The Biggest Book Of 2024 Is About To Drop

And it doesn't have a publisher

This is the 261st edition of SHuSH, the official newsletter of The Sutherland House Inc. If you’re new to SHuSH, push the button:

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Two weeks ago, Taylor Swift appeared on Good Morning America to announce the forthcoming release of Taylor Swift | The Eras Tour Book. Its 250 pages will feature musings from the megastar and behind-the-scenes photos from her record-breaking, two-year, five-continent, 149-concert, billion-dollar Eras Tour. Copies will be available for $39.95 on Black Friday (November 29), exclusively at Target. The publisher is Taylor Swift Publications.

Yes, Taylor Swift is self-publishing.

Yes, this is unprecedented.

It’s the first time that the book everyone knows will be the biggest hit of the year is 1) self-published and 2) available from a single non-book retailer.

Taylor’s publishing strategy makes sense for her. Swifties would find her book if it was available exclusively at Bass Pro Shops. Instead of taking maybe 15 to 20 percent of the retail price of her book in a deal with a conventional publisher, she’s likely taking what—50 percent? 60 percent? How much leverage would Target have in this situation? If Taylor walks into the office of CEO Brian Cornell and says, “dude, you get all the sales and all the in-store traffic from my millions-strong scream team, but I’m taking 65 percent,” does he say no?

Barron’s has posited that Taylor’s book will be the hottest thing in retail since Costco’s gold bars.

UBS analyst Michael Lasser notes that 69 percent of American adults identify as fans of Taylor Swift, and 16 percent, or more than 40 million people, identify as “avid” fans. Lasser estimates that if just 2 percent of those avid fans buy the book and a record from Target—Swift is simultaneously releasing a new version of her most recent album—the company’s fourth-quarter sales will jump about $100 million.

Stepping outside the usual channels is a standard Swift move. She’s one of the most commercially savvy entertainers of all time, up there with Lucille Ball, Elvis, George Lucas, Oprah, and Jay-Z. She legendarily re-recorded her early albums to regain control of her music rights, and self-produced Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour film, which grossed $261 million, a record for a concert film. "There is so much business acumen here you could teach an entire MBA or business-level course on what she's doing," says Clayton Durant of Long Island University's Roc Nation School of Music, Sports and Entertainment.

So good for Taylor.

Not so good for big-time book publishing.

I read about her deal and thought back to the Penguin Random House/Department of Justice trial, which we covered extensively (for our greatest hits, begin here). Among the many revelations of that affair was that the Big Five publishing houses are almost entirely dependent for their profitability on celebrities. These might be celebrity authors whose personal brands generate huge sales: Stephen King, James Patterson, Dan Brown, Nora Roberts, J. K. Rowling, Colleen Hoover. Or they might be regular celebrities dabbling in authordom: Prince Harry, Barbra Streisand, Britney Spears, Matthew McConaughey, Michelle Obama. What they all have in common is their household names.

They’re the select few who receive the multi-million advances. They inspire what Madeline McIntosh, former bigwig at Penguin Random House, described as a “very high degree of confidence” that they will sell sufficiently to justify those huge advances.

What McIntosh is saying is that celebrity books are the closest thing you’ll find to an exception to publishing’s number one rule—no one really knows what will sell and what won’t. It’s possible for a publisher to overpay for a celebrity memoir, and the odd one will fail, but they’re far more bankable than first-time novelists.

It follows that the big houses are celebrity crazed. One of the loudest complaints in the book industry over the last several decades is that publishers have abandoned the patient work of developing a dependable list of legitimate authors in order to place ever larger bets on bold-face names. They fight bare-knuckle for A-listers, B-listers, D-listers, and even the “celebrity adjacent”—anyone who can be pitched with a straight face to the Today Show or Good Morning America. One executive testifying at the trial described how she had spent ten years prevailing upon Mike Rowe, the “star” of Discovery Channel’s Dirty Jobs, to write a book (makes leaves you wonder if she or Mike made the worse career choice).

You would think, then, that when the world’s hottest celebrity decides she’s better off without a publisher, the book world would be sunk in existential dread. But I’ve seen almost nothing in the trade press about Swift’s decision and what it might mean for the industry. The sentiment seems to be that Taylor Swift is in a league of her own and that no other celebrity can do what she does.

That’s what the movie people thought until Beyoncé announced a Swiftian deal for the film of her Renaissance concert tour.

In fact, it’s becoming common for celebrities to release books independently. Jared Leto has been self-publishing art books. B. J. Novak of The Office self-published a children’s book. Academy-Award-winning actress Viola Davis and her husband, Julius Tennon, recruited an experienced book person and together they launched their own publishing house, JVL media.

Other celebrities, including Anthony Bourdain, have flexed their status to land their own imprints at the big publishing houses, which is another way of getting a Swiftian cut of the action.

Molly Stern, a former publisher at the Random House subsidiary Crown, where she oversaw the Obama and Matthew McConaughey books, recently founded Zando, the whole point of which seems to be to wrestle celebrity business from her former employer. She’s wrangled collaborations with Sarah Jessica Parker, John Legend, Gillian Flynn, Ayesha Curry and others by granting them imprints and a greater share of the spoils.

Mindy Kaling two years ago launched Mindy’s Book Studio in partnership with Amazon.

Franchise genre writers—the likes of Hugh Howey, Bella Andre, Colleen Hoover—are signing deals with big publishers that allow them to retain the rights to their e-books. This lets them continue to rake in a 70 percent e-book royalty from Amazon, where the bulk of their sales occur, while also having a foot in the traditional publishing world.

Reese Witherspoon has taken a different approach with Reese’s Book Club. This set-up lets her trade her personal imprimatur for lucrative screen rights to the club’s selections, which have so far included Where The Crawdads Sing (a feature film she produced), Little Fires Everywhere (a Hulu miniseries she starred in and produced), and Daisy Jones & The Six (an Amazon Prime series she produced).

Donald Trump is a different celebrity from any of the above, but he’s also taking his books outside the traditional book industry. His Save America was published by Winning Team Publishing, run by Donald Trump Jr. and others. It was a New York Times bestseller this summer and, at $99, easily the most expensive book on the list. While it’s available at Barnes & Noble and on Amazon, the primary sales channels are Trump’s own websites and rallies where he doesn’t have to share 50 to 60 percent of that $99 with a retailer. While Trump might not have had options at the Big Five, it’s not difficult to imagine future celebrity politicians making the same choice.

Everywhere you look in book publishing, celebrities are side-stepping and out-clouting traditional publishers. More and more of them are deciding they either don’t need the resources publishers provide, or they can arrange far better terms than traditional publishing deals offer.

The balance of power is shifting because fame generates more sales than the marketing departments at Penguin Random House or HarperCollins. It also helps that the basic publishing expertise required to generate a book is easily hired.

Taylor Swift, self-publisher, is not an isolated phenomenon. As celebrities increasingly own their own brands and platforms, the big houses have less to offer them, and less of a future.

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Fulford photo contest results

In SHuSH 259, “Tell them I had a wonderful life,” our tribute to the late journalist Robert Fulford, we posted two photographs and asked readers to identify the individuals we couldn’t name. Here are the photos:

The “someone else” in the top photo was identified by John Macfarlane as the photographer Nigel Dickson. The “others” in the bottom photo were identified by Rebecca Eckler as Phil McKellar and Helen McNamara.

John and Rebecca each receive the Sutherland House book of their choice (email your selection to serina@sutherlandhousebooks.com).

I feel I should have known Helen McNamara. Here is her wonderful 2008 obit from the Globe & Mail:

Those who knew Helen McNamara, whether as a jazz columnist with the Toronto Telegram, a broadcaster with the CBC, the author of The Bands Canadians Danced To or a quiet artist who produced landscapes, portraits and still lifes, always marvelled at her spirit.

Although she was only five feet tall and had suffered polio as a child, Helen was a giant in her field. She was also a pioneer, covering jazz in the nightclubs of Toronto and beyond at a time when few women did that type of reporting.

Helen's writing career began in the 1940s. Her first regular column, McNamara's Bandwagon, appeared in the Toronto Telegram on Jan. 22, 1949, the same day that her close friend Alex Barris launched his column in The Globe and Mail.

The world of jazz became Helen's passion. She wrote for England's Melody Maker, Canadian Composer, Jazz Panorama and others. The greats of the day, from Duke Ellington to Count Basie to Jimmy Rushing, became not only important subjects in her columns but lifelong friends. While American stars earned her attention she was always ready to bring the work of Canadian musicians and singers to the forefront.

Suffering from Parkinson's disease, Helen spent the last 16 years in a long-term care facility. Over that period many musicians and friends came to visit. In 1997, her dear friends Alex Barris and Billy O'Connor presented a tribute concert with an all-star salute that featured Oscar Peterson, Peter Appleyard, Guido Basso, Jim Galloway, Moe Koffman, Rob McConnell and Phil Nimmons in a night of outstanding jazz.

Helen never married, but her role as a beloved aunt to many nieces and nephews was of great importance to her. She took them to concerts, introduced them to musicians, shared her music collection and, as one nephew said, never criticized them.

She had a sense of justice and a wonderful sense of humour that was never cutting but always sharp. In the days when clubs shut around midnight and were closed on Sundays, Helen would often invite out-of-town musicians to the family home for after-hours meals. Her mother, Beatrice, would have a huge pot of chili on the stove to serve with loaves of warm bread, and her father, Joe, would be ready with liquid refreshments for the jazz stars.

Helen's life was an inspiration to her family and her admirers. Even though she wore a leg brace and carried a cane all her life, people only saw, in the words of Duke Ellington, a "sophisticated lady."

Helen died the same day as her friend Oscar Peterson. Their funerals were also held on the same day. Fittingly, a rendition of his Hymn to Freedom was played for her in farewell at her funeral.

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Our Newsletter Roll (suggestions welcome)

Banuta Rubess’s Funny, You Don’t Look Bookish, reviews five books a week.

The Bibliophile from Biblioasis, an independent publisher based in Windsor.

The Literary Review of Canada’s Bookwork, “your weekly dose of exclusive reviews, book excerpts, and more.”

Art Kavanagh’s Talk about books: Book discussion and criticism.

Gayla Gray’s SoNovelicious: Books, reading, writing, and bookstores.

Esoterica Magazine: Literature and popular culture.

Benjamin Errett’s Get Wit Quick, literature and other fun stuff

Lydia Perovic’s Long Play: literature and music.

Tim Carmody’s Amazon Chronicles: an eye on the monster.

Jason Logan’s Urban Color Report: adventures in ink (sign-up at bottom of page)

Anne Trubek’s Notes from a Small Press: like SHuSH, but different

Art Canada Institute: a reliable source of Canadian arts info/opinion

Kate McKean’s Agents & Books: an interesting angle on the literary world

Rebecca Eckler’s Re:Book: unpretentious recommendations

Anna Sproul Latimer’s How to Glow in the Dark: interesting advice

John Biggs Great Reads: strong recommendations

Steven Beattie’s That Shakespearean Rag, a newsy blog about books and reading

Mark Dykeman’s How About This: Atlantic Canadian interviews and thoughts on writing and creativity.

J. W. Ellenhall’s 3-Page Book Battles: Readers help her choose which of three random books to review each month.

Donald Brackett’s Embodied Meanings: “Arts music films literature and popular culture.”

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