We are closed to unsolicited submissions of novels in 2020, but we are always open to agented submissions. If you have an agent and you would like to submit a proposal or an unpublished manuscript, your agent should contact Stacey Donovan via email at (hallmarkpublishing@crownmedia.com) for details.

What We’re Looking For

We’re looking for wholesome or “sweet” romance novels and cozy mystery novels of around 75,000 – 90,000 words in length. We love romances and mysteries that also celebrate friendship, family, and/or community ties. All stories must have happy endings.

We’re looking for contemporary stories set in the United States.

We’d especially love to see seasonal themes for romance (winter, Valentine’s Day, spring, June brides, beach reads, fall, and Christmas). For Christmas and winter romances, we like to see snowy locales.

For Hallmark mysteries, strong seasonal themes are discouraged. We don’t publish Christmas mysteries. We’d especially like to see series ideas with female amateur sleuths.

A sense of humor is always a plus for us. We tend to avoid stories with very sad or distressing elements, including but not limited to terminal illness, abuse, addiction, early stages of grief, and children or animals in peril.

We aren’t looking for stories with strong religious themes, but faith may be depicted as a part of characters’ lives.

We don’t publish romantic suspense. We aren’t interested in paranormal romance in general, but we’re open to time travel or a little bit of magic.

We aren’t looking for children’s books, young adult novels, other fiction genres, or nonfiction at this time.

No nudity, sex, profanity, or graphic depictions of sexuality or violence will be accepted. Physical interaction must be limited to hugging and kissing. We avoid backstories about infidelity or promiscuity. In murder mysteries, the murder must happen “off the page,” and we tend to avoid other heavy or disturbing content.

For romance, we prefer third person, alternating between points of view, but we’ll consider a first-person narrative with an entertaining voice. For mystery, either first person or third person is fine.

We’d love to see diverse stories from diverse authors.

We no longer consider previously published works for publication.

Hallmark Publishing isn’t involved in acquiring the movie or TV rights of books published by other publishers. We never read scripts, so please don’t send them.

Thank you so much for your interest in Hallmark Publishing!