Maybe you've heard of poetry.com. The site might look promising to an aspiring writer--there are boasts of giving away $100,000 dollars in prizes, claims to be the "world's largest poetry society," and advertisements for a poetry convention. Many hopeful writers have been thrilled to receive letters telling them that their poems have been accepted for publication in anthologies.

An exciting event for a novice poet, right? Unfortunately, the joy is often short-lived as writers realize that poetry.com publishes any poem submitted to the site. Other writers are ecstatic upon being told that they are winners of a large contest, only to find out that they are not. While poetry.com is a joke among many, the site still lures unsuspecting hopefuls, and dA writers need to be informed.

So what is poetry.com? First of all, the organization goes by several names, including the International Society of Poets, Watermark Press, the International Library of Poetry, the International Poetry Hall of Fame, the National Library of Poetry, etc. (Note to photographers: `diamondie brought to my attention that they also do business as the International Library of Photography and picture.com.) Whatever they call themselves, poetry.com is a vanity publisher. That means that you pay money to receive a book or other product featuring your poem. Although the site claims that these anthologies can be found in bookstores or libraries, this is not generally the case. Furthermore, poets who do pay the approximately $50.00 to buy the anthology discover that their poem is crammed into a page with many others in a book containing literally thousands of poems.

The resulting shock, humiliation, and disappointment can be a major blow to new writers. "Internet Poetry Winners Find Out $50 Books Aren't Alike" tells the story of a woman and a twelve-year-old girl who realized something was wrong when their anthologies arrived. The conventions have also been reported to be less than promised, as this interview with a devastated attendee shows.

Contests are another way the organization raises the hopes of writers. If you submit a poem, you'll most likely be told that you are a semifinalist in a contest. Even writers who are familiar with poetry.com can find themselves being tempted by promises of huge winnings. When =justim received an email telling him he had won, he allowed himself to hope, but investigated:

The most amazing thing about my experience with them for me was that I allowed myself to believe anything they'd sent me. My automatic response should have been to always delete any email I received from them, but when the opening line of one of them was "And the 30,000 dollar winner is... Timothy Case!" it was hard to do so. I mean, that is a direct, 100% bold-faced lie.

I spoke to a phone jockey when I called to complain, who quickly told me she'd pass my complaint on. She was probably the only one in all of this that was good to her word. Two days later I got a call from an aggressive, irritating man, who didn't give his name (to be fair I forgot to ask though). He tried to make me feel stupid for not realizing that the email had only told me I was nominated for the prize (as is everyone on their list no doubt, and which I would have to spend something like six-hundred dollars to try and win). I explained calmly that it was a very easy mistake to make, and that I could tell from his and the response of the other person I spoke to that it was a fairly common one. He told me he'd pass my complaint on to 'the boss' and I never heard from him again.

My advice to anyone for any email scam is to just take a chunk of the email and google it. If sites pop up telling you it's a scam, it almost certainly is. It really is amazing (and embarrassing) how blind greed can make you though. Common sense just went out the window once I had it in my mind that I'd won something.

While this is a serious issue, a growing number of writers have exploited the "every poem accepted" policy with humorous results. Columnist Dave Barry chronicles his experience of having a poem in the organization's Best Poems of 1995 in this article. Later, he again had fun with poetry.com in a blog entry, urging his readers to submit under the last name "Pustule." Here, David Taub shares his tenacious, but ultimately futile, attempts to be rejected by poetry.com. "Would-be poets and scam artists" tells a similar story. ABC also did a report on poetry.com's practices. They submitted poems from a entire second-grade class, and all the poems were accepted. The transcript is available here.

Poets wanting to see their words in print have better options. A good resource for finding publications is the Poet's Market, which is put out by Writer's Digest Books and updated every year. Visit a bookstore, library, or newsstand to find literary journals that interest you, and become familiar with them before submitting. While getting published can be a difficult and long process, legitimate publications are more gratifying, and often provide a contributor's copy of the issue your poem appears in (much better than paying over $50.00 for a clunky anthology!).

Note:
Literature Gallery Director ^imperfect emailed poetry.com for a comment, but had not yet received a reply at the time this article was submitted.
In light of poetry.com's history, $spot confirms that deviantART has blocked all ads from the company.


Links:
Literary Contest Caution has a plethora of links about questionable contests
Wind Publication's ILP page has information about poetry.com's multiple names and lists their photography sites.
Elite Skills' Writing Scams page has a list of poetry scams, victim statements, and suggests ways to report scams.
Warnings about vanity anthologies
Tips on telling if a contest is fake
Preditors&Editors' guide for spotting scams
How to remove your work from poetry.com