Written by Emily Harstone October 8th, 2020

Vinspire Publishing: Open Call for Manuscript Queries

Vinspire Publishing was founded in 2004. They were originally called Vintage Romance Publishing, because they started only published historical romance. When they expanded their line in 2010 to include a wide range of genres including books for children, they renamed themselves. Although recently they seem to be re-focusing on romance again, just not historical romance.

They only publish books that match up with their family friendly policy. They do have decent distribution because I have seen their books in brick and mortar bookstores in the past.

But their email list sign up doesn’t seem like they have a lot of connections in terms of subscribers. It lists the fact that they have 78.

Their covers are hit and miss, but genre appropriate.

They are not open to general submissions at this time, and are only considering agented submissions for most options, but they do often have an open call for submissions. This means that they are accepting submissions that match the open call and nothing else.

At the time of writing this review their open call is for the following (But please double check the website here, to ensure it is still the case).

“We are seeking unagented submissions for romances with mature heroes and heroines. We are looking for characters over the age of 45, preferably older, as we want to celebrate second chances at love (or even firsts in later years!). These are first and foremost romances. Secondary genres such as suspense and inspirational will be considered. All submissions must adhere to family friendly policy

To submit, make sure your word count is between 35,000 and 95,000 and submit a detailed query to vrpsubmissions @ gmail.com (without spaces). Your query should include your publishing credits, information on your platform, and two-three paragraphs about the book as well as word count and genre. You are welcome to submit the first three chapters of your manuscript as well. “

If your manuscript does not line up with their open calls for submissions in any way, please do not submit. Manuscript publishers are more likely to close to unsolicited submissions if writers submit manuscripts that don’t fit their needs.

To learn more or to submit go here.


Emily Harstone is the author of many popular books, including The Authors Publish Guide to Manuscript SubmissionsSubmit, Publish, Repeat, and The Authors Publish Guide to Children’s and Young Adult Publishing.

She occasionally teaches a course on manuscript publishing, as well as a course on publishing in literary journals.

You can follow her on Facebook here.

Are you ready to submit?

Please fill out this short form before continuing.

Why this form is required.

Have you revised your manuscript at least 3 times?


 

We Send You Publishers Seeking Submissions.

Sign up for our free e-magazine and we will send you reviews of publishers seeking short stories, poetry, essays, and books.

Subscribe now and we'll send you a free copy of our book Submit, Publish, Repeat

Verso: Accepting Proposals

Verso is the largest independent, radical publishing house in the English-speaking world. They publish 100 books a year, and have editors based in Brooklyn, London, and Paris. They participate in all of the major book fairs. The majority what they publish is is nonfiction, and they are not open to unsolicited submissions of fiction of…

Quills & Quartos Publishing: Accepting Submissions

Quills & Quartos Publishing was founded in 2019. They started with a very specific vision, to focus on publishing the best Austenesque romance fiction. This is of course a niche market within a niche market, so if this is not the right fit for your work, please don’t submit or read further. However if you…

University Press of Mississippi: Accepting Submissions

The University Press of Mississippi was founded in 1970. They are currently the largest and only nonprofit publisher in the state. They are supported by Mississippi’s eight state-run universities. They publish work on a variety of subjects and are open to submissions in all nonfiction categories. They are interested in fiction or poetry submissions. You…

Elk Lake Publishing Inc: Accepting Proposals

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…