The Famous Poets Society (also known as the Christian Poets Guild
) was a
vanity press
A vanity press or vanity publisher, sometimes also subsidy publisher, is a publishing house where anyone can pay to have a book published.. The term "vanity press" is often used pejoratively, implying that an author who uses such a service is publ ...
that organized a poetry contest and offered self-publishing services.
Despite the company's claims to have awarded over $425,000 in cash prizes to selected poets over 8 years,
nearly all writers who submitted works were accepted regardless of artistic merit, and they were required to buy the anthology (described in one
NBC4 story as resembling a "yearbook" and being printed on "Xerox paper") in which they appeared in order to receive a copy of it; in addition, they had to pay significant fees to attend the contests' award ceremonies.
The
Winning Writers website lists the Famous Poets Society as service that aspiring poets should avoid,
while an article in the ''
Boston Phoenix
''The Phoenix'' (stylized as ''The Phœnix'') was the name of several alternative weekly periodicals published in the United States of America by Phoenix Media/Communications Group of Boston, Massachusetts, including the ''Portland Phoenix'' an ...
'' described it as an outright scam, stating that its presumptive founder "
adbeen preying on the naïveté and vanity of poets for 20 years."
See also
*
Poetry.com
References
{{Reflist
Poetry organizations
Self-publishing companies
Writing contests