by Greg Schwartz

Created on: November 23, 2008   Last Updated: July 23, 2009

Poetry.com (which has since been purchased and is under new ownership) was a website that thrived by scamming amateur poets. It also went by the names International Library of Poets and National Library of Poets. The company hosted a free poetry contest, claiming to offer $10,000 in prizes, which sounds pretty darned good. Here's how it worked:

The amateur poet sees an ad for this free poetry contest and figures, "Why not? What have I got to lose?" So he sends in a poem and waits. One day in the mail he gets a letter or an email saying that his poem has made it into the semi-final round of the contest, and because it is such an excellent and well-written poem, Poetry.com would like to include it in a "deluxe" hard-cover anthology, free of charge. At this point the poet (who probably has never had a professional publication) is beaming with pride, and he goes on to read about how he is not obligated to buy a copy of this extremely valuable and important book, but if he would like to, he will be able to purchase as many copies as he wants at the special pre-publication discount of $40-$60. (I'm not sure how much the books are now, but they were $50 each back in 2000 when they scammed me.)

Plus, if the poet would be so inclined, he could provide a short biography of himself to be published along with his poem, for the nominal fee of $25. When you're already spending $100 (which I did - a copy for me and a copy for my family, because I wanted to show off my accomplishment) what's an extra $25?

I know a lot of people have said that after paying for their copy and giving permission to publish their poem, they never received a copy of the book, but I actually got my two copies. They were very nicely printed hardcover books, which contained hundreds of poems all crammed together on the pages in a tiny font. I found my poem smashed in the bottom corner of a page.

The company, in its sales pitch, states that these anthologies (I think they print several a year) will be available in libraries and bookstores all over the world. I've been in many libraries and even more bookstores, and I've never once seen a publication by Poetry.com in any of them.

A few years back a news show (20/20 or Dateline or one of those kinds of shows) did a special report on Poetry.com. They had a class of second-grade students each write a poem and submit it to the contest. Not surprisingly, each and every student got a letter back claiming that their extraordinary and impressive poem had been chosen

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