hashtag poetry

Would you pay $500 to get your name on a list?

I’m writing poetry again. Or, at least, I’m editing my own poetry. It feels good to work on my writing after such an extended hiatus.

Recently I felt confident enough to print up some little chapbooks of newish poems. It’s been a while since my last book came out, and since I have a reading coming up this Friday I want to have something to share and read from and possibly sell at the event. It’s always nice to share new stuff.

The chapbooks are a small selection of poems from a larger work in progress titled A Soft Opening, so I’m calling this short release The Soft Opening EP. The books look nice and I’m happy with the poems contained within, so in addition to having some copies for the reading this Friday, I decided to take some photos and post them on Instagram, along with a link to purchase on my website (I’m selling the chapbooks for $6.66 on alexandranaughton.com).

Now, the point of this post. Whenever I put something poetry related on Instagram I try to include some relevant hashtags to make the posts more discoverable. I have no idea if poetry fans actually scroll through posts associated with the hashtag #poetry, but maybe some do. What I have noticed however is this weird marketing tactic from random Instagram users who leave comments suggesting that you send a direct message or share your post with The Writer’s Warmth or Heaven of Author or another similar account so that they can promote it.

When you look at these accounts you can see that they have several million followers, and every post gets about 16,000 likes. Seems legit, right? Maybe even worth reaching out to in order to get your work some traction. But then when you investigate further and look into the users who are liking the posts on “The Writer’s Warmth”, you realize that they’re almost all dummy accounts, and you can tell this when you click on any of the users’ profiles and see that they usually have none of their own posts, have no followers, and aren’t following any other accounts.

They also usually have these odd handles which sometimes have a name in them but are otherwise a jumble of letters and numbers.

This wouldn’t be a big deal if these accounts didn’t ask you to pay them in order to “promote” your poetry.

Out of curiosity, I reached out to The Writer’s Warmth a couple of years ago when I was promoting a new issue of Be About It Zine on social media and someone not on my friends list left a comment suggesting I promote it there. I got a reply from The Writer’s Warmth right away with a price list of the packages they offer: $17 for a post in their Instagram story, $25 for a permanent post, $38 for a story, permanent post, and $60 for four stories, four posts, and a highlight. The prices aren’t bad, but why pay anything if the only people who will see the post aren’t even real people? They’re not “bots,” but they are empty accounts most likely run by some social media “click farm.”

What really put a bee in my bonnet though is this DM I received from some other random person telling me that they were impressed by my work and asking me to pay $500 to get a shoutout in LA Weekly. Is this really how it works? Maybe I’m naïve, but I thought major media mentions happen because the reviewer organically came across the artist’s work (as in, they found the book at a bookstore or received a book from the author’s agent or heard about the author through their professional channels in one way or another), not because some PR firm scouted your homemade chapbook from an Instagram post. Am I wrong?

Hello Alexandra,

I am representing a PR firm called Mogul Press. We specialize in strategic media placements. We work with top authors, and influencers, to help them get featured in major publications. We offer guaranteed placements in the shortest possible time frames.

I came across your profile, and was really impressed. We are currently working on an article for “LA Weekly” which will be titled “The World’s Top 15 Most Influential Best-Selling Authors”. We are selling spots in this article for $500 each. You will be featured alongside 14 top Authors to watch in 2023 on The LA Weekly, which is a publication that gets thousands of visitors every month. It will include a short paragraph about you as well, that describes your success story.

The article is expected to go live at the end of June 2023. We only have a few spots left.

If you are interested in being featured in this article, please let me know ASAP, and we can lock in your spot!

Sure, I’d love to be featured in LA Weekly. Who wouldn’t? But does this article title even sound real to you? “The World’s Top 15 Most Influential Best-Selling Authors?” Why would I even be included on that list? I’m not a best seller and I’m not influential in any kind of worldwide sense. I feel bad for anyone who has already shelled out $500. The Mogul Press Instagram account looks pretty kosher: it has real accounts and verified users following it, and real accounts like and comment on their posts. Maybe they are clients of Mogul Press?

According to the Mogul Press website: “We can take you from being a nobody to being a person of influence in your industry… We have the ability to take a person with absolutely zero authority, and get them published on major publications including Forbes, Entrepreneur, Inc. Magazine, and more. We do this by strategically building up their writing portfolio, getting them on a bunch of smaller publication, and then using that as leverage to pitch the biggest ones.”

Maybe it’s normal for people to pay money to a company to help them establish their personal brand? Maybe print media is so dying and desperate that they publish whatever a PR firm sends their way? Maybe they’re all getting a slice of the pie when it comes to paid listicle advertising?

It all seems so wrong. Would you pay $500 to get your name on a list? I definitely wouldn’t, and I don’t think I even believe that sending that much money to a PR firm is even a guarantee that 1) the article would happen, and 2) you’d get any sort of benefit from the article if it is indeed published and you’re included in it.

Back in 2015 or 2016 (when I was popping off in the Bay Area for a brief moment and things were looking up for me before I got into a terrible and traumatizing relationship that caused me to derail myself and took a lot of effort to start healing from, and I’m still not anywhere close to where I was before that started) my novel American Mary was reviewed in the San Francisco Chronicle. It was a lovely review, and such an honor to see my first novel get that kind of love. But! (and maybe I’m exaggerating here) the only opportunity I saw as a result of that article was a letter from Pelican Bay prison from an inmate who had read the article and saw my photo and thought I could be his pen pal. The letter went to E.M. Wolflman bookstore in Oakland, which the article mentioned as the location of the book release party. I didn’t write back.