As a journalist covering the publishing industry and a devoted Taylor Swift fan who flew to Amsterdam this past summer to experience the Eras Tour, I took to the recent announcement of Taylor Swift | The Eras Tour Book like a moth to the glowing orbs during “Willow.” While it’s easy to write off a book of mostly tour photography exclusively sold at Target as “just another piece of merch,” the reality is, it could have major implications for the book business in both the immediate and far-reaching futures.
The Eras Tour Book (hereby referred to as The ETB for brevity) circumvents the traditional publishing model in two key ways. First, there’s Swift’s decision to self-publish the book under the seemingly new Taylor Swift Publications, as opposed to working with one of the “Big Five” publishing houses (Penguin Random House, HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster, Macmillan, and Hachette) that typically snag these major celebrity book deals.
Anyone who follows Swift’s career will recognize the motivations behind her decision to self-publish in order to maintain the copyright to her own material. In 2019, Big Machine Records sold the master recordings of Swift’s first six studio albums to her known foe, Scooter Braun, despite her expressed desire to reclaim the rights to her own music. Ever since what Swift described in a Tumblr post at the time as her “worst case scenario,” she’s been vocal about the importance of artists owning their own work. Her recent business decisions reflect that mentality, from her ongoing project to re-record and release all six albums owned by Braun, to funding and selling the 2023 Eras Tour Movie directly to AMC in lieu of working with a studio partner.
When I spoke to novelist and devoted Swiftie Lily Meade—who posted an insightful Twitter thread when the book was announced—she pointed me to Swift’s quote from a 2022 Rolling Stone article: “People often greatly underestimate me on how much I’ll inconvenience myself to prove a point.” It’s a lot more work to publish your own book or distribute your own movie than it is to work through well-worn channels, but it’s also the only way to control the final product. Meade speculates, “This had less to do with the money than it did control over the final product. Taylor owns the film, so she can license it to domestic and international distributors on her own terms. When she announced this book, she made a point to finish with ‘international details coming soon.’ ”
The significance of Swift’s decision to self-publish lies in how heavily traditional publishers rely on a few blockbuster deals with celebrities who come with their own built-in audiences—through these deals, publishers are able to keep their balance sheets in the green every year. Most books sell shockingly few copies, with only an estimated 25 percent ever “earning out,” meaning that the publisher recoups on the advance payment it made to the author upfront in exchange for the book’s copyright. In order to lose money on roughly 75 percent of the bets you hedge each year and still keep the lights on in midtown Manhattan, many publishers bet big to win big. “Traditional publishers spend millions of dollars to acquire books by celebrities,” says Saimah Haque, senior director of marketing at Hachette Book Group. “The publishing deals are often high six-figure or even seven-figure. Britney Spears’s book deal with Simon & Schuster was $15 million.”
While a 256-page photo book is hardly the tell-all memoir from Swift that publishing executives dream of, it’s all but guaranteed to sell a lot of copies this holiday season at a time when book sales are otherwise waning. The Eras Tour was the first tour to ever cross the $1 billion-in-earnings mark—that was reported back in December 2023, before Swift performed dozens of sold-out international shows this year, and it’s not over yet. The ETB might be “just another piece of merch,” but Swift’s Eras Tour merch has earned hundreds of millions of dollars. When you factor in the international rights for The ETB—which Swift has yet to announce—that’s a potentially astronomical number of book sales for a publisher to miss out on.
The good news for publishers is that unlike Taylor Swift, most celebrities don’t have the endless wealth and team infrastructure needed to figure out the logistics of self-publishing, or the rabid audience ready to purchase anything that might make them feel closer to their 1989 queen. “Hundreds of celebrities have published books through traditional publishers, and while some books are best-sellers, many sell more modestly and don’t earn out,” says Haque. “I don’t think this book will have much of an impact on the traditional publishing model, as many celebrities don’t want to spend their own time and resources to figure out the logistics of editing, printing, distribution, marketing, etc.”
Then again, we’ve already seen how Swift’s first-of-its-kind distribution deal with AMC for The Eras Tour Movie quickly led to a similar deal for Beyoncé’s Renaissance Tour concert film, cutting movie studios out of two major 2023 theatrical releases. With Swift’s focus on artists owning their own work, it’s not unfathomable that she might pass along what she learns in the process of publishing The ETB to other A-list celebrities scoping out the market.
Swift performing for a massive crowd during the Eras Tour.
That Taylor Swift started her own publishing operation in order to maintain complete control over how her story is told (and marketed) is also a sign of how traditional gatekeepers are being sidelined from how we engage with celebrities and their stories overall. When people criticized Chappell Roan for failing to endorse Kamala Harris, she didn’t sit down with a reporter at a national publication; she hopped on TikTok and posted a video clarifying her views. Previously, we engaged with celebrities and their work by way of traditional media outlets, but as thousands of social-media posts a day demonstrate in small ways (and The ETB demonstrates in a bigger one), that’s no longer the case.
Yet Swift didn’t just cut publishers out of the equation for her first official book. She also closed the door to all but one retailer: Target. According to the big-box store’s October 15 press release, The Eras Tour Book and a new anthology LP of The Tortured Poets Department will be available exclusively at Target in stores only on Black Friday “while supplies last,” then go on sale online the following day. The book will not be carried at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Books A Million, independent bookstores, or any other traditional retailers where books are sold.
The logic behind partnering with Target will again make sense to long-time Swifties. Taylor Swift has been working with the seventh-largest U.S. retailer to release exclusive editions of her albums since Fearless in 2008, clearly demonstrating her continued trust in its ability to deliver on the demand of her fans—unlike some of her other recent partners. In 2023, Swift slammed Ticketmaster for the site outages, delays, and exorbitant fees that caused thousands of her most devoted fans to miss out on tickets for the Eras Tour. She said at the time, “I’ve brought so many elements of my career in house. I’ve done this SPECIFICALLY to improve the quality of my fans’ experience….It’s really difficult for me to trust an outside entity with these relationships and loyalties.” In contrast, the trust between Swift and Target is well-established.
But while I understand the motivations behind working with a loyal partner, I must admit that I find Swift’s decision to sell The ETB exclusively at Target incredibly short-sighted.
The only retailers in the book business that turn billions of dollars in profit every year are the ones that don’t specialize in books: Amazon, Target, and Costco. Independent bookstores that serve as hubs of their communities run on incredibly small profit margins, and the foot traffic from a Taylor Swift book available in stores could have been what kept them in the green this year. It’s not just the $39.99 cover price that would have gone to a small business instead of one valued at more than $69 billion. “Target will surely benefit the most from this deal, as they will have Swifties storming the stores and their website to get a copy of the book, and once they are there, they’ll likely shop around for other Black Friday deals,” says Haque.
Some independent-bookstore owners were also disappointed in Swift’s distribution decision. “When it was announced that the book would be exclusively available at Target, I was bummed,” says Rosa Hernandez, marketing manager at Third Place Books in Washington. “If that book was available at indie bookstores, the sales from it would have absolutely helped indie bookstores during the holiday season. Many stores rely on the holiday season to help keep their stores open throughout the year.”
The decision to sell exclusively at Target is one that will cost The Eras Tour Book the coveted title of New York Times best-seller. The New York Times confirmed to Esquire via email: “A title sold exclusively by a single vendor does not qualify for tracking.” Not that the fourteen-time Grammy winner needs such a paltry feather in her cap. As Meade says, “I don’t think Taylor cares about ‘achieving’ the title so many of us would walk on glass for, because I don’t think she did this to impress us at all.”
An “us” I’m confident Swift does care about impressing is her fan base, who appear predictably thrilled to have a new way to show devotion. “Fans are shaking and crying over her Eras Tour Book,” reported Billboard from a sea of eager tweets on the day it was announced. “I’m really excited to buy The Eras Tour Book. I think a lot of people are looking for ways to hang on to or memorialize the excitement and buzzy feeling the Eras Tour brought with it—this book is a perfect way to do that,” says Krista Doyle, founder of Taypedia.com, an online publication all about Taylor Swift. “I also think the logistics around its release [i.e., via Taylor Swift Publications] is not only an incredibly smart business move, but it should be exciting for fans, because I do think it’s foreshadowing future book releases, like maybe a memoir.”
As with every article I’ve written about the intersection of celebrities and publishing, I must note that it’s not Taylor Swift’s job to bail out the book business, be it the publishing executives we don’t need to root for or the independent bookstores we do. Swift has done enough to buoy the global economy; we can’t expect her to save The Shop Around the Corner, too.
All we can do is hope that when Taylor Swift does release a tell-all memoir practically guaranteed to break all sales records, she’ll give the little guys a piece of the pie.
This post was originally published on here
