[Publisher] Burchette & Ferguson

I got a like from there too, so I PMed them with my questions. I'll copy+paste the conversation I had for you. I was nice, but still, a little off-putting that they had NO information about upcoming titles. The reason may be that their current distributor is NOT Macmillian, but... a vanity publisher. They are basically glorified packagers at this point, so you're essentially self-pubbing right now with them. Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but Ingram Content Group is POD self-pubbing, which they claim is their "distributor".

THEM:
Hello, Theresa! You left a comment on out profile regarding a question you have? We are so sorry you could not find our contact info. It’s found on our “Contact Us” page. It might not be showing up at moment because we are in the process of moving our website to a different host server.

ME:
That may be it, no worries! I couldn't seem to find a list of books you have acquired/authors who have signed with you, so I could see if my work would belong in your roster. I know you are new and everything is a little hectic, so I really appreciate the fast response. I will try to ask all my questions in one message so you are not constantly responding to me all day. Do you have an average turnaround for pitmad pitches you have liked during the event? How much creative control does the author have over the process? Do you charge any fees for authors? What rights do you obtain?Sorry if that is a lot! I just like to be wholly informed when I look at companies for my work.

THEM:
Hello! I apologize about that. Yes. Many of our pages are unavailable due to migration to another server. I’m not sure if you saw on on our website that we are a new publishing company that won’t launch until the Fall season so under our terms with our authors, we cannot list them until our company is fully up and running. Mostly, our authors are 20% between ages of 15-19, 60% between 20-24 and 20% between 25 & up (highest is 70 years old). Most of our authors are YA Fantasy, Sci-Fi, and Romance, Historical/Mystery/Poetry. Our list of authors & books should be posted on our website within the next two weeks. We apologize once again about that! You should expect one to two days to hear from an editor if we do like your manuscript. The author will have a lot of creative control for their work (where the book should be marketed to, cover ideas, etc). Therefore, authors will retain full rights to there work. We do not charge any fees. We are a small publishing house but due to our growth of members so far, we are able to work with S&S and Macmillan as our sole distributor for our works once we hit the 100 books.

ME:
That sounds great. Thank you for the swift reply and the information!

THEM:
You’re welcome! I hope my reply made sense. Please let me know if you have any other questions! If you need to contact us through email, you can do so through [email protected]

I hope the person who responded to your questions isn't one of the editors... And, um, who cares what the ages of their authors are?

And Ingram is a major distributor...but they include IngramSpark, which handles POD books for small publishers/self-publishers. I can't help thinking they're conflating the two, possibly through well-meaning cluelessness.

Lilreeper said:

We are a small publishing house but due to our growth of members so far, we are able to work with S&S and Macmillan as our sole distributor for our works once we hit the 100 books.

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Did you push back on this? It's beyond ridiculous for a couple of reasons including that S&S and Macmillan are two different companies, neither of which would touch this company for any reason.

Why would the author have input on where the book is marketed? If I'm going with a publisher, I expect them to handle the marketing as part of why they're getting their cut from book sales. If I'm doing their "marketing", I might as well publish myself and cut out the middle man.

Sure, I always promote my own stuff, but I shouldn't have to market it. That's the publisher's job.

Round Two said:

Did you push back on this? It's beyond ridiculous for a couple of reasons including that S&S and Macmillan are two different companies, neither of which would touch this company for any reason.

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Yeah, this makes no sense. Major glaring red flag - either the publisher has no clue what they are talking about, or they assume the person they are talking to has no clue... Both of those companies distribute for smaller publishers, but they have pretty high standards in terms of quality and size of catalog.

And of course that sort of distribution relationship is exclusive, but using Ingram and B & T for wholesale is also standard practice for any legit publishers who want their books on shelves in stores.

Marissa D said:

And, um, who cares what the ages of their authors are?

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I think the fact that 20 percent of their authors are teenagers is probably worth knowing.

They were pushing hard on one of the hashtags before and during pit mad and it was fairly obvious they are trying to build something. In other words, the author's work will help them succeed.

I'm hoping to find a better fit than that, personally, one that stands more of a chance of an even match. Otherwise, I see little reason to go with them over self-publishing.

On a related note, the topic of 'starting our own publishing company' has come up at critique circle out of frustration for the whole system. So I don't begrudge B&F at all -- I sort of get it -- but no, I won't sub there.

You can also go to their twitter feed and look at their likes on September 6th, see how many they passed out. That might give you a sense of it all.

I got a like from them too and started digging a little. Couldn't find much. I looked up the founder and couldn't find their name as a known agent/publisher/author anywhere.

What concerns me is they aren't telling us who their editors, agents, or anyone is. Yeah, I can google each of the authors, but I don't return much there either.

I'll put this on my, revisit in future list. Maybe they just don't have stuff together and I understand that. For now, until more can be found, it's a pass.

I did some digging on them, because I got a “like” as well. It turns out they were called The Polyethnic Publishing.
You can google that and see what people had to say about them. Looks like a group of young adults/teens that bombed on their first attempt as a publishing house.

The authors did their own promoting and it seems they are still trying to sell most of the same books.

They were originally The Polyethnic Publishing. And how do I know that? I used to work for them.

Do not publish with Burchette and Ferguson. Coming from experience, I can vouch for this when I say that the founder was completely disorganized and immature at times, and yes the authors (including myself) had to do their own promoting. The Polyethnic Publishing within their time frame was also in the midst of four different lawsuits, all of which had been avoided.

Tyler Ferguson is not her real name. It is a pseudonym, and though I have nothing against pseudonyms, the fact that you can google "Tyler Ferguson" or even her real name and turn up next to nothing about her supposed achievements should raise a red flag. That's when I have a problem, with people who try to make themselves seem bigger than they actually are.

I just did some extensive research on B&F, and I wound up falling into a very weird rabbit hole using Google reverse image search, and here's what I found:

Tyler Ferguson, their founder, wrote this book: Apocrypha, "a journey to the cradle of life to explore the true origins of the two major modern day religions."

The publisher of that book was called Tate Publishing, a family-owned Vanity Press embezzling scam (read more here).

Here's where things get weird...

Some of their staff listed on B&F's website have pseudonyms, and they all have these illustrated images of themselves. I was able to track down the main artist of these images, a deviantart member, and I also found another religious connection...

Their submissions dept is headed by "R. Chota", and their image is different from the rest. I reverse-image-searched it and found this:

See this book called "Forgotten Heir"? There's a quote in the 16-year-old author's bio: "96% of teens won't stand up for God. Put this on your profile if you are part of the 4% who will."


Now look at that cover of "Forgotten Heir" and compare it to the cover of this book on Amazon: "The Great Deception: Modern Sodom and Gomorrah"

Check out the author...Neketo FERGUSON. Not Tyler this time. It's Neketo. And he writes in his book, "The Great Deception", the following:

"Four years ago, I was darkened in my understanding of God, but thanks be to God for pulling me out of that darkness and giving me light."

The book was self-published on Amazon in 2015, roughly four years after Tate Publishing went under. And what was the light that Ferguson experienced? In the book, he talks about meeting his wife from a distant country.

B&F is another embezzlement scam, using whatever they had stashed away from this old vanity press, and now getting vulnerable authors to sign with them. They're recruiting teens and young college kids to make up their entire company. I'm pretty certain their Director, Blake Tan, is a recent college graduate, while one of their editors is Kate Luke whose first book came from Polyethnic Publishing, which has already been talked about in this thread.

I don't think this is just a bunch of teenagers. I think it's a family-run business with a cultish God mission.

Tyler Ferguson, their founder, wrote this book: Apocrypha, "a journey to the cradle of life to explore the true origins of the two major modern day religions."

The publisher of that book was called Tate Publishing

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I'm fairly certain that isn't her. In 2005 she might of been in her mid teens.
Neketo Ferguson appears to be a middle age man living in Canada.
I feel it's best to stick with the problems with the publisher, rather then speculate on cults etc.
That said, on twitter she has posted a statement about what has been said about her and the press here. It's poorly written, especially when it's suppose to be by a writer and publisher. Lots of errors, so again, it seems to point to a group of very young people publishing their own work but unfortunately deciding to take in writers who believe this is a publishing co run by people with experience.

The person who wrote and published that book with Tate Publishing is not their founder. Like I said before, Tyler Ferguson is a pseudonym; it is not her actual name. Her actual name is Melissa M. Futrell, who was also the founder of The Polyethnic Publishing. Burchette and Ferguson is not a cult by any means. It is just a poorly-run business by a soon-to-be twenty-two-year-old.

Also, if you want an example of a poor business practice, the fact that she publicly replied to the talk that was happening here is a poor business practice. Companies receive bad reviews and skepticism all the time, and they just ignore it. The fact that she publicly drew attention to this should tell you something.

I agree one hundred percent.

The statement that she made seemed rushed. As an up and coming publishing house there should have been no attention drawn to this thread. Especially because authors have every right to look into the publishing house they may work with. If there is no information readily available and we are forced to dig, that’s a huge red flag on its own.

The fact that she publicly drew attention to this should tell you something.

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Definitely. It's very much a knee jerk, emotional action of a young person feeling attacked and not that of a business owner. If what she says is true, about her experiences with her last pub co., then I don't know why she would expose herself to it all over again. They should just stick to publishing their own works, as a small group of writers and have fun. When these signed twitter pitch authors eyes start opening, she may end up in another mess

Also, I just realized she lied in her post. The Polyethnic Publishing did face four different lawsuits that had been averted due to having plagiarized images on some of the covers. The founder herself, also a cover designer, was not one of the people who put plagiarized images on her covers, but there were people she hired that did and that led The Polyethnic Publishing to go on a long hiatus in the first half of this year until that got resolved. She has a huge victim complex and has always had a huge victim complex, and she is very good at persuasion to make herself look like the victim. Look at the replies on that post.

writtenpages said:

Also, I just realized she lied in her post. The Polyethnic Publishing did face four different lawsuits that had been averted due to having plagiarized images on some of the covers. The founder herself, also a cover designer, was not one of the people who put plagiarized images on her covers, but there were people she hired that did and that led The Polyethnic Publishing to go on a long hiatus in the first half of this year until that got resolved. She has a huge victim complex and has always had a huge victim complex, and she is very good at persuasion to make herself look like the victim. Look at the replies on that post.

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As I am new to this site, I think I'm using it incorrectly... I cannot find this post she wrote you folks have referred to in the thread. Was it deleted or am I just straight-up missing it?

You can find the letter here:
Burchette & Ferguson (@burchettefergus) Tweeted:
Please Read: “A Letter from our Founder” https://t.co/I40i493Ph2 https://twitter.com/burchettefergus/status/1046854850783240192?s=17

Brilliant - tyvm.

They reached out to me through pitmad. I've gone through the submission process, and now they have my full ms. The information in this thread upsets me. Are they not legit? What about the authors announcing their publishing contracts with B&F?

They are a legit publisher, just like Polyethnic was, but they are a very sloppy one. They are not the most professional, and because of my experience with The Polyethnic Publishing, I have extreme doubts that Burchette and Ferguson will be any different, considering the founder has a huge victim complex. Most of the titles they signed are former Polyethnic titles, ones that despite all the time they said they wasted with Polyethnic still decided to publish with the new company. I would personally suggest not going with them.

LexieLarue said:

They reached out to me through pitmad. I've gone through the submission process, and now they have my full ms. The information in this thread upsets me. Are they not legit? What about the authors announcing their publishing contracts with B&F?

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There are a lot of small publishers that may have the best of intentions but which are under-capitalized and whose principals lack experience. Sadly, publishing is not a forgiving industry.

Take the royalty rate at this house. It's no doubt intended to be beneficial to authors because, after all, we're just a big happy family, right? What then happens is, even if the house does strike lucky with a really great book, it can't make enough money back to pay the editor, pay for larger print runs, or win a bidding war for another hot title. It quickly becomes a spiral until the house can't afford to keep the lights on, at which point authors had best hope there's a solid rights reversion clause in the contract because otherwise that great book is gonna be stuck out of print.

The best intentions count for nothing.

It's great that you got a pitchmad request, LexieLarue, but unfortunately an increasingly large number of not-so-great agents and publishers browse these contests looking for hopeful authors. Remember that you have the finished product; your work is done. You're looking for a publisher that can buy it off you and bring it to the most readers possible. If it's a solid book, others will take interest, too. Sometimes it just takes time and perseverance.

Don't just assume because the house has signed authors it's a good deal. Authors are not a commodity in short supply, and signing them is easy (too easy, without agents involved). Until these books start to actually come out and, one hopes, sell, we have no evidence that this publisher can do anything to earn its cut, whatever size it is.

And according to their instagram, they have signed 45 Authors, with another 129 in the process of signing. There is absolutely no possible way they can can properly edit, publish and market this many books.