Beth Brower announced the official release date for “Emma M. Lion: Vol. 9″ early Thursday morning — along with a fresh publishing deal with Penguin Books.
The ninth book in “The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion” series will be released Feb. 23, 2027. Its release comes a bit later than anticipated, Brower acknowledged, as she chose to spend a bit of extra time polishing off her characters.
“I know I’d planned to release Vol. 9 this year, and Penguin was poised and ready to do the work required so that could be the case. (They have your back.),” Brower shared in her Thursday Substack newsletter. “But I needed just a handful of extra weeks to make certain that I had done right by the characters. Volume 9 is a riot, there are a lot of moving parts, and the terrain of the book requires me bringing my ‘A’ game to the endeavor.”
“I knew a handful of additional weeks would give me the amount of time needed to send the book into the world with excitement and peace rather than a feeling that I’d moved a sliver too fast,” she continued. “So thank you, thank you for this last final show of patience. It will soon be in your hands.”
The first two books in “The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion” series landed quietly in November 2019, drawing modest attention.
Now, seven years and eight volumes later, Brower is regularly recognized in Orem, Utah, where she lives, she recently told The New York Times. After a recent exchange 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.”
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.
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.
Beth Brower announces Penguin Books deal
In what Brower described as one of the “wildest” months of her professional life, she has signed a publishing deal with Penguin after years of turning down offers from other “incredible publishers.”
“As lovely as everyone has been, I knew it wasn’t the right door and the right time,” Brower said. “I wasn’t certain what the Right Door and the Right Time would look like, but I have a solid instinct and was leaning on that.”
The decision was guided by a desire to find a publisher that could offer improved distribution options, maintain printing quality and consistency and, most importantly, providing Brower with independence in her writing.
“My number one priority is to protect my characters and books; my number two priority is to take care of my readers,” Brower said.
“Penguin fully understood this,” she continued. “They listened to every concern, and in the back and forth that followed they showed by their actions (not only their words) that they were willing to be partners in this endeavor, to take the weight of printing and distributing off my shoulders, while leaving my writing process untouched, preserving the soul and spirit of Emma M. Lion.”
Brower, who has self-published 13 novels since launching her writing career in 2016, previously signed publishing deals with Bloomsbury UK and HarperCollins Canada, which will work in tandem with Penguin.
During the past decade, Brower said she has “been running a full-scale business,” including managing the bulk of publishing work, formatting the book layouts, making cover art decisions, handling marketing work, and managing her website and social media pages.
The new publishing deal lightens much of the burden that comes with independent publishing, freeing up significantly more time for Brower to focus on writing.
“So you see how utterly THRILLED I am to have the full force of Penguin behind me,” Brower said. “Now there will be more time to write the forthcoming ‘Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion’ while knowing that the printing, distributing, and protecting of my books is with Penguin — a trusted legacy publisher.”