The 17 Best Christian Publishers

These are 17 publishers who are actively seeking Christian manuscripts of all stripes and genres.

Most of these publishers are traditional publishers, but I do have a few on this page that are hybrid publishers (half self-publishing and half traditional publishing).

There are advantages and disadvantages to both routes to publication, so I’d advise you to do your homework on each publisher listed here, and also to decide beforehand what type of publisher you’re looking for.

1. Zondervan

Zondervan is the gold standard of Christian publishing. They’re the best known and have been around for a long time (80 years!). If you’re looking for the highest quality, I would start here. They are a branch of Harper Collins, which gives you the power of one of the biggest publishing houses behind you.

If you want me to namedrop a little bit, they’ve published Rick Warren, Rob Bell, and Hal Lindsey.

They publish a variety of genres, including Christian children’s books, Christian fiction, and Christian nonfiction, including memoir.

You should especially check out their new YA imprint Blink Young Adult. Blink is looking for “clean” YA, but that doesn’t mean they’re looking for innocence or avoiding tough topics.

Recent Sample Books:

• “Move” by Greg L Hawkins and Cally Parkinson, a nonfiction book which surveys 1,000 churches to determine whether church goers are actually growing closer to Christ.
• “The Mountain Midwife” by Laurie Alice Eakes, a novel about a woman who wants to abandon her family roots of midwifery to go to medical school.

2. Baker Books

So Baker has 6 imprints, and each one publishes slightly different things.

1. Revell — this is mainstream fiction, aimed at the widest possible audience. Although there are religious themes, the storylines and characters are still accessible to a secular audience.
2. Bethany House — they publish ABA fiction, which means it has stronger religious overtones, with a strong moral code. It’s more conservative and more religious than Revell. 
3. Chosen — this is what Baker calls a “spirit empowered” imprint, which means they publish material which is charismatic or Pentecostal. 
4. Baker Books — this is nonfiction. It focuses on thoughtful treatments of Christian living. They also publish big blogger names and pastor resources. It’s the biggest imprint of Baker.
5. Baker Academic — It’s in the title. Academic work only. They are only looking for current professors or others in academia. And the work is only aimed at other academics, so if you are an academic seeking a wider audience, look below.
6. Baker Bravos — This also publishes academic work, but it’s aimed at those both inside and outside academia. So overall, it has slightly more accessible themes, while remaining scholarly.

Baker only accepts submissions directly from agents, but they do accept slush pile submissions through this portal:

www.christianmanuscriptsubmissions.com

Their editors visit that portal when they are looking for certain types of manuscripts, and if your manuscript is chosen — well, lucky you.

3. Intervarsity Press

Intervarsity Press doesn’t focus on mass market Christian living. They are more focused on what they call thoughtful Christian books, books about church, culture, and mission. 

They do like anything to do with spiritual formation, as you’ll see from the examples below, and social issues and social justice.

These are some of the titles published by Intervarsity:

• The Liturgy of the Ordinary (I can confirm this is a fantastic book)
• Silence and Beauty (I went to church with Mako in New York, and he is both a painting genius and brilliant at pointing out themes in Shusako Endo’s work).
• Slow Church (Love the slow movement)
• Vintage Saints and Sinners

4. Westminster John Knox Press (WJK)

WJK leans toward the progressive, especially when it comes to social issues, so if you’re conservative, this probably isn’t the best publisher for you.

They are looking for social issues through a Christian worldview, spirituality, devotions, and they also have an academic branch.

They have a wonderful imprint called “Flyaway Books” that focuses on children’s books.

Not all of the children’s books are expressly religious, but all of them have positive messages and issues that children deal with.

One important note for submitters: they like creative retellings of Bible stories. 

Sample Titles of WJK:

• The Witness of Religion in an Age of Fear
• Holy Solitude
• Resist and Persist: Faith and the Fight for Equality
• Lent for Everyone

5. Kregel Publications

Kregel is looking for general nonfiction about Christian living. Sample titles:

• A Woman After God’s Own Heart
• Invitation to Church History
• Mending Broken Branches: When God Reclaims Your Dysfunctional Family Tree

Their Gilead imprint focuses on Contemporary Christian fiction, and they are looking for traditional CBA fiction as well as literary fiction.

Also, they just started up a very cool new imprint which I hope has fantastic success — it’s called Enclave Press, and it’s focused on Christian Sci-Fi and Fantasy.

6. Beaming Books

With a tagline like “Helping Kids Thrive,” you can probably guess that this is a Christian publisher of children’s books (They used to be called “Sparkhouse Family” and have recently changed their name).

• Grit and Grace: Heroic Women of the Bible
• Don’t Forget to Flush! A Pre-Teen Devotional
• The World Jesus Knew: A Curious Kids Guide to Life in the First Century

As you can tell, they tend toward nonfiction titles with strong lessons and information for children.

7. Herald Press

Herald Press is a Mennonite publisher and they are looking for books that are from an Anabaptist perspective.

They focus on spirituality, reconciliation, justice and community. 

Note well: they are not looking for any academic titles.

Sample Titles:

• Fledge: Launching your kids without losing your mind
• Mystics and Misfits: Meeting God through St. Francis and Other Unlikely Saints

8. Eerdman’s Publishing

This is a pretty broad Christian publishing house based in Grand Rapids Michigan. 

They are looking for children’s books, culture and religion, pastoral care and counseling, and contemporary spirituality.

They do not publish memoir or fiction.

Sample titles:

• God, Improv and the Art of Living (with a forward by my friend Susan E. Isaacs)
• The Holy No: Worship as a Subversive Act
• Believe Me: The Evangelical Road to Donald Trump

9. The Upper Room

If you are looking to publish your devotional, I would humbly recommend this publisher.

They are looking for authentic, sensory-based devotionals that explore what it means to be a faithful Christian.

They also publish books about spiritual formation:

• Lenten/Advent books
• Small Group Study Guides

10. Wipf and Stock

They have an extremely robust poetry-publishing imprint called Poiema. If you have Christian poetry, I would strongly recommend buying a few of their books and seeing if your book of Christian poems would be a good fit.

The Cascade imprint publishes a variety of nonfiction.

Their Slant Imprint publishes fiction, but they only have a few titles right now. However, they told me that they are eager to expand their fiction offerings, so check out what they’ve published before and submit while they are in need.

Thankfully, they have only one submission portal, and the editors will decide which imprint your book might be right for.

11. Moody Publishers

Moody has a great reputation in the Christian community, mainly because of their reputation for the Moody Study Bible and Moody Bible Institute (even I took a correspondence course in Biblical Hebrew from them eons ago). But does their publishing branch match up to their reputation in other ventures?

They do have a good pedigree, since they were founded in 1894, and they do have good name brand recognition among the people you want to buy your books. They also have a good stable of authors like John MacArthur, A.W. Tozer and Gary Chapman.

Overall, I would rate this as a pretty great publisher to go with. Not my first choice among the ones on this page, but among the top. A bonus is that they accept a huge variety of nonfiction and fiction. For their fiction categories, they accept the following: Children, Fantasy, Sci-Fi, YA (Young Adult), and Mystery.

The worst thing about Moody is that they’re not very friendly to submitters. You just can’t send them your manuscript, because they accept no slush pile. Instead, these are the three ways to get a manuscript to them:

• Through a literary agent
• Through an author they publish (a personal connection)
• From meeting them at a writers conference

Sample Titles:

• How Should Christians Vote? by Tony Evans. Most Christians begin with the question of “who” they should vote for, rather than asking “how” they should vote — in other words, what principles should be used to determine who to vote for?
• The Turning by Davis Bunn. Five people hear a voice from God that commands them to fight against the cultural direction of America. What happens next is unpredictable.

12. Dove Christian Publishers

Dove Christian Publishers is a hybrid publisher, meaning that some of their books are traditionally published and do not charge the author, and others are self-publications, meaning they charge you to publish with them. 

They publish fiction and nonfiction, and they do not provide advances.

They say that they’re looking for authors with some kind of social media platform, and also for books that will do well in the Christian market. They say that some books can take as long as 12 months to publish, but the majority require 4 – 6 months for publication (12 months would be a normal time frame, while 4 – 6 months is extremely quick in the industry). 

They provide 25% royalties on e-books, which is industry standard (although some indie publishers go up to 50%), and 10% – 15% royalties on physical books.

Sample Titles:

• More Than a Great Partner: How to Find and Keep the Right Mate. A great self-help book helping unmarried people to find the right partner and married people to stay married. 
• The Regency. In this high-octane thriller, an assailant kills a Washington D.C. pastor and then pursues a young woman.

13. Bethany House

About half of their titles are paperbacks, and the others are published only as ebooks — which is important if you absolutely need your book in print. Some Christian book publishers have the bad reputation of only publishing bonnet fiction, and that’s not Bethany House at all; most of their fiction doesn’t mention overt religious themes in the descriptions at all, although the Christian undertones are present in the book. But The Atonement by Beverly Lewis does have the traditional Amish garb on the cover:

Sample Titles:

• Letters to my Daughter: The Art of Being a Wife by Barbara Rainey. After 4 decades of marriage, Rainey decides to share her hard-fought wisdom about marriage with her newly married daughters.
• The Inheritance by Michael Phillips (fiction, book #1 of a series). After the clan patriarch dies, the family fights over the inheritance on the Shetland islands.

14. Crosslink Publishing

Crosslink Publishing makes it very easy to submit a manuscript to them. There’s a button on the upper left hand corner of their website which lets you submit directly to them, which sure beats waiting for an agent to accept your manuscript. They also are very open about the type of contract you would get, publishing a sample author contract on their website.

They sell their books at a pretty low price point — Confessions of a Ninja Mom on Amazon was selling for $4.84, which means your royalties would be lower by a third than if you were selling at $15.00 for a paperback. Awaken Your Might, a Christ-centered devotional aimed to improve your leadership skills, is priced at $3.99 (!!). These are good price points if you are a reader, but not such good price points for an author trying to earn money. But obviously their business model is more about selling tons of copies at a lower price point, so if that’s what you want as an author, go for it.

This manifesto lets you know a little bit more about their philosophy of publishing, including a commitment to absolute transparency and that authors should get a decision on their book within 7 days (a record in the industry!). Make sure to read the comments at the bottom of this post to see about the experiences of other authors with this publisher.

Overall, I think this is a better choice for nonfiction than it is for fiction. I didn’t find very many fiction titles that they’ve published, and had a hard time figuring out the pitch for the novels they do have.

Sample Titles:

• The Rise of the Prophet (fiction). A Young Adult novel that retells a familiar biblical story.
• The Gift of Rest (nonfiction) looks at Rest from a biblical perspective, going from Genesis to Revelation.

15. Thomas Nelson

Thomas Nelson is a really solid publisher, one of the best. It’s kind of a sibling with Zondervan, because both are subsidiaries of HarperCollins (don’t worried, you won’t be quizzed on this).

What’s the difference between Zondervan and Thomas Nelson? Not that much. Both are largely Protestant, and evangelical in the broad sense of that term. The biggest difference is that Zondervan is an upstart (1931) and Thomas Nelson has been around for centuries (1798). Also, Thomas Nelson has annual revenue which far surpasses Zondervan. What do age and gross earnings have to do with you, the author? Not that much, to be honest.

Thomas Nelson publishes big time authors, people like John Eldridge of “Wild at Heart” fame and Sarah Young of “Jesus Calling” fame, as well as Shauna Niequist, Max Lucado, and the Jesus Storybook Bible for kids, which recently just sold 2 million copies.

I wouldn’t call them theologically discerning, but more ecumenical in their approach. Which is fine, because this is a business and not a church. It’s difficult to get a manuscript accepted here, but if you get in it’s a great sign about the quality of your submission.

Sample Titles:

• The Stone of Ebenezer, by Susan Van Volkenburgh. A novel retelling the Biblical story of the battle over the ark of the covenant.
• Steve Farrar, Manna (nonfiction): When you’re in the wilderness, how will God provide for you?

16. Faithwords

Faithwords describes itself as catering to the “Christian inspirational market.” Which can pretty much be summed up by a single one of their most popular authors: Joel Osteen. As far as fiction, their most popular author is Paul Young who wrote “The Shack,” as well as Ted Dekker.

So they’re hitting a much broader market for Christian books than more conservative, evangelical publishing houses like Thomas Nelson and Zondervan. It’s more like self-help combined with a light Christian veneer.

Sample Titles:

• Grace Revolution by Joseph Prince. How to “live above defeat,” and conquer your problems.
• Overload by Joyce Meyer. How to live a life free from stress.
• Dr. James Dobson’s Godless, about the housing crisis and three people who try to crawl out of financial despair.

17. Paraclete Press

Paraclete is a Christian publisher looking for fiction, a wide variety of nonfiction, and poetry. But they don’t take children’s books, sermons, or commentaries.  

Their submissions page is a little bit hard to find on the website, but here are their submissions guidelines for what they’re looking for.

Here are two sample titles:

• “Be Still and Listen,” which is a nonfiction title that probably fits under devotional/spiritual living
• “Unveiling,” which is a novel by Suzanne M. Wolfe, and here is the description: “Rachel Piers, a brilliant young conservatrice at a Manhattan art gallery, is given the dream assignment of restoring a mysterious medieval painting in a church in Rome.”