Taylor Swift Publishes a Book Without Book Publishing

And Why Does Taylor Swift Love Target So Much?

Biggest News in Books: A Real Taylor Swift Book

It’s official. The biggest book of the year will come out on Black Friday, November 29^th. Only in-stores (the first day) at Target. And much to the chagrin of numerous publishers and editors (who all claim to be Swift’s #1 fan), Swift is producing and putting out the book without the help of a traditional publisher and keeping all of the piles of cash the book will earn to herself. Close observers of the Swift Enterprises are not surprised by Swift’s move to create her own publishing company and handle the business herself. This decision is completely in line with how Swift does business and book publishing is just the latest casualty.

Citation: I owe most of my knowledge about her business decisions to journalist Nora Princiotti and former music exec Nathan Hubbard and their Every Single Album: Taylor Swift podcast. Definitely worth a listen.

Breaking down the decision to forgo traditional publishing starts with Swift’s well-known positions on creative control and who gets to profit off her talent and fame. Taylor Swift has made a very public, time-consuming, and lucrative campaign out of re-recording all of the albums she doesn’t own the masters to— partly out of spite for the person who did profit handsomely off of her music and partly for the potential billions she stands to regain by wresting the copyright back.

Then *checks note, does a double take to check again for how many years Taylor Swift has been touring and dominating the pop culture news cycle* in 2023 she released the concert film Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour. Notably she did this without Hollywood using neither their established production or distribution systems. From start to finish she made the film, marketed it, and negotiated deals with the theatres where it played. And it’s hard to imagine even with the best terms Hollywood could offer that she didn’t take considerably more home in profit from the $262 million dollars gross at the box office.

So logically, even a year before this book was announced the writing was on the wall: If Taylor Swift doesn’t need or want Hollywood involved, why would she need book publishing?

It’s possible that Swift doesn’t pay attention to or care about publishing at all. No, who are we kidding? This is very much a person who pays attention and cares. And it’s fun to think that part of the reason Swift is doing a book now is that writers and publishers have not been as shy about using Swift’s massive popularity to cash out in the last couple of years. Since the Eras Tour kicked off there are coloring books, quizzes, mad libs, biographies, songbooks, calendars, daily words of wisdom, fashion tributes, and general fact books that have all sold tens-of-thousands of copies, none authorized or written by Taylor Swift. Historically, she hasn’t liked when people make money off of her who aren’t her.

A decade ago, there was a certain fear around the publishing world about Taylor Swift— that her rabid fanbase, knowing her conflict with her record label and being overprotective when it came to anything slightly negative, would troll and harass anyone who approached the subject without an idolic reverence (and there’s a good reason most of the Taylor Swift books still are the book equivalent of fan art). Then Taylor Swift: A Little Golden Book Biography, a picture book came out in 2023 and seemingly by name recognition alone has sold over one million copies. Since then, the gravity is just too much to ignore and everyone from biographers to rom com writers have been far less shy about trying to harness that the riptide of Swift’s fame that is so powerful it feels like a new law of physics.

If you’re wondering how the corporate team at Target got blessed with this absolute gift — pray for the employees that actually have to be in stores on Black Friday when the plague of Swifties descends upon them — than you can again look to history. Swift is repeating the ground trod by her exclusive deal with AMC by releasing her book exclusively at Target (when you are Taylor Swift you can get away with making your customer work by making the product available at one place). It is also a retailer that has been a key partner for Swift over the years as a vehicle for selling physical albums and now vinyl (which are still important to smashing records and making headlines and etching your name into popular music history). Taylor Swift’s first book will be released alongside the extended version of her last album in CD and vinyl. Everything make sense now.

This combo will cost you a cool $100 dollars.

But does Taylor Swift Need Publishing?

Ha. No.

If you have the natural marketing engine of Taylor Swift’s magnitude, the greatest asset is…her. With that guaranteed demand and her substantial resources there is virtually no risk in her funding the production of a film, let alone the production of a book. Distributors, whether they be movie theatres or national retail stores, also will bend over backwards like they would for no one else, even other billionaires, to get Swift’s product out there. The “this is the end of Hollywood” or “this is the end of publishing” discourse doesn’t really deserve a rebuttal, but here it is anyways: The most famous person in the entire world doing something is not a replicable model (a good rule of thumb to follow in all aspects of life, not just business). So, fear not that her foregoing publishing sets a precedent for anyone else any more than “Blank Space” sets a template for would-be pop stars to make a hit song.

But it is also the nature of the Eras Tour film — and now the Eras Tour book— that allow Swift to cut out the middlemen. The production value on both endeavors is sky high, but the creative choices in both are…let’s say, limited. Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour (which I absolutely did watch all four *checks notes*, sorry, three hours of and enjoy…at home, I’m not insane) was a pretty straightforward taping of her concert. Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour might have taken a lot of technical know-how and money to accomplish, but a Scorsese music documentary it is not. A book called officially: The Eras Tour Book, you’ll be unsurprised to learn, is also not an avant-garde creative work. It’s a book of almost entirely photos, so let’s call it what it is: merch.

Beyond the business reasoning, Swift’s choices in movie making and book publishing get a bit existential. Would the professionals at the right movie studio or a book publisher help Swift create a more interesting, successful film or book artistically? It seems to reason so. Would having an iconic documentary like A Hard Day’s Night or Stop Making Sense or a book like Bob Dylan’s Chronicles or Patti Smith’s Just Kids cement Swift’s legacy even further? Almost certainly. But name a popular musician whose book even comes close to matching the creative staying power of their songs…

Books are an absolute service to fans and rubberneckers who want a window into their favorite artist’s mind and life. There’s a value there, but rarely a chance of actual artistic achievement of any significance. I’m on record saying that there’s kind of no reason for Taylor Swift to do a “real” book despite our selfish desire to see it. She’s a musician, a generational talent, one whose art is extremely personal already, and there’s something to admire about the fact that she’s made the vast majority of her money from what she’s best at. But if she does decide to turn her creative mind to an actual book, not a coffee table-style book, that would be a crazy trip, and publishing will, undoubtedly, be there to answer the call, although she might just decide to ring up the Target execs again instead.