Ok so i had some dealing with poetry.com some years back and had found them to be a scam, recently a friend of mine had submitted some work to them and before i break her heart and let her know the truth i decided to double check my findings. The result was the same and i thought i'd add what i have found here. First of all i would like to say that if any of you have doubts about this sight please visit www.wockyjizzy.com/poetry/shame, they have tried several times to submit awful poems to poetry.com to see if there is anything they will not choose as a winner, as to date nothing is to poor a piece of work to go into poetry.com anthology. My favorite is my "cate has flees", also they have 3 scanned acceptance/winners notification letters from poetry.com complete with awful poems (atleast one of wich is written as a direct insult to poetry.com.) on them. There is also an article from dave barry about poetry.com.
My dealings with them were as follows: at the age of 13 (i am now 22) i wrote what i believed to be a wonderful poem i submitted it to poetry.com, got there standard winners letter and offer to purchase a book. I did not purchase the book but of course was very excited. About 2 years later i received another letter from them telling me i was to be published in another book as well a compilation of all of there best poems i was excited but then noticed somthing strange, the letter contained a copy of my poem in the same formate and whatnot that it had supposedly been published, odd to me because i noticed several misspelled words (i was 13 when i submitted this)
I went back and dug up the original letter from them (my parents were so very proud that they had kept the acceptance letter on my "winning poem " and publication and sure enough there was my accepted poem misspelled words and all. I had signed off on the mispelled poem as my final cut to be sent to press and printed exactly as written. I did some reasearch and found many sites similar to the one i listed above, explaining what a scam this place is. To all you disbelievers who still say this can't be a scam they don't even require you to buy a book to be published, scams make u make you buy junky stuff or u pay for somthing they never send you. Well #1 if your a believer in poetry.com and never bought a book how do you really know they ever published your poem (you've never seen your poem on paper after all) and yes there are several people i have noticed they say they have received a book from these jerks with there poetry in it well yes i am sure that they have filled dozens of books with poems from payings contest winners.
Some of you say what are they hurting even if it's not real i do have a beautiful book with poems in it and my work on paper. It is hurting all the people out there who think they have legitimatly been published and may be able to have a career one day in the field only to find out that they have been scammed. Sorry such a long report here but it needed to be said.
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