Scammers

Not sure what I was searching for when I ended up on poetry.com by mistake.

But I saw that they were awarding prize money for a poetry contest and there was no fee to enter. So I thought - what the hell. Threw a poem in called Blinding the Mind of the Beholder and then promptly forgot all about it.

Next thing you know I'm getting emails galore from Howard Ely, editor of Poetry.com and the International Library of Poetry in Maryland, U.S.A. and they're just falling all over themselves with praise for Blinding.

Well golly gee, I've been awarded the Editor's Choice Award! Hoo haw! And look - I can purchase an editor's choice award medal!

Um. No thanks.

Oh, look, I'm a semi-finalist!

Ooh! Now I'm a finalist!

Oh and now Blinding is being published in a prestigious anthology and I can pre-order a copy for $60.00! Oh or I can buy it on a CD or mounted on a plaque! And I can choose to have an about-the-author blurb added for a mere $25 fee.

Um. No thanks, no thanks, no thanks and no thanks. No way in hell I'm paying someone else for the privilege of publishing me. They can damn well pay me.

So I looked them up on Wikipedia and sure enough - they're predators. Aparently they publish roughly fifty anthologies a year - each around 500 pages containing six poems per page.

That's 150,000 poems per year! Yeah. Real prestigious. What an honor. Even if they milk just one copy of the book per poet on average - without the sales of medals, plaques etcetera - that's nine million dollars in earnings right there. Their payout in prizes? One thousand per month as far as I can see.

I wasn't able to remove the poem from the 'contest' but I was able to edit it. Blinding the Mind of the Beholder has now become Blinding the Mind of the Scammers.

I urge you to go to my contest page and vote for it!

http://www.poetry.com/voteforme/poemvote1.asp?PID=12834170

And in case they got wise and removed it by now. Here it is:


Blinding the Mind of the Scammers

money grubbers money grubbers
I hope you choke on pencil rubbers
you ugly scamming bichbasterds
at poetree dot com

cheaters cheaters punkin eaters
ten fer ten on the scumbag meter
you filthy little criminals
at poetree dot com

Maryland's a fairy land
Full of imps with hairy hands
My pterodactyl's commin ta kill you all
at poo-tree dot com


Brilliant I know - but hold your applause.

FWG