(Both your links aren't working, had to add the colon. Really odd.)
http://www.publishwithcfa.com/
Christine F. Anderson Publishing is run by a woman who self published a memoir-- that discusses her battle with bipolar disorder and her 70 month incarceration for SEC violations, including embezzlement.
Here is her book which she claims is selling 600 copies per month.
Forever-Different-Journey-Bipolar-Disorder
I'd like to know where it's moving 600 copies a month. The paperbacks are ranked well below 1 million on Amazon & B&N, the Kindle version is below 400k (far less than one copy per day, maybe a handful a month at that rank), and I can't find it on Kobo, iTunes, Smashwords or Google Play. Maybe it moved that many in a month right at first, but it hasn't sold much in a long, long time anywhere I can find.
In her publishing company, she is requiring a $500 deposit from the authors, which is to be refunded after 250 copies are sold.
Actually, the site says they require a $1,000 payment from authors, not just $500. It says that they invest about $24,000 over two years, but I suspect that's to make the relatively small $1,000 look like a bargain.
I'd advise people to steer clear just based on those numbers, before even considering her history of identity theft and embezzlement. I know she admits it, that's admirable, but if you know someone likes to steal eggs, you don't trust them with your eggs. Anyone with an admitted history of theft, check fraud, credit card fraud, and embezzlement, among other things, has
amazing chutzpah to ask anyone for a thousand dollar investment in anything, don't you think? I do.
I'm not commenting on my opinion, I am just giving information on what I found. Thanks
I'll offer my opinion.
No. And that's just based on her history and the $1k. Let's pretend it costs nothing and there's no criminal record. Just looking at the output here, I'd say no.
The publisher site links to the author websites, not the books. Some of them are cookie-cutter websites, obviously put up by the publisher, that have book trailers and
no links to the damn books. That's not even Selling 101, it's like remedial salesmanship--make it easy to buy your product. LINK to it.
They all seem to have book trailers, big waste of money, and the covers range from not good to completely dreadful. The ranks are low, so if there's marketing or promo, it's not working. I outright do not believe the claim of spending $24k on any one of these books, and in fact, I don't believe but a fraction of the author's $1,000 is going toward them. I realize they're all new, just started publishing in April, but there's just nothing promising here. Look at the fonts.
This is a poetry book the author apparently paid $1k to have published. That makes me want to weep, seriously.
And the blurb, oh my god. The first sentence--
After hiding in the garage on a dusty shelf for nearly 20 years, Stacey Marcus has finally found the courage . . .
How many headdesks can I do in a row without knocking myself out? I'd be laughing at that--it's funny as hell--except this woman paid A THOUSAND DOLLARS to this publisher for that shitty cover and that horrible blurb to publish the kind of self-conscious poetry that only has meaning to the author (I read the sample). If she wanted to publish her poetry, she could have spent a few bucks for a pretty cover and a little to have it formatted, and done better than this.
See the one book in the Also-Viewed carousel? That's another book published by this company that they forgot to list their publisher name with. Look at the font on that one. Tempus Sans. Read the blurb. Starts out okay, and then decides to give us a geography lesson. Look at the sample. The formatting's all screwy, with paragraphs indenting to different places. It's a mess.
Note the poetry book has one book in its Also-Viewed lists. The above novel has 3, and one is that poetry book, the other two by the same author (who was trade-published years ago with Slow Walk in a Sad Rain). You have to sell a small number of copies before you generate also-boughts, maybe a dozen. Given that they have extremely small also-viewed lists, nobody's even looking, let alone buying.
The other book is non-fiction. It hasn't even been looked at enough to generate a list of also-viewed titles.
The publisher's site says that the $1,000 is refunded after the sale of 500 books. I think it's pretty easy to see that the publisher's income isn't going to be from the sale of books. Anyone considering this, run.
