The Taylor Swift Theory of Book Publishing

Among the details on Target’s product page for the official Taylor Swift Eras Tour commemorative book—256 pages; 500 images and personal reflections written by Swift—was one unusual tidbit buried under the header “Specifications.” Most of Swift’s fans surely glossed over the section, which provided information less relevant than the book’s cost ($39.99) and release date (in stores on Black Friday and online the next day). But the book industry noticed: Her publisher is listed as “Taylor Swift Publications.” The superstar is bypassing traditional publishers and releasing her book herself. This perhaps isn’t so shocking—she loves to cut out a middleman. Swift issued her Eras concert movie directly to AMC Theatres and began rerecording her early albums after an ownership dispute; she also has a long-standing retail relationship with Target, which will be the book’s exclusive retailer.

For the companies that produce and sell books, this could be interpreted as a warning sign, because every dollar spent on what is sure to be a massively successful product (Swifties are such prodigious spenders that economists feared her tour would trigger a surge in European inflation) is a dollar that publishers are missing out on. Instead, her decision is less a bellwether for a big-name-oriented industry than a sign of the times—a symptom, not a cause, of a shift in the relationship between these businesses and the famous.

The day after Swift announced her book, David Shelley, the CEO of Hachette, one of the “Big Five” book publishers, said something at the Frankfurt Book Fair that got far less attention: He shared that Hachette will focus on introducing readers to an author’s existing catalog, in order “to have a business that isn’t super reliant on hits.” Best sellers, established tentpoles of the industry, were now “icing on the cake,” he explained. The book industry still welcomes the hype and sales that a star can bring, but more and more, publishers also rely on what they already have: generations’ worth of older titles—what they call the backlist.

Shelley’s sentiments reflect longer-term trends for celebrity authors. Swift isn’t the first star to finesse her own advantageous publishing situation. Lately, various writers with meaningful personal resources—money, followers, notoriety—have struck out on their own or made nontraditional arrangements. Colin Kaepernick and Donald Trump have released books through their own outfits. In 2022, Brandon Sanderson, a prolific and popular sci-fi and fantasy writer, raised millions of dollars through a Kickstarter to self-publish four of his novels. Colleen Hoover, the mega-best-selling author of genre fiction, has continued self-publishing books even after entering into a relationship with Atria Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster (along with signing contracts for forthcoming titles with two additional publishers).

But despite the profit incentives of doing everything yourself, it seems unlikely that every celebrity will follow in Swift’s footsteps. Publishing a book is hard and expensive, and requires more than just publicity know-how. Few stars, especially those merely looking to burnish their personal brand, will have the stamina or interest to source editors, lawyers, designers, proofers, rights specialists, and all of the other professionals required to create, distribute, and sell a book. The editing process in particular is useful to many people “regardless of their stature,” Jane Friedman, who reports on the publishing industry, told me. Plus, the less glamorous parts of publishing—How do you get your title into a local bookstore in Des Moines, or Munich? What happens if your shipment of books falls into the sea?—are better left as someone else’s problem. Many celebrities less enthusiastic than Swift about building an empire may think, as Friedman put it, “Do I really need to futz around with this?” (Swift, with her Target relationship and merchandising expertise, is well equipped to futz around with it.)

If the value that publishers bring to authors can vary, the value that famous people bring to publishers has traditionally been significant. Shelley, the Hachette CEO and a self-professed Swift fan, told me that “obviously, I’d be lying if I said it wouldn’t be my dream for us to publish a Taylor Swift book.” A big best seller can buoy a business. At the 2022 antitrust trial over the proposed merger of Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster, executives explained that “publishing is a portfolio business, with profitability driven by a small percentage of books.” This setup means that a lot of resources are still marshaled toward projects for established authors, many of them famous.

But “celebrities are not some financial saving grace of traditional publishers,” Friedman told me. They can be meaningful contributors to a company’s bottom line, she said, but “they require as much work to sell well as most titles.” Simply slapping a famous name on a book doesn’t always move product. Sometimes, celebrities parlay their name and following into big-time sales and hype—though, of course, not all of them (or their projects) are created equal. Britney Spears’s 2023 book, The Woman in Me, sold nearly 1 million copies, according to Circana Bookscan, which tracks sales numbers. In other cases, performance is less spectacular—see Billie Eilish’s self-titled 2023 book, which sold only about 81,000 copies. Readers want something new and compelling to dig into, especially when they can see endless images and posts from their favorite stars online anytime. That sales variability for even big-name authors is part of why publishers have been doubling down on their new (old) stream of revenue.

The “Vegas” model of betting on a few big titles each year is receding in favor of a focus on what a company has already published (or obtained by acquiring the backlist of a competitor), Thad McIlroy, a publishing-industry analyst, told me. Long a smaller concern of publishers, interest in backlists accelerated as Amazon and social media scrambled the way books are sold and discovered. (See Chris Anderson’s 2006 book, The Long Tail, published by Hachette, for more on that phenomenon.) Early in the pandemic, people were buying lots of books, many of them old, and this accelerated the shift: In 2020, two-thirds of book sales were backlist titles, and by 2022, that number was closer to 70 percent. Shelley reaffirmed to me what he’d said at Frankfurt: Although one-off wins are “always fun,” an emphasis on the backlist and working with authors across multiple books is central at Hachette. TikTok in particular, he added, has “fundamentally altered” the way people find books, allowing decades-old works—he cited the late sci-fi author Octavia Butler’s novels as an example—to find new and engaged audiences online.

Nothing happens very quickly in the publishing world, and a sudden break from big hits is unlikely. Swift’s new book is more likely to become a memento than a classic; in the coming years, a more conventional project from the singer could well result in the kind of traditional book deal any publisher would be delighted to make. Already, the industry is awaiting her next work—Memoir? Long-rumored novel?—and guessing, or at least hoping, that she will turn to them.

Even so, one of the most likely (and most prudent) courses for the Big Five over the longer term may be to spend less energy chasing big names. Maris Kreizman, an author with deep experience in the industry, told me that she was optimistic about the change in priorities. “I hope that this would take some of [publishers’] attention away from landing the celebrities,” she said. “The amount of time and energy they spend on those kinds of books could be used to help other books grow and find an audience.” This virtuous cycle can happen only if publishers place the same kind of faith in other authors that they’ve been placing in famous figures; with fewer celebrities in the picture, perhaps they can focus on the weird, vibrant work of smaller authors. That sort of exodus, far from casting a chill through the book world, might actually make it more interesting.