What Year Was 'Love Is But A Chance' Published?

I remember stumbling upon 'Love is but a Chance' during a bookstore crawl years ago. The copyright page listed it as 2017, which tracks because that was when romance novels with magical realism elements started gaining mainstream traction. The author, Lila Vane, had just broken out with her debut 'Whispers of the Moon' in 2015, making this her sophomore release. What stood out was how the cover design reflected mid-2010s trends - muted watercolors with gold foil accents that dominated that era's romance section. The book's initial printing had that distinct new-book smell when I bought my copy, which further confirms the timeline for me.

The publication history of 'Love is but a Chance' is more interesting than people realize. After digging through publishing databases and author interviews, I pieced together that Lila Vane actually finished the manuscript in late 2016. The original release got pushed from spring to fall 2017 because the publisher wanted to capitalize on holiday shopping trends.

What's fascinating is how its release coincided with the peak of BookTube's romance community boom. Reviewers like 'PaperbacksandPugs' were championing it weeks before the official September 12, 2017 launch date, thanks to advance reader copies. The first edition had a print run of just 15,000 copies - modest by today's standards, but huge for a then-new author in the genre. By Christmas that year, it had already gone into third printing due to that viral 'cozy magic' aesthetic TikTokers later rediscovered in 2020.

For collectors, the true first editions are identifiable by a specific printing error on page 143 where a paragraph repeats. Later printings fixed this, making the flawed ones oddly valuable. The audiobook followed in March 2018, narrated by Emilia Clarke soundalike Sophie Aldred, which boosted sales further. It's wild how such a specific 2017 cultural moment shaped this book's trajectory.

As someone who tracked Lila Vane's career from her fanfiction days, I can pinpoint 'Love is but a Chance' to 2017 with certainty. The dedication page references her winning the 'Emerging Voices Award' that January, which dates the final edits. My receipt from The Ripped Bodice bookstore shows I purchased it on release day - September 12th, right when their autumn catalog dropped.

The timing mattered because 2017 was when publishers started aggressively marketing romance as 'upmarket fiction.' This book bridged that gap with its literary prose about time-crossed lovers. The hardcover's deckled edges and French flaps were deliberate 2017 trends, different from today's minimalist designs. Goodreads data shows most early reviews clustered in late 2017, with the paperback following in summer 2018. That one-year gap between hardcover and paperback releases was standard practice then, unlike current simultaneous formats.