Promotional activities included Madonna hosting a tea party at London's Kensington Roof Gardens, as well as appearances on television talk shows and at book signings.

Commercially, The English Roses debuted atop The New York Times Children's Bestseller list and sold over a million copies worldwide.

Madonna's first release as an author was the coffee table book Sex, published by her company Maverick and Callaway Arts & Entertainment in 1992.

"[1] He remembered watching Madonna read a book he published, David Kirk's Miss Spider's Tea Party, during an event in March 1995 at New York's Webster Hall, for the release of the music video of her single, "Bedtime Story".

The publisher believed that Madonna's worldwide name recognition and cross-cultural appeal would attract an audience to a book written by her.

[4] Madonna's Kabbalah teacher had asked her to share the wisdom she had gained through her studies of Jewish mysticism in the form of stories meant for children.

[1] In March 2003, it was announced that Madonna and Callaway Arts & Entertainment had signed a deal with Penguin Group to publish an original series of five illustrated storybooks for children.

Finally, The English Roses became a moral story with messages from Kabbalah, drawn from tales that Madonna had heard from her teacher.

The joint press release announcing the deal explained that each story book would involve Madonna working with a different illustrator.

Nicky Stonehill of Coleman Getty—who had only an hour to discuss the PR strategy with Madonna—used the media hype surrounding the release and struck up an exclusive deal with The Times of London to publish excerpts from the book.

The day before the book's publication Madonna threw a promotional tea party at London's Kensington Roof Gardens,[12] inviting friends and celebrities.

At the party, Madonna—dressed in a white satin frock—read from the book to a crowd consisting of teenagers and young children and later gave them gift baskets.

[4][13][14] Coleman Getty's idea was to have the literary press read the book for the first time at the party and write about the reaction it generated among the children.

[17] On the same day, courier services delivered copies of the book to UK television talk shows like GMTV and RI:SE, so it could be discussed during the program.

[10] In the United States, Madonna appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show and book signing events at the Barnes & Noble bookstore in New York City's Rockefeller Center.

[19] The book was available at over 50,000 bookstores, record stores and other retail outlets in the United States, with initial sales on websites like Amazon being reported as "impressive".

[23] The book debuted atop The New York Times Children's Bestseller list,[24] selling 57,369 copies in its first week according to Nielsen BookScan.

[26] The book appeared on the list for a total of 18 weeks and had sold 321,000 copies by October 2004 accounting for 70% of all tracked sales across the United States.

[43] Ayelet Waldman from Tablet questioned whether Rabbi Baal Shem Tov, whose morals were the inspiration behind Madonna's writing endeavors, did really ask "to be nice to pretty girls because their lives might be harder than ours."

The reviewer noted Jewish influences in the story with the name Binah, and the character calling her father "papa" and wearing a "shmatte" on her head.

[44] Kate Kellaway of The Observer described the story as "written in language that veers between Hilaire Belloc and breakfast TV", finding the tone arch and strained but containing charm.

She felt Fulvimari's illustrations made the book look like "a party invitation with his pictures of a garlanded, girly existence: each English rose a fashion-plate, with a doe-eyed stare, caught up in a whirl of blue butterflies, yellow clouds and fairydust.

[47] Writing for The Guardian, poet and novelist Michael Rosen found The English Roses to be heavier on the moralistic side rather than being ironic, which he felt was the norm for children's books.

[48] Emily Nussbaum of New York magazine found Binah's character was "the blandest, most passive good-girl on Earth, the opposite of Madonna" and felt that by writing the book, the singer was in a way admonishing her older provocative self.

"[50] David Kipen of the San Francisco Chronicle humorously said that the "last time a five-book series launched with such a bang, the first installment was called Genesis."

The reviewer described Fulvimari's drawings as a "witty, busy style that recalls the celebrated filigree of Ronald Searle, and the almond-eyed womanhood of the I Dream of Jeannie (1965) credit sequence.

[54] In September 2006, Madonna announced plans to release a sequel to the story, titled The English Roses: Too Good to be True.