Apex domains cannot have CNAME records.
Question and response
Question
dig johnsonpapers.com. NS
Answer
johnsonpapers.com. 5 NS ns-1395.awsdns-46.org.
johnsonpapers.com. 5 NS ns-173.awsdns-21.com.
johnsonpapers.com. 5 NS ns-79.awsdns-09.com.
johnsonpapers.com. 5 NS ns-152.awsdns-19.com.
Authority
The response has no authority records.
Additional
. 0 OPT ; payload 1232, xrcode 0, version 0, flags 0