Nathan Bransford | Writing, Book Editing, Publishing

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Did Taylor Swift need a publisher after all? (This week in books)

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This week! Books!

First up, we have two polls running, first the 18th annual extravaganza Will You Ever Buy Mostly E-books. I’ll reveal those results early next week! We also have one on whether listening to audiobooks counts as reading, and here are the returns so far:

Pretty close, but the “listening is listening” crowd is in the lead.

On to the links!

It’s peak “best of 2024” list season, and, spoiler, pretty much all of them have James by Percival Everett. Here’s a smattering:

Taylor Swift’s much-hyped book The Eras Tour dropped at Target on Black Friday, and the Swifties have good news and bad news on their hands. The good news: according to Circana Bookscan, it sold 814,000 hardcovers in the first two days, which would make it one of the fastest-selling books in recent history. On the other hand, by Swiftian standards the release was notably muted (2 million copies were rumored to be printed, leaving quite a lot of stock left), and fans were miffed by typos, blurry photos, and shoddy design (staying true to form, some Swifties thought the typos were Easter Eggs).

Did Taylor need to visit the Tortured Poets Department that is traditional publishing after all?

One author who doesn’t need any help with hype is Ben Mezrich, one of Hollywood’s most bankable authors despite the overall industry downturn. Simon van Zuylen-Wood at Vulture has a terrific profile of Mezrich, who gleefully embodies this “truth is for suckers” era we’re living through.

After getting smacked down twice by the courts over their digital lending program and so-called “National Emergency Library,” the Internet Archive announced that they would not pursue a likely futile appeal to the Supreme Court. Good. I remain infuriated that the IA chose to rip off authors during the height of the pandemic, when a lot of people were fearing for their livelihoods.

Speaking of misguided tech, social media was aghast at these four indistinguishable tech bros and their “A.I.-assisted” glorified vanity press that has managed to attract $16 million in seed funding for unfathomable reasons.

And in the wake of Jeff Bezos’ decision to nix the Washington Post’s endorsement of Kamala Harris, in additional to canceling Washington Post subscriptions, book lovers are leaving Amazon-owned Goodreads as well.

In a “what’s old is new” piece, Kevin Kearney at Slate looks into the burgeoning hustle of republishing classic public domain literature on Amazon.

We didn’t have a Pizza Hut anywhere near my hometown so I missed out on this particular piece of nostalgia, but Sarah Bahr looked back at the Hut’s Book It! reading program, which is actually still around!

And as we face mounting book bans and an incoming administration openly declaring war on the media and cultural institutions, Toni Morrison on censorship and fascism remains a must-read.

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. Wicked by Gregory Maguire
  2. The House of Cross by James Patterson
  3. Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros
  4. The Women by Kristin Hannah
  5. James by Percival Everett

Adult print and e-book nonfiction:

  1. Cher: The Memoir, Part One by Cher
  2. Framed by John Grisham and Jim McCloskey
  3. Melania by Melania Trump
  4. The Serviceberry by Robin Wall Kimmerer
  5. Be Ready When the Luck Happens by Ina Garten

Young adult hardcover:

  1. Nothing Like the Movies by Lynn Painter
  2. If He Had Been With Me by Laura Nowlin
  3. A Study in Drowning by Ava Reid
  4. Divine Rivals by Rebecca Ross
  5. The Glass Girl by Kathleen Glasgow

Middle grade hardcover:

  1. Impossible Creatures by Katherine Rundell
  2. The Complete Cookbook for Young Chefs by America’s Test Kitchen Kids
  3. The Complete Baking Book for Young Chefs by America’s Test Kitchen Kids
  4. The Last Dragon on Mars by Scott Reintgen
  5. The Bletchey Riddle by Ruta Sepetys and Steve Sheinkin

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, “Diamond Jubilee” by Cindy Lee is one of my favorite albums of the year, and I appreciated Mason Currey digging up some great writing advice from Patrick Flegel/Cindy Lee, the artist behind the album: what matters in art is actually doing it.

Have a great weekend!

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Comments

  1. Neil Larkins says

    Swift could have published the phone book, including the Yellow pages, of Podunk, Kansas and it would have had the same sales. As a published author she is not even in the same universe as the rest of us slogging away at our laptops.