Taylor Swift on The Eras Tour. Photo: Billboard.

Over the years, Taylor Swift has gradually entered popular culture as an icon of the American music industry. With the recent world tour The Eras Tour, Taylor Swift affirmed that her name has created a global influence. The tourism, aviation, service industries… all benefit from this tour. Publishing is no exception.

Taylor Swift’s charisma

Little Brown Books recently announced its publishing plans. The two works that received a lot of attention were two books about Taylor Swift. On September 3, the publisher will launch the collection Poems for Tortured Souls for 12-18 year olds. Next is the picture book The 13 Days of Swiftness: A Christmas Celebration for Fans (13 Days of Swiftie: A Christmas gift for fans) .

Executive Director Lisa Yoskowitz said the poetry collection will have an initial printing of 50,000 copies. The photo book will print 500,000 copies. This is a very large release and even when released, it can climb the bestseller list on Amazon.

“We’ve been doing Taylor Swift titles for over a decade. Most have very good consumption. This is completely understandable because of Taylor Swift’s global influence, millions of children love her,” Ms. Yoskowitz shared.

Two books are about to be released by Little Brown Books about Taylor Swift. Photo: Hachette.

Mary-Kate Gaudet, editor of The 13 Days of Swiftness , believes that the audience for these products is still on the rise.

“The younger generation of fans is characterized by a desire to get their hands on anything that features their idols. It doesn’t stop there, we also have older fans who focus on in-depth publications. This helps the publisher develop a variety of book genres revolving around the character Taylor Swift,” Mary-Kate Gaudet said.

According to Ms. Gaudet, the publisher considered releasing the books in the fall even though they were themed around Christmas. However, Taylor Swift’s charisma can cause a book published “out of season” to still achieve good business results.

“For a celebrity-inspired title, there’s always the concern that they’re such a short-lived trend that they fail before the book can launch. But Taylor is a different story, the problem is how to get the book released as quickly as possible. In particular, this is the time when Taylor Swift has just released a new album and her The Eras Tour is attracting the attention of many countries around the world,” Gaudet added.

A series of books about Taylor Swift have been made

From February to October 2024, there will be 5 biographies about Taylor Swift released. These include You Are Fearless by artist Laura Catrinella, Taylor Swift by Maria Isabel Sanchez Vegara, T aylor Swift (children’s version) by JD Forester, The Story of Taylor Swift by Rachelle Burk and Meet Taylor Swift by Claire Baker, Alexandra Koken. The book “Meeting with Taylor Swift” released in April alone has printed more than 300,000 copies.

For ages 12-18, there are books inspired by Taylor’s lyrics such as Begin Again (Emma Lord), This Is Me Try (Racquel Marie), Six More Months of June (Daisy Garrison), I Wish You Would (Eva Des Lauriers) and Afterglow (Phil Stamper).

In addition, the publishers also released quiz books with a print run of approximately 70,000 copies.

“Taylor biographies have always shown good commercial potential,” said Andrea Posner-Sanchez, who edited the celebrity biography series at Random House Children’s Books. The book Taylor Swift: A Little Golden Book Biography , released on May 2, 2023, has printed 300,000 copies. After a year, we republished 16 times and the total is now 2.3 million copies. This is also the company’s best-selling book.”

The book Taylor Swift: A Little Golden Book Biography is a publishing phenomenon of 2023. Photo: Penguin Books.

Posner-Sanchez admits that Random House Children’s Books’ artist biography series has been very successful with its work on Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Frida Kahlo, Betty White and Dolly Parton. Compared to the names mentioned above, Taylor Swift is still too young. “Wendy Loggia, the book’s author and editor of Random House Children’s Books, is a Swiftie (as Taylor Swift’s fans call her) that convinced me. Then I discovered more and more of my coworkers were also Swifties. I started to realize how large and passionate Taylor’s fan base really is. That helped me change my thinking.”

Although it is difficult to predict when the Taylor Swift fever will cool down, it is important that publishers are seizing the opportunity to create valuable works that attract readers from many different walks of life. together.