The Poetry Scam : Poetry contest not what it appears to be.

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The Poetry Scam.

Poetry Scam Contests to Watch Out For.

If you are a practicing poet and have had your work published, or are striving to have your work published, it is quite likely you will know at least something about the poetry contest scam.

On the other hand, you may enjoy poetry, maybe you have written a little and might be tempted to try and get your work published if you could be convinced you had a chance.

Beware the Poetry Scam.

Surfing the 'net you may stumble upon a free poetry contest. Hey! What can be better than free! The site seems to encourage entries regardless of ability, it all appears straightforward enough, and there is no fee to participate, so you decide to enter one of your poems.

Click! And your poem is submitted for review. You think that your work will have the same chance of being accepted as a snowball surviving in a furnace, so you move on from that site, get involved with other things on the 'net and forget about your entry.

Some days later you have mail. It is a nice official looking letter from the organizers of the poetry contest. Well what do you know! You have been been hand-picked for publication! The publishers wants your poem to appear in their forthcoming anthology.

The letter is full of praise, the panel of judges all agree that your work shows rare talent.

Congratulations you are on your way to being a published poet. Or are you? Is this a poetry scam, a fraud, a poetry rip-off?

About that “forthcoming anthology.” Naturally you will want to see your poetic work in all its published glory. If you do, then you will need to buy a copy of the book, no free copy for you even though the selection committee thinks your poem to be the best since Byron. It will likely set you back $50 or more, plus of course $10 shipping. But what the heck, this is a luxury bound coffee table volume, and it does feature your work.

So you drum your fingers for a while. You weigh it up. Yes it's a chunk of dough but, after all your work is going to be in this luxury anthology of poems, you want to see it, you want to own it. You submit your order, and that ensures that your poem will in fact, be included in the book. With this poetry scam had you not have ordered it is unlikely that your verse would make it to publication no matter that you had been selected as one of the finalists.

But there's more. Do you want your biography included in the volume? $20 extra please. How about a CD of your poem read by a well known broadcaster complete with musical accompaniment? A mere $30 plus shipping.

You may even be invited to join a prestigious sounding poetry society for a hefty fee, have a dozen display cards printed with your poetic masterwork (make great gifts for your friends,) or an expensive wall plaque honoring your achievement.

You may think “OK so it's really me paying for my poem to be published, self publishing by a trick route.” You might reason that at least your verse will get seen if it is in the anthology and, you never know, that may lead to something. After all these books get printed in their thousands.

Not this book, it will not get printed in any great number. The only people who will buy it are other victims of the poetry scam. You will not likely find it on sale in any bookstore or available online. This still means plenty of money for the bogus publishers, there is the $50 or so from each victim, plus sales of the CD's etc.

There Are Legitimate Poetry Contests.

Are all poetry contests a poetry scam? No, there are legitimate poetry contests out there. A legitimate contest is very likely to require a submission fee to cover cost of prizes etc. Any prizes offered are likely to be more modest than the bogus poetry contests.

Before you think about entering any contest do an Internet search and see what you uncover about the site, there are scam poetry sites that have dozens of web pages warning about them.

One easy way to check the legitimacy of a contest is to enter a nonsense rhyme, just compose the worst poem you can. If it is a scam you will be amazed to have the nonsense entry accepted, be told that you display a unique talent and all the flattering praise. This test has been successfully done many times, the entries obviously are not read by a human!

Of course, this type of fraudulent activity is not limited to the poetry scam. Such dummy contest are also operated for short story writing, drawing, song writing etc.

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