vanity publishing and poetry.com

5 posts / 0 new

Topic locked

Sat, 2001-10-06 17:11

Having just read David Taub's article about vanity publishing and poetry.com, I remember too well the feeling of almost being taken in by the international library of poetry when I was thirteen years old. I had decided to write a poem and sent it off to one of their 'competitions' and in reply they offered to publish my poem in a very expensive anthology which I was not going to pay for and put it on a tape, which they were going to charge me for. After reading David's article I decided to go on the site, mainly because I remember so vividly when I was thirteen, the upset of being tricked by such a money greedy organisation and was curious to see whether if they were still making money from my thirteen year old poetry. And they were. My poem was archived and in order for it to be published on the site I had to send them my email address. Well bu**er that!!!

This is to warn new poets DON'T be fooled by them. Read David Taub's article. Its very funny and may just save you a lot of upset.

Thu, 2001-10-11 17:25

David Taub

Thanks for your feedback Helen!

Thu, 2001-10-18 17:04

SJHinton

I was also nearly taken in by a vanity press when I was 17 and writing my first collection of short stories. The memory atill makes me angry, but I'm very glad you brought the subject up now that I'm back to writing seriously and attempting to get published. What strikes me as odd is the number of "authors" participating at various websites who are proud their work is published - by essentially a vanity press. They talk big as though their work was published on it's own merits, but they paid money to put the work on a site and often haven't gotten any returns from this other than the claim they're published authors. Am I missing something, or are these people as deluded as I think they are?

Tue, 2001-10-23 21:16

Hellen

I think they are either very young like I was (13) or very deluded about the difference between being published and actually BEING published if you know what I mean. That sounds as if I'm up myself doesn't it? I'm only trying to say that its difficult to get anywhere if you want to be a writer, extremely difficult.

Sat, 2002-01-19 15:24

aplleu

A friend of mine was silly enough to get his work published by some high sounding publisher who turned out to be one of these Vanity people. He has now a half garage full of poorly printed books which he cannot even give away. His last comment to me was " I'll have to pulp the lot. A small fortune wasted.

Topic locked