Updated September 24, 2025; The no longer appear to be actively publishing books.
This small press’s motto is “Publishing the Positive”. They were founded in 2016 by Deb Haggerty, whom you can learn more about here. Elk Lake focuses on publishing positive Christian books.
Their website is a little out of date, and poorly organized. Although the main page clearly focuses on highlighting recent books, I didn’t find a page devoted to the catalogue as a whole, outside of this one, which is more focused on authors rather than books, and is organized alphabetically rather than chronologically. Out of the three books listed on their landing page, one had ten ratings, one had a few, and the other had none on Amazon. The most recently released book listed was published three months previously. I do not think they have distribution beyond Ingram.
Their new author guidelines mention a wide range of genres including but in no way limited to contemporary romance, romantic suspense, nonfiction, and speculative novels. They have a suggested word length range listed beside each genre. They do publish children’s and young adult books, but they are not interested in picture books of any kind. Please do not submit a genre they are not open to.
There are from my perspective, a number of unusual requests as part of their proposal guidelines including listing the history of the manuscript and that they want a one-page sell sheet instead of a query letter, as well as a paragraph about why they are the right fit publisher. However they probably receive fewer submissions this way, and it makes it clear right away if an author is not actually following their guidelines.
Please spend time on their website to determine if they are a good potential fit for your book. Please carefully review their new author guidelines and their proposal guidelines.
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.
