Taylor Swift shook off publishers for her new book. That could spell trouble for the rest of the industry.
Taylor Swift is in her author era. With her latest announcement, the singer is back to her business-disrupting playbook with “Taylor Swift | The Eras Tour Book.”
Swift announced on “Good Morning America” Tuesday that the $39.99 commemorative book, set for release on Black Friday, would offer a behind-the-scenes look at her record-breaking Eras Tour and include musings from the star.
The twist? The book will be self-published under Swift’s new imprint, Taylor Swift Publications.
The billionaire is bypassing traditional publishers and distributors, releasing it exclusively with Target. At a time when celebrity titles can bring in millions of dollars for publishers, Swift ensured she’s getting more of the revenue share.
The move shouldn’t come as a surprise. She has a history of making her own business rules — and squeezing every penny out of her superfans. Whether it’s her album rereleases or her touring strategy, Swift has repeatedly shown an ability to maximize her earnings.
“She understands how her fan base operates, and she is able to create a lot of different deal structures that just haven’t existed,” Clayton Durant, an adjunct professor at Long Island University’s Roc Nation School of Music, Sports and Entertainment, told B-17. “There is so much business acumen here you could teach an entire MBA or business-level course on what she’s doing.”
Swift has made clear that any industry she wants to explore is hers for the taking.
Swift doesn’t need the resources publishers provide
For decades, budding authors have had the same goal: Get a major publisher — the five biggest in the US today are Penguin Random House, Simon & Schuster, Macmillan, HarperCollins, and Hachette — to release their books.
But that dream has felt far-fetched in recent years as these companies focus on investing in what they see as “sure bets” like celebrity books, Erik Hane, the founder of Headwater Literary Management, told BI.
“The celebrity deal is sort of warping publishers toward really being less interested in supporting and fleshing out a writer’s career before they’re a sure thing with a huge following,” he said.
It’s becoming increasingly difficult for new writers to break into the traditional publishing industry, leading some to consider self-publishing an alternative.
Taylor Swift at a show in March.
There are benefits to the self-publishing model — the most important being that you can keep more of the money your book makes.
Authors who work with traditional publishers earn money through advances and royalties on book sales, which, according to PublishDrive, usually fall between 10% and 15%.
Self-published authors can get a much larger percentage of sales and maintain creative control over their projects. They can also be more nimble, getting books published sooner than the two years it often takes to publish traditionally.
There are still advantages to using the traditional publishing model, most notably access to printing presses, distributors, the media, and staff who can promote the book for an author.
But Swift, arguably the most famous person to ever buck the traditional publishing path, doesn’t require the resources that a typical self-published author, best associated today with an unknown name releasing an e-book on a shoestring budget, needs.
As a self-published author, she can reap the rewards of the model without much risk because the money it takes to write and market a book will barely make a dent in her bottom line.
Plus, in Target, she has a built-in distributor for her book that she trusts.
Swift has a long-standing relationship with the retailer, often releasing Target-exclusive versions of her albums that feature songs her fans can’t listen to anywhere else. The store warned fans that the book was likely to sell out quickly.
Most important, she has the Swifties.
Swift’s loyal audience is her greatest asset
As Swift’s album and concert sales have shown, her social-media followers are prepared to buy whatever she’s selling — and that’s likely to remain true for her book.
“Taylor Swift is truly, I think, the one celebrity whose actual follower count correlates to sales,” said Courtney Maum, an author and publishing expert who has worked in the industry for 20 years.
Jessica Maddox, an associate professor of digital media at the University of Alabama who is a self-described Swiftie, told B-17 that Swift’s online power was evident in the fact that social media sites have actually changed to accommodate the singer — what she calls “the platformization of Taylor Swift.”
Swift during the Eras Tour in London.
When Swift was set to release “The Tortured Poets Department” in April, X banned searches for leaks of the album, helping to ensure people didn’t listen to pirated versions of it. And after Universal Music Group’s music was removed from TikTok in early 2024, Swift was able to strike her own deal to get her music back on the app.
Swift’s relationship with the sites is mutually beneficial. Swifties flock to them to share theories about coming projects or what lyrics in her songs may mean, and she has a built-in marketing network.
Maddox said Swift would most likely leverage her organic audience and free marketing from social-media platforms for her coming book, which she described as “a new take on marketing that the Big Five publishers could not provide her.”
“If someone at this scale has the resources at her disposal and the platform at her disposal, there’s no reason to give up controlling that much of a cut,” Hane added.
Taylor Swift has a history of innovating in business
Swift’s success — and how she’s made her billion-dollar fortune — has relied on a series of moves that break from how artists have traditionally conducted business.
The most obvious and biggest cash cow is her rerecordings, which she began releasing in 2021. Last year, Bloomberg estimated that the value of her catalog was $400 million — and that was before she released “The Tortured Poets Department.”
Swift owns the majority of the masters and most of the publishing rights to the rerecorded versions. She earns money whether it is streamed, played on the radio, or purchased.
Swift performing in Milan.
Swift wasn’t the first artist in history to rerecord music — albums have rerecording clauses that allow artists to do just that after a certain period — but she is the first to find such success.
She used a winning PR narrative — a female artist taking back power from a label — and her strong relationship with fans to make those rerecordings just as, if not more, popular than the original versions.
“Once you eclipse a certain amount of superstardom, it’s being savvy enough to understand how these clauses work and how they’re flexible,” Durant said.
The industry has been forced to adapt. Rerecording clauses, which were “very much passive deal points” in recording contracts, are now some of the “most toughly negotiated deal points,” Durant added.
Swift has extended this business savvy to all aspects of her career.
Take something straightforward, like vinyl sales. Rather than just releasing one vinyl for each album, Swift has turned her records into collectibles by releasing multiple versions with different cover art. Last year, nearly one out of every 15 vinyls sold was a Taylor Swift album, according to the entertainment data firm Luminate.
In what most closely resembles her book deal, Swift self-produced last year’s “Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour” film. She had to swallow the production costs but reaped financial rewards.
Swift with fans at the “Eras Tour” movie premiere.
Those profits were high, considering she also brokered her distribution deal with AMC, cutting out the intermediaries. The film grossed $260 million worldwide, per Box Office Mojo. She pocketed eight figures from the theatrical run, plus whatever Disney+ paid for streaming rights.
Beyoncé followed suit with a similarly structured deal for the film of her Rennaissance tour. It’s been widely speculated that she was inspired by Swift.
“Not every music star can pull this off,” Paul Dergarabedian, Comscore’s senior media analyst, told B-17 at the time. “Taylor Swift ignited the spark.”
Swift’s coming book deal, done in a way that leaves her in control of the product and the profits, might inspire other authors to follow her example.
“Obviously, Taylor Swift is sort of a case under herself for this stuff in terms of just her reach,” Hane said. “But there are a lot of people who aren’t as famous as her but are still doing pretty well who this kind of thing might make sense for as well.”
And Swift’s latest venture will likely just keep her fans coming back for more.
“There is no artist,” Durant said, “creating more intrinsic value to the superfan than Taylor Swift.”
