You've been short-listed! Now give me some money.

I was going to demonstrate my creativity in a creative writing exercise I nicked off my friend for today's post, but then the postman dropped me a letter and it changed my mind. Big time. You see, the letter was from the organisers of a small competition I entered late last year.

They claimed that although I hadn't won, my poem was good enough to have been short-listed and they wanted to publish it in their upcoming anthology. However, first they needed my permission and while they had my attention, would I like to purchase a minimum of two copies of this anthology for the largely discounted price of £25.00 (+£4.99 p&p)?

I don't know about you, but the last book I bought that was close to that price was my poetry anthology for university and that made sense because it has over two thousand pages and the paper is like Bible paper (thin and basically see-through). I quickly learned my lesson and since then, have rarely bought books for my course that were brand new.

Anyway, why the hell would I want to pay £30 on two books that were only interesting to me for one page? I wouldn't. And as for the organisation wanting my 'permission' to publish my poem, they could forget about it. I can smell a scam when I see one (okay, Sharena can smell a scam when she sees one but then she can tell me and I can sniff it too!). I found it hilarious how on the first page of the four sheets of paper they sent me, they dedicated an entire paragraph to trying to convince me they're not vanity publishers. Well, duh, of course they'd say that. I'm sure a vanity publisher wouldn't be proud of the fact and tell it outright!

I'm going to ignore this organisation - which, if you're interested, are called United Press. Maybe they're a stand up company and maybe I'm too cynical but maybe I've found a lucky escape from them and their extortion-like prices. I'm not that knowledgeable about these sorts of things so will probably never know 100% for sure.

In all honesty, I am quite disappointed that the competition ended this way though. I was fairly excited at the start because I was really shy about entering my poetry to competitions. I won't let this experience set me back though! I'll keep an eye out for genuine writing competitions and keep writing and improving so that one day, I'll be good enough to win big. That's the dream, anyway.