Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour book sold 814,000 copies in one week
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Taylor Swift's Eras Tour books on display during Black Friday shopping at a Target store in New York on Nov 29.
PHOTO: REUTERS
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NEW YORK – The biggest book release for the year is not a blockbuster novel or an explosive celebrity memoir. It is concert merchandise.
Pop superstar Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour Book, released on Nov 29, sold 814,000 print copies over the Thanksgiving holiday weekend – the largest first-week print-sales total of 2024, according to Circana BookScan.
The book’s huge opening week also stands out because of Swift’s unusual retail strategy. She released the book exclusively through Target, bypassing bookstores and Amazon. It went on sale in physical stores on Black Friday and was available for purchase online from Target on Nov 30.
The release is unusual in other ways. Instead of working with a major publisher, Swift self-published the book through Taylor Swift Publications. The 256-page hardcover, which costs US$39.99 (S$54), includes more than 500 photos and reflections from Swift.
The Eras Tour Book ranks as the second-highest adult non-fiction release in the history of BookScan, said a Circana representative.
Swift’s first-week print sales nearly matched former United States president Barack Obama’s A Promised Land (2020), which sold 816,300 print copies in its first week of sales. It put her well ahead of another blockbuster non-fiction release – Prince Harry’s Spare (2023), which sold 620,600 print copies in its first week.
Her decision to sell her book only at Target was a disappointment to some booksellers, who make the majority of their annual revenue from holiday sales and were cut out of one of the year’s biggest releases.
A display showing Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour books at a Target store in Alexandria, Virginia, on Nov 29.
PHOTO: REUTERS
“It’s a very unfortunate decision because it could have been a huge deal for indie bookstores,” said Ms Julie Ross, a Swift fan and co-owner of Pocket Books Shop, an independent bookstore in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.
Some Swift fans who rushed to buy the book said on social media that they were underwhelmed, and panned the project as slapdash.
Readers pointed out grammatical and spelling errors, blurry images and botched picture spreads, and some complained that they wished the book had been more thoroughly edited.
A fan who had lined up at Target at 5am to buy the book said in a video on TikTok that she was blown away – by the number of grammatical mistakes. She noted that some disappointed fans are calling it “The Errors Tour Book”. NYTIMES
