Taylor Swift’s Book is a Sales Smash
Welcome to Today in Books, our daily round-up of literary headlines at the intersection of politics, culture, media, and more.
Taylor Swift’s Book is a Sales Smash
Taylor Swift’s The Eras Tour book is far and away the fast-selling book of the year according to Circana, and is the second fastest non-fiction title in their records, outpaced only by Barack Obama’s A Promised Land in 2024. Two notes even on that. First, Swift’s book was only available at Target, and that surely cost Swift some first-week copies. The harder-core folks clearly went to Target, but there are a lot of sales floating around for people in B&N and Wal-Mart and indies, etc. Second, as far as I am aware, there was no pre-ordering available for The Eras Tour. Giant releases like this often bank a significant number of first-week sales as pre-orders, since those pre-orders are not “realized” until the book is actually out. Combined, I wonder what these two factors mean for what the book’s first-week ceiling actually was. Could it have been twice as big? 1.6 million? I think so. Book Riot editor made another interesting point this morning: did this book get rushed out because of all the other non-official Swift books hitting the shelves this fall? Which leads to the second of today’s headlines.
The Eras Tour Book Criticized for Poor Production Quality: “It’s Giving High School Yearbook”
There is a reason people who could profitably self-publish don’t. It takes time and expertise to do well, especially in a high-profile, high-production complexity situation like a photo-heavy coffee table book that will be scrutinized with the intensity of millions of die-hard fans. Even a seasoned published house can make mistakes, but it sounds like The Eras Tour book’s problems go well beyond regular professional publishing error. Incorrect song lyrics, badly-editing captions, and two-page photo spreads that put Swift in the crease are but some of the blunders. Was keeping the extra cash worth it? Only her team can know, but given how exactingly Swift manages her brand and music, I cannot imagine she is just chalking this one up to the cost of doing her own business.
The Atlantic‘s “10 Books That Made Us Think This Year”
If you are going to be one of the last major publications to put out your 2024 book list, you would be wise to frame it a little differently than the “best of” wagon train ahead of you. And I will admit that The Atlantic’s “books that made us think” description of their list had me click on it a little faster than I would have it were a bog standard headline. That said, the line-up is more familiar than the different evaulation criteria would have you think. Of course there are a couple of things that aren’t on a whole bunch of lists already, but there are also many that are.
The Best Gifts for Readers This Year
Not a book to behold, as the safest way to go when giving a book lover a gift is to….give them a book you know they want. Short of that, a book-related gift can be more fun and surprising. So if you have a reader on your list (or have need of a list to forward would-be givers), Book Riot’s 2024 gift guide is for you.
