Without a traditional publishing deal or marketing campaign, Beth Brower remained confident her “Emma M. Lion” book series would reach the right audience.
The first two volumes in “The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion” made their modest debut in November 2019. Just months before the release, Brower personally announced the books on Instagram, where the post drew 65 likes and just over a dozen comments.
Now, after seven years and eight volumes, Brower is regularly recognized in Orem, Utah, where she lives, she recently told The New York Times in one of her first major interviews. After a recent interaction while out with her husband, Brower gave him a lighthearted apology.
“I’m afraid,” she recalled in the interview with the Times, “we’re going to spend the rest of our lives talking about Emma.”
Who is Beth Brower?
While attending Utah Valley University — where Brower earned a degree in literary studies — she discovered a knack for gardening that led to a career as head gardener at Rivendell, a seven-acre “Lord of the Rings”-inspired estate in Park City, Utah, with more than 1,200 native trees.
After seven years at Rivendell, a chronic illness required her to leave.
“We have to be brave enough to encounter the dark things,” she told the Times. “Having hope or faith in life requires grit. It requires being honest about the shadows one encounters.”
Brower grew up in Orem as the fifth of 11 siblings. A lifelong reader, she recalls often sneaking out of bed as a child to pull her favorite books from the closet. “My desire to create stories grew as I was learning to read them,” she said.
After facing rejection through the traditional publishing path, Brower decided to create her own route, founding Rhysdon Press in 2016. She published her first novel the same year.
She relied on her family’s talents while building her independent publishing company. Her sister edits her work, while her brother-in-law designs the book covers.
“Much like the Brontë sisters had each other, and Virginia Woolf had her sister, I have a lot of talented siblings,” she told the Times.
With support from her family, Brower has self-published 13 novels since launching her writing career in 2016 — “The Queen’s Gambit,” “The Ruby Prince,” “The Wanderer’s Mark,” “The Q,” “The Beast of Ten” and eight volumes in the “Emma M. Lion” series.
Writing ‘Emma M. Lion’
The “Emma M. Lion” series represented a genre shift from her previous novels, and was meant to provide a detour from “emotionally heavier work,” per the Times.
The detour became a breakout. The first volume has received more than 110,000 reviews on Goodreads — a major jump from the 3,100 reviews on her first novel.
It launched the series in front of traditional publishers, leading to deals with Bloomsbury Publishing in the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand and over a dozen other countries, as well as translation rights sold in at least 17 countries — including French, German, Italian, Spanish, Dutch and Portuguese.
Audiobook versions of the series have also been released.
Now, she has focused much of her attention on the series, publishing eight volumes and working toward a ninth. Brower also publishes a subscription-based Substack newsletter, featuring extra scenes, short stories and letters based on the secondary characters in “Emma M. Lion.”
Readers have been drawn to the series’ charming, epistolary style. Set in 1883 in the fictional neighborhood of St. Crispian’s in London — where Brower had only been once before beginning the series — the novels follow Emma, a witty 20-year-old, as she navigates her quirky neighborhood, eccentric family members and tries to reclaim her family home.
“As a publisher, I like complex female characters,” she said.
Brower writes the series with a similar format to a television series. There will be four seasons of “Emma,” each season including five to six volumes, with each volume comprising two months. Her plan is for 25 books, spanning the years 1883 through 1887.
She already knows how it ends.
“I do know everything that happens. With all the characters. I’ve not told ANYONE,” she wrote on her personal website. “When readers tell me their thoughts, opinions, or predictions, I smile and try not to give anything away. When the entire series is finished and you reread the volumes, I hope you enjoy the easter eggs.”