Taylor Swift is arguably the most famous woman on the planet and she has only seen her popularity soar even further when she began dating Kansas City Chiefs star tight end Travis Kelce earlier this year. But based on the discouraging performance of her latest book release, it sounds like there’s a chance that her popularity is falling off.
The pop superstar released a new 256-page book that looks back at her record-breaking Eras Tour. Taylor Swift and her team expected a massive demand for the book, which printed 2 million copies for its initial release. But according to a report from the Philadelphia Enquirer, actual demand “didn’t come close” to what was expected.
“After dominating the entertainment industry with a record-setting tour and box office-shattering concert film, Taylor Swift released what was anticipated to be one of Black Friday’s hottest holiday items. But in Philadelphia, at least, the demand for the newly released Taylor Swift | The Eras Tour Book didn’t come close to the frenzy that follows when her concert tickets go on sale,” the Philadelphia Enquirer reported.
The outlet went on to report that most Target stores still had hundreds of books unsold after Black Friday.
Needless to say, this is some pretty brutal news for Swift, who was expecting a lot more of a frenzy for the exclusive book, and people had a lot to say about it on social media.
“The tour sold mostly because of hype and marketing. It got turned into this must see event. She can’t sell anything cold. She has to actively work to manufacture interest. She didn’t do enough to sell the book which is embarrassing for her because she should be able to at this point,” one person wrote in a post on Reddit.
“People are fatigued,” someone else speculated.
“Insane to sell a book about a primarily auditory experience,” another fan added.
“I mean I’ve seen even a lot of Swifties disappointed in the ‘book’ which is really just a bunch of photographs of the concert of varying quality and a few paragraphs about each era. For 40 dollars. They didn’t really put in effort to add much of any behind the scenes or insights from Taylor on planning it or anything like that so there’s not a lot new to glean from it,” someone else wrote.
“I’ve seen a few TikToks showing the contents and so far there’s only 2-3 photos I’ve seen that haven’t been seen before, and a lot were just taken off her instagram posts for shows. There doesn’t seem to be much new content apart from the occasional fun fact about how the production works,” another person added.
“It would be unbelievably funny to me if the absolute [trash] merchandise is what eventually turned people against her. Unlikely but very, very funny,” someone else said.
Clearly, this is not going the way Taylor had hoped.
