Complaint / Review
Poetry.com, Nobel House Publishing
Intenational Society Of Poets false offices, poems never published, very clever, very evil company 1 Poetry Plaza

After submitting a poem to Poetry.com, I began receving email and paper mail telling me that my poem was a semi-finalist in the site's big poetry contest. Would I agree to have my poem published in a book? Would I like to buy a special coffee-table edition of the book for just fifty dollars? Being sixteen or seventeen at the time, I declined their offer. I told them that I would allow the poem to be published, but did not want to buy anything.

I continued to receive mail telling me that I was invited to a Poem Convention in Florida, and that all I had to do was send them some money to secure my seat at the convention. After being sent dozens of letters, which began getting increasingly desperate in tone, I began to get suspicious and looked up "poetry.com scam".

Here's what I've heard and what I have been able to deduce about how the scam works:

1. The offices listed on the website do not exist. People have tried visiting these offices and they either do not exist, are abandoned, or contain a completely different company.

2. Customer service does not exist. If you email the site, you will get an error message.

3. If you do not pay for your poem book, the poem will not go anywhere. It won't be published, even if you sign the release form sent to you.

4. If you do pay for your poem book, you will receive a book that was mass-produced and has your poem on the first page, very carefully glued in place so it is very difficult to detect that it's not supposed to be there.

5. People who have recieved these books have talked to others who have also received the books, and no one can find anyone else's poem in their book, even if the books have the same title. Everyone's own poem is first in the book, and the rest of the poems are the same - none written by people who have submitted poetry to poetry.com.

For some strange reason, the BBB of Maryland still allows poetry.com's practices to continue, despite many reports of fraud.

Bottom line: If anyone asks you to pay to be published, it's a scam. If it seems too good to be true, it's a scam. Use common sense and do your research on any company with whom you plan to do business, and you will not be scammed.