Accomplished singer and songwriter Taylor Swift is officially in her author era.
The 14-time Grammy award winner released her new book “Taylor Swift | The Eras Tour Book” exclusively at Target stores in-person on Black Friday, Nov. 29, 2024, and online the following day. She also launched a vinyl and CD to her 11th studio album “The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology”.
In the 256-page book, Swift reflects on her world-renowned The Eras Tour, which began on March 17, 2023, and concluded on Dec. 8, 2024. Over the course of 21 months, Swift toured five continents and 51 cities around the world, with more than 10 million fans in attendance.
Swift opens the book reflecting on her six-year touring hiatus. During this time, she explained how the re-recording of her first six albums revitalized her appreciation of her past work, ultimately being the driving force behind The Eras Tour in sharing her new albums with her fans.
“My goal was for every fan to leave that show knowing I gave them absolutely everything I had,” Swift wrote. “I made a promise to myself to be physically and mentally tougher than I ever had been before.”
With The Eras Tour grossing a record-breaking $2 billion and Swift winning 10 Billboard Music Awards, 2024 has been an accomplished year for Swift to say the least.
The book sold over 800,000 copies in just the first week of its release, becoming one of the most popular non-fiction books sold in 2024.
As her fanbase, known as the “Swifties”, camped outside their local Target stores on the morning of Black Friday to receive the $40 book, many appeared to be disappointed. The criticism mainly centered around the book’s quality of text and pictures.
Although the book received a mix of online reviews, praising the book for its creative design and use of embedding behind the scenes photos. Other fans who purchased the book voiced their frustrations on social media regarding the book’s flaws, dubbing the book as The “Errors” Tour Book due to its grammatical errors, spelling mistakes and choice of low-quality images.
Examples of these mistakes are seen on page 195, where Swift misspells “trying” with “rying”. On page 194, there’s 10 additional misspellings to titles of her songs such as “High Infedelity” “(High Infidelity”), “Jump The Fall” (“Jump Then Fall”) and “I Don’t Want to Live Forever” (“I Don’t Wanna Live Forever”).
Swift’s decision to self-publish the book allows mistakes like these to appear, creating the impression that the book’s release was rushed.
In addition to the book’s mistakes, there’s confusion surrounding Swift’s decision to include outfit designs that were never shown on tour, such as a green “lover” guitar and light pink blazer, ultimately leaving fans theorizing whether Swift is hinting at a future project or if these were just additional errors left in.
Rather than including substantial narratives from Swift, readers may feel under-delivered by the book’s content as the book relied heavily on graphics and pictures from her tour.
Despite the flaws, her book provides interesting anecdotes as she reflects on certain aspects of The Eras Tour such as the backstory behind each album, the preparation of the tour and the names of all 25 band, vocalists and dancers who performed on the tour.
Swift also shares her creative use of color coordination, detailing how she matched the color of her microphone to the albums she performed on tour.
Swift’s choice to end the book with a closing statement to her fans added a nice touch. She pays homage to those who attended The Eras Tour, writing “The Eras Tour had no typical age demographic or stereotypical attendee. It was for everyone, because you made everyone feel included.”
Overall, while her new book has some compelling parts, it ultimately falls short of expectations, failing to win over the avid readers and non-Swifties.
