Nathan Bransford | Writing, Book Editing, Publishing

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Taylor Swift bypasses the publishing industry (This week in books)

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This week! Books!

First up, it’s always a thrill when one of my editing clients lands a book deal for a project we worked on together, congrats to Heather Aimee O’Neill!

While publishing executives gather in Frankfurt, Germany to make deals and talk about how their acquisition by private equity behemoths is going, a bombshell dropped that a new Taylor Swift book called, well, Taylor Swift | The Eras Tour Book will be for sale exclusively at Target starting on Black Friday for $39.99. It will feature over 500 images with “personal reflections and notes written by Taylor herself.”

Most notable from my vantage point? She’s bypassing the traditional publishing entirely. The book will be self-published, and it won’t be for sale in bookstores (or Amazon for that matter). Michael Cader at Publishers Lunch argues that anything that drives fans to a brick and mortar store to buy books is good for the business and it’s a big publishing universe out there.

I’m not so sure. Sure, major publishers will still be fine (they still have their money minting backlists after all), but it’s yet another sign that the biggest authors and celebrities don’t really need publishers anymore. In a business historically driven by hits, that’s a worrisome trend.

Amazon released new versions of the Kindle, including the first-ever e-ink color Kindle, if you’re into that sort of thing.

TikTok’s ByteDance is stepping further into the book world with its imprint 8th Note Press and will partner with Zando to make additional books available in print.

On Maris Kreizman’s blog, Ilana Masad takes a look at the yeesh world of “Holocaust Beach Reads,” recently encapsulated by books fitting the title “The [BLANK] of Auschwitz,” which includes a fascinating quote by Dara Horn I hadn’t seen before about the way Christian archetypes are embedded in reader expectations in western literature: “We expect the good guys to be ‘saved.’ If that doesn’t happen, we at least expect the main character to have an ‘epiphany.’ And if that doesn’t happen, then at least the author ought to give us a ‘moment of grace.’”

This week in bestsellers

Here are the top five NY Times bestsellers in a few key categories. (All links are affiliate links):

Adult print and e-book fiction:

  1. The Boyfriend by Freida McFadden
  2. Counting Miracles by Nicholas Sparks
  3. The Housemaid by Freida McFadden
  4. Identity Unknown by Patricia Cornwell
  5. Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros

Adult print and e-book nonfiction:

  1. Melania by Melania Trump
  2. From Here to the Great Unknown by Lisa Marie Presley and Riley Keough
  3. Be Ready When the Luck Happens by Ina Garten
  4. The Message by Ta-Nehisi Coates
  5. Revenge of the Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell

Young adult hardcover:

  1. Nothing Like the Movies by Lynn Painter
  2. Immortal Dark by Tigest Girma
  3. Heir by Sabaa Tahir
  4. The Glass Girl by Kathleen Glasgow
  5. Twenty-Four Seconds From Now... by Jason Reynolds

Middle grade hardcover:

  1. The Millicent Quibb School of Etiquette for Young Ladies of Mad Science by Kate McKinnon
  2. The Bletchey Riddle by Ruta Sepetys and Steve Sheinkin
  3. Impossible Creatures by Katherine Rundell
  4. The Complete Cookbook for Young Chefs by America’s Test Kitchen Kids
  5. Spooky Lakes by Geo Rutherford

This week on the blog

In case you missed them, here are this week’s posts:

And keep up with the discussion in all the places!

And finally, Point Nemo is the most remote place on Earth, where the nearest bit of land is over 1,670 miles away (the distance from New York to Santa Fe). In the hands of Cullen Murphy, it’s also a deeply fascinating place: space junk graveyard, albatross home, and an ocean floor that can reveal five million years of climate history.

Have a great weekend!

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Photo: The Huntington, San Marino, CA. Follow me on Instagram!

Reader Interactions

Comments

  2. john ochwat says

    I second that – kudos to Aimee (and you).

    I don’t know all the details of the Taylor Swift deal with Target (other than they’ve worked together before), but I’m thinking if I were in the Taylor Swift stratosphere, I’d do something similar.

    Consider: If you’re lucky enough to sell your debut novel to a big five publisher, they’re going to take on the job of marketing and promotion. If you’re really lucky, your book ends up in bookstores and airports and featured on Amazon and sold overseas and whatnot.

    BUT. I expect what you’ll give up to get that to happen is rights: Film rights, audiobook rights, international distribution rights. Maybe even copyright? Not sure on that.

    For Swift, it makes no sense to trade away any rights or control, or a larger portion of the proceeds. Publishers do add value for marketing and distribution, but she’s such a huge celebrity, she doesn’t really need those. She has a ton of leverage, and all she needs is a retail channel. Target gives her that.

    In my happier scenario, publishing isn’t an oligopoly, and there’s a competitive ecosystem of publishing houses, and she could work with one that would allow her to keep her rights and creative control AND get her into bookstores, and not just Target.

  3. Nathan Bransford says

    Assuming you have a halfway decent literary agent you wouldn’t be giving up film rights by going to a “Big 5” publisher, and copyright is in your name. Publishers are fighting harder for audio, but agents still try to retain those rights to exercise on their own. And agents have discretion over whether they want to grant a publisher North American rights, World English, or World All Languages.

    But yes, I agree there’s not really much reason for Swift to go through the publishing ecosystem considering her existing supernova marketing clout and her pre-existing relationship with Target. What you’re proposing… “publishing isn’t an oligopoly, and there’s a competitive ecosystem of publishing houses, and she could work with one that would allow her to keep her rights and creative control AND get her into bookstores, and not just Target” –this already exists, she just seems to have made the decision that she has more to go gain going exclusively through Target than she does having it widely available in bookstores.

    I’m not saying there’s anything publishers can or should have done differently here, it’s just a sign that the overall cultural and economic ecosystem is shifting in a way that’s not favorable to traditional publishers.