May 2003

Just for fun I checked my account at poetry.com this morning. I put the poem that was under the mysteriously disappeared name Ape Staartje now under Pietje Puk and guess what?
My poem is currently being considered for inclusion in their hardbound anthology series and is therefore unavailable for editing at this time. This process takes about one week. Their review of my poem is for poetic quality and to determine if it will add to the value of the publication. If I have additional edits to make, please try again in a few days.
And this message is ONE day after I posted it there.
I am now VERY curious if also my alias Pietje Puk mysteriously will disappear after that "about one week".

And there's something else. Something disturbing...
Today I went to one of Finland's biggest bookstores, armed with two of the ISBN numbers of the anthologies that ILP had published. One of the numbers was the number of the book that I have at home here as the reminder of my stupidity; it was published under the name "A Passionate Sky".
I had them check in the international database of registered ISBN numbers and you probably guessed already: there wasn't such a number in the database. Neither of the two numbers that I gave them to check was found in the search.
The only thing that they found was the name of the second anthology I gave the title of: "Patterns of Life". There were something like five hardbound anthologies by that title, but none had the matching ISBN number, nor a name of a publisher to my knowledge related to ILP or poetry.com.
Since the anthology I have was actually printed, and since it is definitely a crime to put an ISBN number there that is not registered, I assume that they did register a number. It is however not tracable by any recognised bookstore or available in any bookstore.
So you can ONLY purchase the anthologies through poetry.com. That must definitely be to keep the insane prices in their own hands...

TO BE CONTINUED!
Continue with Poetry scam(s), Part VIII.