiasco with Mr.Graham Cook in the future. There’s a lot of good juicy information on Today’s Women and I may comment on some of that information here someday.
In the meantime, I will place a link to your scam warning page in my resource directory.
Merry Christmas to you too!
As a host of a long standing poetry competition (Mattia Int’l) I am pleased with both the content and approach of your article. Unfortunatley, many peotential writers are dismayed by such scams. . . you do a great service by keeping the alert out there.
http://www.mattia.ca/cgi-bin/newsboard.cgi?action=reload
Very interested to read your report. It must be frustrating to write and submit a poem and then find it is only an attempt to extract money. I’m fortunate in that I won a properly administered competition, received my prize promptly and was very well treated. This has prompted me to run a modest contest on my own site to try to encourage traditional rhyming poetry (no scams!).
Evangeline
I took a look at your site and there were some red flags that immediately popped up. The first red flag was the lack of any kind of poetry or poetry related information on the site. The second red flag was all the affiliate marketing. Now just to be clear, I have no problem with anyone trying to earn money with affiliates but when everything on the site supports the affiliates instead of the affiliates supporting the content, it looks shady to me. I can’t find a reason for the contest or why anyone would submit to it, especially since the site has no information on poetry or writing in general.
The third red flag was the lack of information on who you are and on the person judging the contest. For me that was a big red flag. I would not recommend your contest to my users, even though I doubt it is a scam but its purpose seems to be just another marketing tool. There’s no apparent reason for the contest to be on the site other than a way to get others there in order to generate affiliate sales. In other words, the contest looks out of place on the site.
I did do a bit of research on you before approving this comment since it appeared that the only reason you commented was to market your site. I did not find anything that would suggest that you are a scam artist. I did find a few of your articles and your winning poetry, which does support your love of poetry. Unfortunately, most Internet users do not know how to find the information I found and since there is nothing on the site about you nor why you are publishing a contest, why would they risk submitting their poetry? Why would any serious poet want their poetry published on a site that isn’t focused on poetry or even writing in general?
BTW, I do like the design of your site and I like that your affiliate marketing isn’t in your face but there really isn’t any real content on the site. Marketing affiliates is getting harder simply because the search engines are getting smarter and dropping duplicate content like hot potatoes. Most affiliate marketers are using the same content as the sites they are affiliated with, thus duplicating content. Without any original content affiliates are doomed to fail.