Two Sylvias' Weekly Muse: October 2, 2022

Issue 23

Welcome to October, Muse Readers!

We occasionally receive questions about poetry presses and the legitimacy of their contests and their calls for submissions. Many poets are rightly concerned about whether to trust their poetry collections with publishing entities that could be shady and might rip them off—monetarily and in terms of copyright.

These particular publishers are known in the writing world as “vanity presses.” This name derives from the fact these publishing places will flatter you (without even really reading your work) in order to draw you in. The primary difference between a vanity press and a legitimate poetry press is that the vanity press will continuously ask you for money during both the publication process and the marketing phase of your book. A legit poetry press that is respected in the writing community will not ask you for money—they will usually pay you money in the form of a prize payment and/or royalties and other perks. Vanity presses sometimes give themselv…