POETRY.COM
Written by Raven of Ravens Rants
Poetry.com - Scamming the Poet Over the Internet
I hate to admit it, but five years ago I was suckered in by a huge poetry scam.
Like many people, my first contact with the "National Library of Poetry" (now known as the "International Library of Poetry" or ILP) was a plain half-page newspaper ad that appeared at the bottom of the Sunday funnies. The ad touted the library's free poetry contest, the $10,000 prize that went with it and even included a picture of the previous winner to prove its validity.
Like a lot of amateur poets, I got very excited. My spirits soared and for the first time I believed that someone, somewhere was really doing something to help amateur poets get established and make a name for themselves. Back then I was yet to make my appearance on the Internet and I was sitting on a growing pile of work that I was eager to share with the world.
So without hesitation, or much thought for that matter, I ran upstairs, selected a poem from my poetry book, typed it up, threw it in an envelope and sent it to the address listed in the ad. Then I waited anxiously for my response. I didn't feel that I had a chance to win, but it didn't stop me from hoping and praying that maybe, just maybe, this would be my springboard to literary notoriety.
However, I was to be a lucky one. Apparently in my hurry to get my work out the door, I had either written the wrong address down or made it so unreadable that the post office couldn't decipher it. A little over a week later the envelope was returned to me, unopened and stamped "undeliverable."
In the months and years that followed, I became wise to the ways of the ILP. Now, rather than hating the fact that my letter was returned unopened, I count myself lucky. Because if the ILP had gotten a hold of my address back then, when I was still very naïve about these things, I might have spent a lot of money I didn't have and maybe even had my desire to be come an author crushed by a bunch of greedy imposters.
You see, most people's stories revolving around the ILP, which also own the domain poetry.com, start out very much like my own, a young amateur poet seeking notoriety getting suckered into sending their works to their free contest. However, the difference is in what happens when the ILP gets the envelope.
Invariably, almost every single work (up to 99.9% of them) that gets sent to the ILP becomes a "semi-finalist" in the contest and gets their work published in the ILP's upcoming anthology. Poets are sent "artists proofs" of their work to finalize for publication and the poems are inevitably sent to press, crammed together with thousands of other works and published.
The catch is what happens after the book is published. Rather than being sent to bookstores and libraries, these anthologies have exactly one audience, the poets themselves. Each and every published poet in one of these anthologies is hit up to pay as much as $50 to see their own work in print. Where most legitimate presses give authors free copies of their work and make money off selling the books to the rest of the world, the ILP makes it's money by selling the poet's work back to the poet.
But it doesn't stop there. Authors are then asked to pay for the production of CDs that will contain tracks of them reading their poems, to have their poems put on a variety of items from handbags to sweatshirts and to join their poetry society, which will allow you to attend their conference, also at a very high price.
The ILP has no interest at all in helping you build a reputation, their only goal is to sell you as much stuff containing your own work that they can all the while charging you as high of prices as you'll pay. Some estimates have indicated that the ILP takes in as much as $12.5 million per year just by selling their anthologies back to the authors that sent in the works that make it up.
It's a well-known scam that's made an appearance on ABC's 20/20, other news shows, and countless sites on the Internet. However, despite the press, it's a scam that is continuing to hook in thousands of well-meaning poets every year.
Now listen, I know first hand how hard it is to be an amateur poet. I've stayed up late at night with my copy of "The Poet's Market" trying to find places to send my work, then going through the trouble of typing up cover letters and the poems themselves to make them appropriate for submission and then waiting six months for the inevitable rejection letters. It's painful, time consuming and it's hard enough without having to dodge scams.
But that's exactly how these people make their money, they take authors who are frustrated by the current market for poetry and offer them false hope for relief. It's easy to turn smart, rational people into virtual ATM machines by offering them cures for their ills, it's how the "snake oil" salesmen of the wild west days made their money and it's how the ILP makes theirs today.
The sad part is what happens after people discover the scam, many after having spent hundreds of dollars on anthologies no one else will read and memberships that mean nothing, a lot of great poets become disheartened and stop writing.
This is why most serious poets and people who know the truth about the ILP scoff at the name. The only thing that they offer is a chance to see your name in print, and even that comes at a high price. If one tries to use an ILP credit as a springboard to other publication opportunities, they are frowned upon and inevitably beaten by candidates with stronger backgrounds.
The moral of the story is that being a poet isn't easy. For me, it took five years of peddling my site on the Internet to get where I am today, but even that is just a humble beginning. If something seems too easy, like being a semi-finalist in a national contest, it probably is. Most poets get turned down far more than they get accepted and if you aren't thick-skinned you probably shouldn't be submitting your works for publication.
But until everyone accepts that, the ILP will be there, harvesting money from people by building up their hopes and getting them to pay for it, in cash, every step of the way.
Your business with the ILP and poetry.com is your own, but at least now you've been warned and you know what to expect.
Odds and ends:
- For submission to the ILP's contest, poems must be under 20 lines. Why so short? It allows them to cram as many as six poems per page in their publication, saving them printing costs and allowing them to increase the number of potential customers for each book.
- The ILP, at last count, publishes nearly one anthology per week. Each book is nearly 600 pages long and has approximately 6 poems per page (that twenty line limit again). That makes for over 180,000 "semi-finalists" each year.
- Titles of semi-finalist poems actually published in ILP anthologies include "The Plagiarized and Horrible Poetry Scam" and "The Poetry Conspiracy." Proof positive that no one actually reads the poems before they are listed as semi-finalists and go to print. (See references for more details)
- Attendance at an International Society of Poets (ISP), a part of the ILP, convention will run you about $600 not counting room and board. A recent conference was attended by roughly 4,000 people generating an easy $1.68 million in revenues for the ILP.
- Finally, according to one estimate, the ILP gives out about $6 in prize money for every $1000 they generate. Bottom line, this is no charity, but rather, a very large cash cow.
- If you've been taken in by the ILP, the best thing you can do is report them to the Maryland Better Business Bureau or the Maryland Attorney General's office. Information on both are available in the references.
References:
References:
Windpub.org
(An excellent collection of links and information about the ILP and their practices)
ThePoeticLink.com
(Be sure to sneak a peek at the "artists proofs" of poems actually published by the ILP in their anthologies.)
Petitiononline.com
(Be sure to sign the petition against this scam!)