[Publisher] Burchette & Ferguson

Jeebus. If they sign 174 in one short time period you'd better set your expectations real low.

I wasn't cynical enough yesterday, then.

This is the spaghetti at the wall approach.

Buy n books, where n is some ungodly high number. Invest next to nothing in them. If one miraculously brings in revenue (which won't happen), the publisher wins. If they don't, there's no cost. Heads I win, tails you lose.

That's not incompetent, that's predatory. With enough incompetence not to realize it.

@VeryBigBeard Thanks and you are absolutely right. I want a long, lucrative writing career and that's worth waiting for.

LexieLarue said:

@VeryBigBeard Thanks and you are absolutely right. I want a long, lucrative writing career and that's worth waiting for.

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You're quite welcome.

It would be really great if Twitter pitches weren't such a mine-field, but as they gain in popularity they attract people whose business is parting writers from their money.

I don't mean to be dismissive of Pitch Wars or #pitmad or any of the others, but in the end, your best bet is still a really great query letter, a killer book, and following an agent's submission guidelines. A Twitter pitch like can be a nice shortcut, but it's still kind of a pre-query. It's just a slightly different path to the same place.

VeryBigBeard said:

You're quite welcome.

It would be really great if Twitter pitches weren't such a mine-field, but as they gain in popularity they attract people whose business is parting writers from their money.

I don't mean to be dismissive of Pitch Wars or #pitmad or any of the others, but in the end, your best bet is still a really great query letter, a killer book, and following an agent's submission guidelines. A Twitter pitch like can be a nice shortcut, but it's still kind of a pre-query. It's just a slightly different path to the same place.

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I absolutely agree. I've been in the query trenches for 2 years on this latest manuscript. Just wanted a break. Nothing worth having ever comes easy.

Just thought I'd use my first post here to weigh in with an update.

To begin with, these people are absolutely no good. They "liked" one of my pitches for my novel, THE DOLL MAKER, on Pitmad day on Twitter. So I sent them my first three chapters. The next day, some girl named Nancy emailed me to tell me they wanted to see the first half of my book. I thought that was odd, since no one had ever asked me for the first half but I went along with it. Then they had a technical problem on their end and said they could only read the first 70 pages and could I resent it. I responded it sounded as if it was a problem on their end and that sending the first half would have the same result. As it turned out days later, I was correct. It was a glitch on their end. OK, I thought, these things happen.

Then they asked me for the full ms and I happily complied after giving it one more proof-reading. Then they had a server crash. Then the following week, they had yet another server crash that occurred the same day I'd sent them my book. So they offered me a contract and sent me a sample one .Then I went to Burchette & Ferguson's Twitter feed and found the open letter written by "Tyler Ferguson", aka Melissa Futrell, which led me to this thread. That's when I began to get really alarmed.

Now, I know for a fact that one of the people contributing to this thread is also the one sabotaging Burchette & Ferguson. You used to work for Melissa at Polyethnic. You've been spreading vicious rumors that simply aren't true as well as stating things that are. When I discovered that you'd wiped her distribution channel clean, I was angry. Now I don't care. I won't root for you or help you in your sabotaging endeavors but neither will I care. Frankly, I think you're scum that has nothing better to do with your time than to shit on someone's dream but it's no longer my concern.

I won't care because yesterday I terminated the contract or rather made Melissa terminate it by telling her what I really think of her. We'd had one phone conversation that lasted about an hour and I addressed some of the concerns that were raised here. It's true that 20% of her acquired titles were written by teenagers 16-19. It's also true she's only 21 yet is already working on her second publishing company. What DIDN'T come out were her political and religious affiliations. That came out late last month in an email at the end of a series in which I let her know I hate right wingers and everything they stand for. After all, I myself am being stalked by one named Dave Chadwick, aka "Sugar Ray Dodge" and it's been going on for close to four and a half years.

Then last week Melissa wrote me a letter telling me she was concerned about my political beliefs and confessed she was one of the right wingers I said I hated and that furthermore, she's a Trump supporter. With a contract still on the line, I opted to bite my tongue and ignore the letter. Then a week or more had passed after I'd sent back my contract and asked both her and the sales department via email (she took down her phone number, meaning this "publishing company" literally has no phone number where they can be reached.) if it had arrived. The sales dept got back to me in two or three days and said Melissa was expecting resolution on an issue she'd brought up in her last email. I replied that I didn't know what that was but that I was not turning into a right wing nut job like her. EVER.

The next day (yesterday, on National Author Day), she responded the way I thought she would and said she was terminating the contract that had yet to arrive after a week and a half. So then I told her what I really thought of her. I had had it with their amateur hour bullshit. The girl who'd begun emailing me earlier this fall, Nancy? She was killed in a hit and run accident by a teenage driver and apparently her brother found out I'd mentioned her on my Facebook page and told Melissa to tell me to take it down, which I certainly will not do. I felt as if I was being stalked by Dave Chadwick again.

So to anyone thinking of signing with them or submitting your work to them, I'd very seriously advise against it. They haven't even officially launched and when their servers aren't crashing left and right, they're getting hacked by some malicious scumbag who's on this thread (I'll leave it to you to divine who it is). Experience has taught me not to get into bed with right wingers and especially Trump supporters. He's a mendacious, con artist dirtbag, hence everyone who supports him will be, too. They have no phone number where they can be reached and the staff page on their amateurish website gives one just pseudonyms and avatars with nothing to vet. Melissa Futrell is a little girl playing grownup by clomping around in Mommy's high heels and even has to work a night job in a nursing home to make ends meet. If you get involved with these people, you will be in serious trouble one way or the other.

Can someone check this, is it just my browser or have B&F completely disappeared from FB and Twitter? I get nothing.

Thanks Donna. Although that post has been on their site (and their twitter page) for almost a month now. They seemed to not be tweeting anymore or posting but the 2 sites were still UP (minus a lot of their early tweets that we have commented on here in this thread)
Maybe though they have just deleted everything everywhere, to start a new... maybe?

Christine,

If an earlier poster was correct, it sounds like their site(s) may have been hacked. It's possible they're still recovering stuff.

*shrug*

Thanks for the reply Richard. At least I know the problem isn’t on my side of the screen and that their Twitter account is down and FB page are gone, for whatever reason.

It would be quite the hack to take out a Twitter, FB, and website. And a DDoS, by far the most likely way to take down a website, doesn't leave nice PR messages.

To me, that blurb reads more like "we're tired of doing this already and are going to blame the website as an excuse."

Getting a basic website up is the work of minutes. There shouldn't be that much data to be installed on the back-end of a publisher website, and uploading what there might be shouldn't take very long. It also wouldn't affect any social media.

Their site is up. For me it loads very slowly, even on a newer iPad Pro (top heavy on the more typical "publishing" stock photo's perhaps)
But the kids need to Edit it, needs SO much Editing!
Small sample from "the Publishing Process"...

The industry is constantly involving and it is up for the publisher to keep up with trends. A writer should take note that the publishing industry is very competitive and the houses are always on the lookout for the next best thing. Our submissions staff will read your sample and they will either deny or request to see more chapters. If requested, the writer must send their next sample or full manuscript by the end of next week.

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I have to give them credit: their covers look great. Not that anyone should sign with them based on that alone.

I agree Clairels, the covers are lovely. Seems she is a graphic designer. Her cover prices, which seem very low, reasonable for the quality, are posted on her Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/tyleralexandriaxo