How to Spot a Poetry Contest Scam
Quick answer: Learn how to spot a poetry contest scam: fake anthologies, hidden fees after you win, missing judges, and the checks legitimate contests always pass.
A poetry contest scam usually shows itself through three signs: everyone who enters seems to win something, the real cost arrives after the win, and the organisation names no judges and publishes no past results. Legitimate contests state their fees, prizes, judging process and deadlines up front, before you send a single line. The classic version works like this: you enter free, receive a gushing acceptance within days, and are then invited to buy the anthology your poem will appear in, often for forty pounds or more, plus a framed certificate, plus tickets to an awards gala.
None of that money reflects the quality of your poem. The business model is selling books to the poets inside them. Real contests make their money transparently, through modest entry fees or sponsorship, and they reject most of what they receive. Oddly enough, rejection is one of the healthiest signs a contest is genuine.
The anthology trap, step by step
The most famous example ran for decades under names like the National Library of Poetry and poetry.com. Reporters and curious poets tested it by submitting deliberately terrible verse, including nonsense generated by shuffling words at random. Everything was accepted as a semi-finalist. The acceptance letter is the product: it flatters you into buying the book.
Watch the sequence of asks. A scam accepts fast, praises vaguely, then invoices. The praise never mentions anything specific about your poem, because nobody read it. If a contest can quote your own imagery back to you, someone actually judged your work.
Red flags to check before entering
Five minutes of checking filters out almost every scam. Run through this list before you pay any fee or accept any prize.
What legitimate contests look like
A genuine competition publishes its rules, fee, prize structure and results date, and it tells you what happens to your rights. Past winners are listed with their winning poems or at least their names, and the judges exist outside the contest's own website. Writory, for instance, opens entries on the 1st, closes on the 25th, announces on the 30th, and shows every entrant a score across five criteria, so you can see the judging actually happened.
If you are ever caught, do not pay the follow-up fees, and do not be embarrassed. Experienced poets have fallen for these schemes. Report the operation to a national writers' body such as the Society of Authors or the Authors Guild, and warn other poets in your workshop or online groups.
What poets can take from this
- Search the contest name plus the word scam before you enter.
- Treat any post-win request for money as the end of the conversation.
- Read at least two past winning poems; if you cannot find any, walk away.
- Check that the judges have publication histories you can verify.
- Be suspicious of praise that could apply to any poem ever written.
- Keep a record of the rules page as they stood when you entered.
Try it yourself
Write a poem in the voice of a flattering acceptance letter that slowly reveals it has never read the work it praises.
Questions
Are contests with entry fees automatically scams?
No. Modest entry fees fund prizes and judging at many respected contests. The scam signal is not the fee itself but hidden costs that appear after you win, or fees wildly out of proportion to the prize.
What should I do if I already paid a scam contest?
Stop paying anything further, keep copies of all correspondence, and contact your card provider about a chargeback if the payment was recent. Then report the operation to a writers' organisation so others are warned.
Do scam anthologies count as publication?
Technically your poem appeared in print, so some editors would call it published. That is another reason to avoid them: you can burn a poem's first publication rights on a book nobody reads.
By the Writory editorial team, reviewed by working poets. Updated July 2026.
Enter a Writory poetry contest
Enter the September contest and have your own poem read and scored. That first entry makes you a Writorian.