Updated February 13th, 2026:Egret Lake do not plan to have an open reading period this year, based on their message: here.
Egret Lake was founded by Tess Jones. They are a small publisher based in near Seattle. They focus on publishing romance and women’s fiction. Egret published their first book in 2023, and their initial focus appeared to be on publishing poetry but it has since shifted to the current genres.
You can get a good feel for what they have published so far, here. So far they seem to be on track to publish between two and four books a year. I like most of their covers and all of them do seem genre-appropriate. The fiction that they’ve published so far has around between 30 and 100+ ratings on Goodreads (leaning more towards the 100 rating mark), and around 50 or so on Amazon. This is a good start for a small press.
They are currently open to submissions of romance and women’s fiction manuscripts that are between 50,000 and 150,000 words in length.
For me there’s one confusing aspect of the website. The use of the word ship, in the following two sentences:
“I am interested in authors who are on board to grow their careers by shipping multiple novels in one genre.”
“I’m interested in authors who plan to write and ship multiple books in the women’s fiction genre, creating a strong brand.”
Now I know what the word ship means in the context of fanfiction, boating, and mailing things, but I don’t think it is meant to be interpreted in any of those contexts here. I don’t know exactly what it means here. It could mean writing in the context of the first quote but not the second. I did think it could be about promoting the book, but don’t see a direct connection either. Now I don’t think this is a big deal, but it was confusing to me.
The complete wishlist is on the website, but in terms of romance, Egret Lake is mostly interested in a series of books or a book with series potential and they particularly like romance with a humorous element. They will not consider historical romance.
For women’s fiction they are interested in comedies featuring mothers, book club books, and cozy reads in a small town. They give additional information about what they are seeking including some comparable times as part of their submission guidelines here.
They are not looking for “historical fiction, historical romance, five pepper spicy romance, suspense, thriller, science fiction, fantasy, young adult, true life stories, biographies, based on a true story, paranormal, or erotica. I am also closed to poetry submissions at this time.”
As the “I” they use throughout the website makes clear, they are currently a one-person operation, so that’s something to take into consideration.
To see their full guidelines, please go here.
Emily Harstone is the author of many popular books, including The Authors Publish Guide to Manuscript Submissions, Submit, Publish, Repeat, and The 2024 Guide to Manuscript Publishers. She regularly teaches three acclaimed courses on writing and publishing at The Writer’s Workshop at Authors Publish. You can follow her on Facebook here.
