Taylor Swift’s ‘Eras Tour Book’ sold 814,000 copies in one week

THE biggest book release of the year is not a blockbuster novel or an explosive celebrity memoir. It’s concert merch.

Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour Book, released 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, includes more than 500 photos and reflections from Swift.

The Eras Tour Book, ranks as the second-highest adult nonfiction release in the history of BookScan, according to a Circana representative. Swift’s first-week print sales nearly matched Barack Obama’s A Promised Land, which sold 816,300 print copies in its first week of sales, and put her well ahead of another blockbuster nonfiction release – Prince Harry’s Spare, which sold 620,600 print copies in its first week.

Swift’s 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.

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“It’s a very unfortunate decision, because it could have been a huge deal for indie bookstores,” said Julie Ross, a Swift fan and co-owner of Pocket Books Shop, an independent bookstore in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

Some Swift fans who rushed to purchase 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 5 am 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