Matt: Welcome back everybody to another exciting episode of Publish & Prosper. 

Lauren: So exciting. 

Matt: This is episode number… 48?

Lauren: 48. 

Matt: 48. And I say exciting because at the last minute I told Lauren to scrap the idea that we had for today and the outline that she prepared, as she does so studiously for every episode. And today we're going to talk without an outline about…

Lauren: Taylor Swift. 

Matt: Taylor Swift. That's right. It's an early Christmas present for Lauren. 

Lauren: Thank you. 

Matt: We're going to talk today about Taylor Swift's decision to self-publish her book, and what that means, and whether or not that has any implications or predictive connotations around the publishing industry and what's going on.

Lauren: Yeah. Full disclosure, we're going to be doing some speculation throughout this. Like who's handling distribution and stuff like that.

Matt: Well, we know who's handling it. Target. 

Lauren: Well. 

Matt: We'll get to that. 

Lauren: We'll get there. But we are gonna be doing our best to get through this. 

Matt: See, this is what happens when we don't have an outline, huh? 

Lauren: I know, I get a little panicky. 

Matt: I'm already regretting my decision. 

Lauren: I mean, I think that - I think that alone is also just the disclaimer up at the top. We're doing this off the cuff. 

Matt: I do so much better without an outline or some guardrails. Like, just let me go, or as my kids would say, let me cook. But you definitely need that and clearly do. What do your bracelets say today? 

Lauren: I need that little safety net, it's fine. My bracelets say screaming. 

Matt: How apropos. 

Lauren: Uh-huh. To the core. 

Matt: Okay. 

Lauren: And the last one is I guess like a… an acronym. I don't know. It’s the first - 

Matt: It's like 27 letters long. 

Lauren: Right. It's the first letter of each word of the first line of my favorite bridge from a Fall Out Boy song. 

Matt: Okay. 

Lauren: No further questions. 

Matt: Yeah. We'll skip over that one. We'll save everybody a little bit of bleeding from their eardrums. 

Lauren: Well, I wasn't going to sing it. Don't worry. 

Matt: All right.

Lauren: Okay.

Matt: Well let's jump in, let's talk about it. 

Lauren: Let's talk about it. So in case you don't already know this because you're not chronically online or a Swiftie like me - I'm both of those things, to be clear - Taylor Swift announced in October that she was releasing a book. It is the first book that it is officially published by her and is not a book that somebody else has written an unauthorized publication in some way or another. So this is a coffee table - 

Matt: So, I'm already going to stop you. 

Lauren: Okay?

Matt: You're going to get your Swiftie card revoked. 

Lauren: Why? 

Matt: I don't think this is a book she wrote. It's mostly photos. It's like a photo book, right?

Lauren: It is a coffee table photo book. 

Matt: Correct. 

Lauren: That is going to have all details from the Eras Tour, but she did say in announcing it that it will include notes from her within it. So she is - while it is not like a - 

Matt: Okay, that's kind of cool. 

Lauren: Yes, yeah. 

Matt: All right. 

Lauren: So it'll have… whether it's production notes or like, a behind the scenes like ‘this is what happened when we were like…’ whatever, I don't know, we don't know yet. But it is mostly a coffee table photo book, but she did specifically mention that it was going to have some -

Matt: Okay.

Lauren: - annotations from her.

Matt: Fair enough. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: All right. So middle of October. 

Lauren: Yes. 

Matt: She comes out announces that this is happening - 

Lauren: Yep

Matt: - in conjunction with Target. 

Lauren: Yes. So that's one of the first key details of this is that it is exclusively available through Target. So it is something that… she does this a lot when it comes to exclusive things, whether they're exclusive editions of her vinyls that are only available from certain retailers, or - 

Matt: Hey, is vinyl pluralized like that, by the way? I think it's just vinyl, right? 

Lauren: Is it? 

Matt: Do you say vinyls? 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: Or would you say albums, records or vinyl? 

Lauren: I don't know. Well, I mean, in this particular case, it's definitely one single album that there's four different vinyl variants of, for example. What is the plural? I don't know. 

Matt: Google's not telling me. 

Lauren: Well, I guess we'll never know. Is it because… 

Matt: No, you wanna know why? Cause my laptop's telling me I'm not connected to the internet. 

Lauren: Oh, okay, great. 

Matt: Wow. 

Lauren: We're off to a great start. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: Okay, well, while you try to figure out… 

Matt: The plural of the word vinyl is vinyl. 

Lauren: Oh. 

Matt: Vinyl is a mass noun, similar to beer or cheese and therefore does not have a plural. 

Lauren: Okay. 

Matt: So for example, you would say some cheese, not cheeses, or an array of cheese types will be served at my function. 

Lauren: Okay. 

Matt: With lots of vinyl being listened to on the turntable. 

Lauren: Okay. Okay. I learned something new today. 

Matt: Versus the invitation you would have sent out, had we not had this conversation, that would say: come to Lauren's Taylor Swift listening party, where we'll be playing lots of vinyls and eating lots of cheeses. 

Lauren: I mean, I would have - the cheese definitely would not have been pluralized. Eating lots of cheese. 

Matt: I don't know.

Lauren: And listening to many vinyls. I also, you skipped right over the beers in there too, which do we not pluralize beer? 

Matt: I don't drink, so I don't know. 

Lauren: Okay. Well, I'll report to you on that one. 

Matt: Depends on how many beers you've had as to whether or not you pluralize it. 

Lauren: But see! You just - you just did. 

Matt: I don't know. I don't drink. Well, maybe the right would have been depends on how much beer you have drink, dranken, drunk, drank, drink, drunk? I don't know. 

Lauren: Okay. Anyway.

Matt: Ask somebody who drinks. I never say beer or beers. I don't know.

Lauren: Okay. 

Matt: Well, you should know this. 

Lauren: I should know this. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: I thought I was right. 

Matt: I feel like you're drunk right now. 

Lauren: I feel like I'm drunk right now too. 

Matt: See. How many beers have you had? 

Lauren: Zero. 

Matt: Okay. 

Lauren: The point.

Matt: Yes.

Lauren: Is that Taylor Swift is publishing a book that is being sold exclusively through Target. And there was a lot of hubbub about this in general. It was kind of a big deal. It's the first book she's publishing. People have been waiting for various announcements for what's gonna happen after the Eras Tour, so the fact that she confirmed this is kind of a big deal. It wasn't an announcement people expected. 

She also, with the publication of this book, simultaneous release at Target is gonna be a vinyl of the complete album of The Tortured Poets Department, which at this point has not actually existed on vinyl. So it's kind of a double drop. And that's also gonna be only exclusively available at Target. One of the details that kind of got buried a little bit under all of that until people started processing it is the fact that this book is self-published. So this coffee table book is being published. The publisher, according to Target, is Taylor Swift Publications. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: Right? Did I get that title right? 

Matt: Yeah. I think the general public that was probably lost on, but for anybody in the publishing industry, that was probably the first thing they noticed. 

Lauren: Yes. 

Matt: I'm looking at the actual press release from Target that came out on the 15th of October and it does not mention anything about self-publishing. It just says it'll be available exclusively at Target, in stores, Black Friday. Yeah, there's no mention of actually self-publishing. I don't even see where it mentions her as the actual publisher, no. 

Lauren: Yeah, I mean, it was a detail that wasn't super, like I haven't seen any official conversation about this that includes the phrase self-publishing, and I'm not entirely sure that Team Taylor Swift would even consider this self-publishing. Like I'm not sure what they're considering it. 

Matt: What is Team Taylor Swift? Like her actual team? 

Lauren: Yeah, like her actual team. 

Matt: I wasn't sure if you were referring to like, you and all the others out there. 

Lauren: Oh no, no, no, no. 

Matt: Or if like her actual team. Gotcha.

Lauren: I am gonna take one for Swiftie Nation here, right now, and I'm gonna say this is self-publishing. She is self-publishing this. 
Matt: Well yeah, I mean, that's definitely - 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: - clear at this point, but you're right. I think the initial communication, again, I'm looking at the Target press release. I think you've already looked at whatever her team put out there in terms of what her official communication would be. And neither really said anything about self-publishing, or Taylor Swift Publications, or whatever she's calling her publishing arm there. But at this point, yes, everybody knows that she is self-publishing it. 

It's kind of, I guess from what we've figured out so far, I'd say it's a loose definition of self-publishing though, because not everything is being done in the traditional self-publishing sort of way, but she is sort of taking the most, I would say, beneficial components of self-publishing and applying that to this book, just like she did with her music over the last few years and some of the other things. 

Lauren: Yeah, this is… there is definitely precedence for this in her business decisions that she's made in the past. I don't think anyone is super surprised by this, maybe with the exception of the distribution through Target. That's the thing that I'm the most surprised about by this.

Matt: I'm not surprised by it, at least based on what I've read and what you've said, because she's released so many other things exclusively with Target. So she has this relationship with Target already. So that makes sense. And again, from what you and I can find, which, you know, some of the details are basically hidden or just not being shared, but it seems like Target is taking on some of the potential logistics and or fulfillment in terms of these books themselves, the actual…

Because we can't find anything that talks about that component of this. And that's that big chunk that lives in the middle of self-publishing a book and then it being sold in various distribution channels or outlets. There's that whole thing in the middle that self-publishing is really best for, which is the printing and logistics of that book - 

Lauren: Right. 

Matt: - and getting it to where it goes. And that's the part that nobody seems to know anything about necessarily. So for all we know, Target could have agreed to take on some of that for her. 

Or, you know, again, for all we know, some publisher could be involved in the backend that we don't know about that is taking care of that production work and or the fulfillment and shipping of those actual printed copies to Target’s distribution centers to then be dispersed to the Target stores. Which obviously is already happening since it's going to be released on Black Friday. 

Lauren: Right, right. I mean, it was in - it was within six weeks of her making the announcement that believe the announcement, the book is, is already in production by that point. Nobody - 

Matt: Right. 

Lauren: - is starting a several hundred page full color photo book, starting the design process on October 15th or whatever. 

Matt: Well. They're not, but let's be real, in self-publishing, people absolutely try to do that. 

Lauren: Absolutely, they -  

Matt: And then they hit us up and they're like, hey, I just submitted this. Is there any way you can have a thousand copies to this place by tomorrow? 

Lauren: Right, and also, like I noticed a layout issue on the cover because I didn't get a proof copy. 

Matt: Oh, and could you adjust my file for me? 

Lauren: Right. 

Matt: By the way, for the cover, because I'm pretty sure I'm way over the bleed lines. 

Lauren: Right, right, right, right, sure, sorry. But yeah, for those of us that are not trying it that way, there's no way that this book was just created overnight. So this is something… but I mean, I do think that there's ultimately like, not super, super surprising that this is happening the way that it's happening. 

Matt: Let's unpack that for a second. 

Lauren: Okay. 

Matt: Because this is the first time that we've seen an A-list celebrity - I know it makes you happy to hear me say that. 

Lauren: It does.

Matt: I'd say if there's something above A-list and that's probably where she is based on everything that's been going on, but this is the first time we've seen somebody of this caliber put out a book that is not being run through a traditional publishing house, i.e. the big five. Something like this not being put out by Penguin Random House or Simon & Schuster or Macmillan seems like, wild. This is a big thing, especially in the publishing industry. 
Does that mean anything about publishing? Is that some sort of signal around traditional publishing that she would decide not to use a traditional publisher? Or is this just merely her continuing to do what she's been doing, which is finding ways to do stuff herself, and this is in no way, shape, or form some sort of a signal that traditional publishing is heading the way of the buffalo? 

Lauren: I think that's a really good question. 

Matt: Thanks, that's why I asked it. 

Lauren: Of course, of course it is. 

Matt: So we'll wait here for your answer. 

Lauren: So I actually, I think the short answer is the latter. No wait, I always mix those two up. Because it's latter, later, former, first. I always mix them up. It's too late. It took me too long to think of that. No, I don't think that this is saying anything about traditional publishing as a whole. And I would not be surprised if at some point in the future she were to decide to traditionally publish a book. If it was something along the lines of either a memoir or a novel or something like that, I would not be totally shocked if she went the traditional publishing route. I think it's more along the lines of continued proof that Taylor Swift is an incredibly savvy business woman and is also somebody who has proven time and time again that nobody knows her own audience better than she does. 

Matt: But that's exactly why I don't think she would ever traditionally publish. 

Lauren: Yeah, that's fair. 

Matt: Because honestly, what's the incentive for her? She now knows what it takes to quote unquote self-publish her work. She now knows that's the only way to retain 100% ownership and rights over everything she does. 

Lauren: Which is something that's incredibly important to her. 

Matt: And nobody can sell more of her products than her.

Lauren: Right. 

Matt: So unless she just needed help with the sheer volume of products that needed to be produced and distributed - which, you can find people to do that for you - I don't see why Taylor Swift would ever have to go to a traditional publisher for a memoir or anything else for that matter. 

Lauren: Yeah, that's fair. 

Matt: What are they going to do for her that she can't do? 

Lauren: I mean, nothing, honestly. Because at this point, every benchmark of something that we would consider traditional publishing… They have publicity connections that they can hook you up with. Okay. Who's got like - 

Matt: Yeah, who's got a better publicity team - 

Lauren: Yeah.

Matt: - than Taylor Swift? 

Lauren: Right. Like clearly - 

Matt: Get the hell out of here.

Lauren: - clearly that or, you know, like obviously like none of the, none of the traditional gatekeepers of self-publishing would apply to Taylor Swift. There's no way that New York Times is not going to review Taylor Swift's memoir regardless of who publishes it or something like that. 

Matt: But that just furthers my point. She doesn't need that. 

Lauren: Exactly.

Matt: Even if they did and they said, oh, good news, Taylor, you're, you're a New York Times bestseller. What does she care? 

Lauren: She doesn't. 

Matt: Yeah. Her audience is going to buy her book regardless of who publishes it, who says it's great, who says it's crappy, what it looks like, where it was printed, how it was delivered, they don't care. And I think that's what I'm trying to get to is that I don't think this says something necessarily about the traditional publishing model, although it could by inverse, because what I think it talks about is just how far we've come with self-publishing and the technology that exists and quite frankly, the knowledge that people are starting to, to gain on the value of an audience built, right? So nobody will probably ever in the history of human beings have the reach and the audience that Taylor Swift does at this point. Maybe. We'll never live to see that, but - this planet probably won't either. But nonetheless.

Time and time again, we see plenty of people who have built an audience for themselves, regardless of size, but it works for them. There's high engagement. They know their audience better than anybody else, and they are able to self-publish content and reach their audience and achieve whatever their primary goals are. Whether that's just straight up book sales or that's using that book to build some other part of their business. 

But I do think this speaks to, again, the advancements that have been made in self-publishing, the technology surrounding it, your ability to build and own an audience if you know what you’re doing. You know, we talk about owned platforms and not building on rented land and things like that. So I'm happy to see this, regardless of the fact that it's Taylor Swift. I do think to a degree that because this, I think, brings to light the advancements made in self-publishing, by doing so you also shed a brighter light on traditional publishing and some of the… I'd say shortcomings of it. 

Lauren: Yes. 

Matt: Because in my opinion - and this is only my opinion, and everybody knows this - I find that there are many shortcomings to the traditional publishing model these days. And I don't think that for the most part, it benefits very many people anymore. Certainly there are some people that do, of course. And if you're somebody like the Obamas or somebody like that, yeah, I mean, you're not overly interested in some of the benefits of owning your own work, self-publishing and things like that. You're not touting yourself as an artist or a creator, you're a former president and you're doing something else with that book. So you would just love to be able to hand that off or who knows if he actually even wrote it. I don't - I like Obama, so I don't want to make any assumptions here, but you know. 

Lauren: He did write a couple of books before that one, so I’m assuming. 

Matt: Well, there's probably a ghostwriter involved in there somewhere. 

Lauren: Yeah, for sure. 

Matt: You know, shout out to any ghostwriters that are doing good jobs with these presidents books and things. But the point is I just don't see that traditional publishing is going to continue to progress the way that it used to in terms of benefits, clout, all of those things. I think as self-publishing and in general, this idea of creating and owning your content and the distribution methods to get it to market continues to increase, I think traditional publishing's value continues to decrease. So it's like this sliding almost Liberty scale effect. 

Lauren: It's been interesting… because you're right. The way you said that is shining light on both self-publishing and traditional publishing. It's been really interesting to watch my worlds colliding in this as the different things have come out about this, because I've seen a lot of TikToks or Threads or articles even where people are talking about… Somebody will pose the question of ‘she's such a champion for indie record stores, why isn't she doing the same for indie bookstores?’ Like why isn't she selling her book through indie bookstores instead of selling them exclusively through Target, and then it turns into - 

Matt: Why isn’t she? 

Lauren: Well, I don't know. But what it turns into then is people that are knowledgeable about the publishing industry responding to that with, let me explain to you how book distribution works. Or let me explain to you how the list price of a book is the set price of a book, and when you go into a store like Target and you see a book at 30% off the list price of the book, that is Target selling it at a discount to their profits. It's not that indie bookstores... 

Like it’s, I've seen a lot of content lately that are Swifties that have nothing to do with the publishing industry learning about how the publishing industry works, which has been just a very interesting collision of worlds for me. But it's also, I'm surprised by the number of people that are like, oh, I never understood that about publishing before. I never knew that indie bookstores are all getting their books from the same sources. It's not like she's dropping a hundred copies of this book at each indie bookstore in the country. Like, that's not how it works. They have to come from a distributor somehow. 

Matt: Wouldn't that be cool though?

Lauren: God, it would be. 

Matt: If she was driving around in a truck - 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: - and just dropping off boxes of books. 

Lauren: Use that jet that she gets so much shit for and use it to drop a box of books at every bookstore instead. 

Matt: That'd be cool.

Lauren: Right? I’d help.

Matt: I mean, I think there's something to be said. We talk about people who are out there online and whether it's Taylor Swift or somebody else, why isn't she doing this for indie bookstores or indie record stores? And there is the question of distribution and capacity, right? Somebody like Taylor Swift, we talk about the audience size, how that enables her to be able to do these types of things and cut out the middleman, so to speak. 

But the flip side of that coin, because there's always, you know, a pro and a con to something, the flip side of that is, she would probably drive such a crazy high demand in the first week of each new vinyl - not vinyls - or book, or books. You can pluralize that one if you want to. 

Lauren: Oh okay. 

Matt: That a lot of these indie stores would not be able to handle that capacity. 

Lauren: I can tell you - 

Matt: Some of these indie stores would probably have to clear their entire inventory and stock it with nothing but her new book on the 29th to be able to handle that capacity, and probably would still get their store burnt to the ground when they ran out of books and a bunch of Swifties showed up with torches and gasoline. 

Lauren: Okay, first of all, Swifties are very nice, so. 

Matt: I've heard lots of things that run the spectrum of nice to violent. 

Lauren: Okay. 

Matt: But my point is capacity, so -

Lauren: Yes. 

Matt: - inventory and distribution. And so in that respect, I can see why she would continue to partner with somebody like Target, who she has a relationship with and she's comfortable with, but still skip some of the other obvious things like Amazon and some of the other places. 

Lauren: Yeah, I think that's fair. And I recognize that I sound like I'm being more forgiving of her - because I am.

Matt: What’s to forgive? 

Lauren: But as somebody that used to work in an indie bookstore, I can tell you that it is extremely difficult to handle the logistics of a massive, massive release like this. A lot of these stores are not equipped to handle that. And that's hard. That's really hard to do. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: And it's really like, some of the worst days that I worked in the entire time that I worked at the bookstore were days where we were selling, you know, several hundred copies of a new book. Or we were selling like, you purchasing the book in advance was your ticket and there was a finite number of tickets available to the event.

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: And like, we were not equipped to do that at the time that these were happening. Like the store was not equipped to do that. And it was just a nightmare for everybody involved. And by the end of it, nobody was happy. Except for the store owners that were like, well, at the end of the day, we did sell 2,000 copies of that book. Everyone else is crying on the floor in the back office right now. But we did sell 2,000 copies of a book in one day. So… I also would love to champion indie bookstores, I think they're incredibly important, but I do kind of understand the decision. 

To me, still what I'm more surprised about by all of this is the fact that she's selling it with Target at all, and the fact that she is not just selling it directly from her website. That continues to be the thing that trips me up every time. And look, I mean - 

Matt: What if - well…

Lauren: We all know I'm going to be at my local Target at five o'clock in the morning on Black Friday waiting to buy this book and this vinyl. Sorry, Dad, cause you're going to be staying with me so you're going to be coming with me. But like…

Matt: I think the Target versus her own website thing at first also seemed odd to me because again, why not just control the entire experience from start to finish for the customer? Because the other thing is, and again, whether or not she actually needs this is arguable, but if she was selling it direct from her site, imagine all that data that she gets. 

Lauren: Oh yeah.

Matt: That her team can use to remarket all kinds of other things. Right? The flip side to that again is it's gotta be so much easier for her and her team just to turn this chunk of the process over to Target and let it be their problem. But I think it's also an accessibility thing too, right? Everybody probably has a Target within 20, 30, 40 minutes of them - for the most part. I mean, obviously there's some outliers there. 

But not everybody might have access to potentially be able to go to her website and purchase it. And on top of that, imagine a Taylor Swift release coming out on Black Friday, online only on her site that's probably hosted by WordPress or something. That's going to shut it down within five minutes. It's going to be worse than any DDoS attack that could ever happen. Again, I think it's the question of capacity, inventory, accessibility. The Target thing makes sense. If it couldn't be indie bookstores, I'd rather be Target than Amazon or some other garbage retail distribution outlet. 

Lauren: Sure, absolutely. This is also something that we keep seeing like, I was just saying she's a champion for indie record stores. She's done this in the past where she's done, for indie record store day, an exclusive vinyl that's only being distributed that way. The one that I wanted so desperately that I did manage to get, thank goodness, a few years ago that was released on indie record store day, the closest store to me, they confirmed that they had gotten, I think, fourteen copies. And it was the Saturday after - 

Matt: Fourteen copies?

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: One four. 

Lauren: Yep. 

Matt: Wow. 

Lauren: And it was the Saturday after London Book Fair two years ago. So I flew back on Friday. I had an international overseas flight on Friday. And then at four o'clock in the morning on Saturday morning - 

Matt: Saying international overseas, by the way…

Lauren: I know, it's redundant. 

Matt: Is like pluralizing - 

Lauren: I know, I know. 

Matt: - cheese or vinyl. 

Lauren: I think it's worse, honestly, but that's okay. 

Matt: Go ahead. 

Lauren: But I still, I got up at four o'clock in the morning and drove to and sat in the dark in Raleigh by myself. Very - 

Matt: That's on brand for you. 

Lauren: Unsafe though. 

Matt: Were you crying the whole time?

Lauren: I was not, but I got the last - at four o'clock in the morning, I got to the Pour House and I got the last of the fourteen records. Like, now imagine doing that tenfold. 

Matt: No. 

Lauren: That's… it's just not sustainable. But we've seen this also with, you know, there's been a lot of talk back and forth about how the number one kind of takeaway from the Eras Tour is that it proved that Ticketmaster is both unable and unwilling to handle massive ticket distribution in the way that they've been doing so. Scalping is insane. Like, there's been no way to - and this is something that Taylor Swift has been trying to do for years. 

As somebody who has gone to every - I've missed one Taylor Swift tour, and it was over a decade ago. I've been to every other one of her tours. And she has done this repeatedly where she's tried to experiment with different ways to do like, fan verification ahead of time to try to make sure that the people that are getting access to the tickets are actual fans of hers and not scalpers buying twenty of them and then selling them for an insane markup online.

It recently came out in an article or an interview with somebody that she just absolutely refused to even consider dynamic pricing for the tickets for the Eras Tour. All in all, like it's been a learning experience and it continues to be a learning experience. And I think that's what this is going to be too. I think this is something that again, like Matt said earlier, obviously there is no… I think it's unlikely that we will see in this lifetime anyone with the massive scope and fan base that Taylor Swift has, but I think there is still going to be ultimately like a lesson for everybody to take here in how do we handle distribution of an exclusive book release? Or how do we handle selling tickets to an international three hour long, two year running show that - 

Matt: Overseas. Across the ocean. 

Lauren: Okay. Well, actually in this particular case, international does include… because international could just have been the U.S., Canada, and Mexico, in which case it wouldn't be overseas. So it is actually relevant to say international and overseas. 

Matt: I think, yes, it's unlikely audience size, all those things. What I'm more interested in with this conversation and why I think it was going to be fun to talk about this was again, trying to understand are there implications here that would trickle down as it pertains to the future of traditional publishing or the future of self-publishing - good or bad? Are there any impacts there?

Does this singular event of Taylor Swift deciding to self-publish her book affect either one of those models in any way, shape, or form? Or is just, just another celebrity thing that people are going to comment on for a week, like, you know, what's been happening in the publishing industry, and then it just disappears into the zeitgeist somewhere? 

I still firmly believe that there, you know, as you alluded to earlier, there are things to take away from this, things that can be learned here. And the biggest one for me is that, like we talked about, yes, she's self-publishing, but again, in her own way, she's kind of put a twist on self-publishing. 

And I think that's the biggest lesson here is that again… it's no secret I hate Amazon. It's no secret, I think the traditional publishing model is broken for the most part, except in a few cases, just garbage at this point. But nonetheless, I do think that this is just another example of why self-publishing and all the advancements that it's made and the direction its continuing to go is still a better model for most people, because of the flexibility that's built in there. 

I mean, there's so many different ways that you could potentially self-publish a book and take it to market to achieve whatever your goals are. That amount of flexibility and freedom coupled with 100% you retain all rights to your content as well as potentially all profits, it's just a better business model in the long run and it fits what the rest of the world is doing right now. 

Outside of publishing there is this entire move to take back your content, to sell directly, to be the distribution channel for your own work and not give that away to somebody else just for the sake of an audience that they may or may not even have. These days everybody's so focused on what they think traditional publishers or traditional music production companies and record labels will do for you and that's just not the case anymore. 

I do like this bit of news. I do think it's pretty cool that it became a headline, at least for a little while in the general mass media world, but in our industry and publishing it kind of hung out for a couple of weeks. People were talking about it. It's made the circuit of all the popular publishing industry newsletters and people are still kind of talking about this. But I don't know, to me it just seems cool because it just shows the flexibility and the freedom you have with it. I think it's really cool and I think we're going to see a lot more of this. 

Lauren: Absolutely. I think that one of the things that we haven't talked about yet in this episode, and I haven't seen it mentioned a whole lot in other conversations about it, is the speed to market that she has here that I think is really cool. I said earlier this show has been going for two years, so realistically - what? 

Matt: What show? 

Lauren: The Eras Tour. 

Matt: Oh, I thought for a second you were talking about our show. 

Lauren: No. 

Matt: And I was like - 

Lauren: We just celebrated our one year - 

Matt: - who was sitting with you the first year then? 

Lauren: It's just felt like two years because - 

Matt: Time flies when you're having fun. Is that what you were going to say? 

Lauren: That's exactly, that is what I meant for sure. Yeah, the Eras Tour has been running for two years. So in theory, it would have been possible for the first year of the tour to have photos and all kinds of stuff from that. And then the book starts going into publication then, and it's still being released now. Like that timeline would work, but it would have been a very… I mean, the show itself has evolved so much over that window of time that entire sections of it would have been left out.

For those of you that don't know, she released a new album in April. There was a two month gap in the tour, the US leg of the tour had ended. She did a little bit of international in South America and Asia. Then there was a two month window of time. In that two month window of time The Tortured Poets Department came out. And then when the show started back up again in Europe in May she had reordered the eras, cut some things, merged some things together, and added an entire new eras set, added a new set for The Tortured Poets Department. 

So she was able to change - I mean, obviously she knew that she had this album coming out, so she was able to prepare herself for it, but she was able to make changes to the entire set list of the show to accommodate this new album. And realistically, if she had gone the traditional publishing route, that likely would not have made the final cut for the book, cause it would have been into production already by the time. And now I don't know, obviously I haven't seen the book, so I don't know whether or not it includes a section for tortured poets or not, but still like she has much more flexibility. 

Matt: I feel like I’m a tortured cohost at this point, like that - 

Lauren: It took you so long to make that joke. 

Matt: That little history section. Oh my goodness. 

Lauren: I will remind everybody listening to this. This was Matt's idea. I wanted to talk about copyright. 

Matt: I wanted to talk about the concept of what she did and the potential impacts to the publishing industry. 

Lauren: Okay. 

Matt: I didn't need the whole history of tortured poets society or department or whatever it is. Dead poets department. 

Lauren: The music video is a reference to Dead Poets Society. So, thanks. Thanks for giving me that one at least. 

Matt: Rest in peace Robin Williams. Okay, well.

Lauren: Anyway. The point is that she's been able to go to market much faster - 

Matt: That’s right. 

Lauren: - with this product than she could have - 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: - if she was going the traditional publishing route. So I think that's pretty cool. 

Matt: So flexibility, speed, those are two very huge, I think, benefits - 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: - of what she's doing. 

Lauren: Also, even just like secrecy, if that's something that matters to you, which is obviously something that matters more to a Taylor Swift or Beyonce level celebrity. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: Who are doing surprise album drops and things like that. It's a lot easier to keep a secret when you're not including an entire publishing house. 

Matt: I'm surprised Target hasn't started a publishing arm. I just thought about this.

Lauren: I actually - I was considering that when I was trying to look up are they the distribution arm of it, and they're not.

Matt: I was in our local Target the other night and, or one of our local Targets, I should say. The the book section, I would say just in the last probably eight to twelve months, has at least tripled in size in our local store. Now again, I know that a lot of this, and in general, the rise in print book sales and things, is primarily due to romance and fantasy. And that's the bulk of what you'll see on the shelves at Target, and even Barnes & Noble's kind of been reinfused or reinvigorated with titles and it's primarily because of fantasy and romance. But nonetheless, it doesn't seem like a trend that's dying anytime soon.

And it does seem like a place where they could jump on that bandwagon like TikTok did. TikTok now has their own publishing company for books, as well as several other companies that you wouldn't have thought of at the time of, hey, they should be a publisher. So I think this is a trend that we're gonna see more of. And again, I think part of that is because the evolution of publishing has finally caught up with - the evolution of the publishing business model, I should say - has finally started to catch up with the technology itself. 

And so again, something like self-publishing where you have not only now access to platforms like ours and others where you can literally publish within minutes to the rest of the world, but then you combine that with print-on-demand, and the technology there, and how much quality you can now get from a book that's been printed on demand. Like, I just think we're gonna continue to see more and more really cool uses of self-publishing and even print-on-demand as we continue moving. 

There's no, like I don't even understand why some of these traditional publishers haven't already started doing cooler collaborations or integrations or things like… It doesn't even seem like they're overly concerned with the direction things are going. I think some of them have already obviously integrated some of this technology on the back end. We just don't see it you know, especially for some of their back catalogs or things that don't move very quickly, but…

Lauren: Yeah, I do think that's been interesting to see. You know, we've talked about, we did the episode recently on like, custom editions of books and exclusive editions and stuff like that. And I'm always surprised by how often Target is one of the retailers that gets exclusive editions - 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: - of books. It's very common. There are very, very many books that I can think of that have Target exclusive editions to them. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: And you know, when you look at the other books or the other retailers on the list of like, this is where you're getting exclusive editions of this book. The rest of them are bookstores. I think it's interesting that Target as a big box store is getting included in exclusive book retailer categories. And I am curious to see like, long term how that goes. You're right, if they do wind up doing any kind of self-publishing or print-on-demand or something at Target, or if they're happy to just be the distributor. 

And I'm also curious to see that. I'm curious to see long-term what happens with this book, to bring it back to Taylor Swift, as I'm always trying to do in my life. I am curious to see what happens… Like, right now we're seeing the limited release where it's a Target exclusive that is going to be available in stores on Black Friday and then online the day after. But it says everywhere like, expected to sell out limited release, you know, finite number of copies, whatever, blah, blah, blah. I'm curious to see if there winds up being a second print run that is not a Target exclusive. And if it's something - whether it's distributed by Target to other retailers, or distributed by Taylor to other retailers, or sold exclusively through Taylor's site or whatever. Like what happens six months from now after this? 

Matt: See, I think that's exactly where print-on-demand should come in, in that situation, just like it does on occasion with traditional publishers now. They sell through that first run, right? And they're still showing some demand, but not enough maybe to warrant another 10,000 copy press or something like that. You could institute print-on-demand to handle the rest of that. 

She could also do the same thing. Her team could connect that book to their website, right? And just sell through on print-on-demand after the initial Black Friday run? Maybe wait a couple of weeks to build that sort of hype again and make that exclusivity from Black Friday feel a little bit better for those people who, like you, will sit in their car in the dark crying until the store opens. But that's a great opportunity to put print-on-demand in motion. I love to see this. I'd like to see more people disrupting the traditional publishing model, because I think it's great. We'll see what happens but for now, it's probably the only time you'll ever hear me say this but kudos to Taylor Swift. 

Lauren: I'll take it. I do think there are ways to do that though in a way that feels authentic to publishing and it also like, will not alienate fans. To be fair - 

Matt: To be fair.

Lauren: This happens all the time where Taylor will release variants of albums and will say, you know, this variant is only available on the website for 72 hours. And if you don't buy it in the 72 hour window, you're never going to get it. And then two weeks later… 24 hours only, it's back up on the website, get it now while you can, and then it's gone forever. And then three weeks later, oh wait - guess what? All four variants are now available on the website again for 24 hours only, and it's like, okay. You're inventing scarcity here, which is - 

Matt: Well. 

Lauren: - you know - 

Matt: Maybe -

Lauren: - that's a good practice to do, like -  

Matt: Maybe they're inventing scarcity, and that's certainly a tactic, of course. But also, let's remember, she's still fairly new to this whole do-it-yourself thing. 

Lauren: Yes. 

Matt: So there is a bit of figuring out demand and inventory balance that they're probably working through on her team. So again, creating scarcity is something she's great at. Her team is good at, and it's a common tactic. But again, this could also be partially just them figuring out demand and inventory. So you do an initial run of books, CDs, whatever, of 10,000. That's probably a low number for Taylor Swift.

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: But anyways, you burn through that. You try to, to sort of estimate, okay, well, for a second run, how many we would need to do and should we do one? How many more people do we think out there would buy this? We've already sold 10,000 units, you know what I mean? And so there's, you don't wanna be stuck with that inventory either, because then what does she do with it? 

Lauren: Right. 

Matt: Because she's not working with a traditional distribution chain. If there's leftover inventory, her team has to figure out what to do with it. I'm sure there's always ways to get rid of it, but the point is just like traditional publishers and any other business, your goal is to try and get that equation almost as breakeven as possible, demand versus inventory stock. 

Which, by the way, is another argument for selling direct though, because you continue to catalog that data and you get to that point where now you know like, every new release we can count on an initial run of 27,000 units, right? And then we know that typically what happens is the second wave will bring about 5,000. That's easily something that print-on-demand could handle. So -

Lauren: Right. 

Matt: Second run goes to print-on-demand, and third run and subsequent runs always go print-on-demand. But you can't make those decisions intelligently if you don't have that data. And if you don't have that data, well, again, you're just guessing. 

Lauren: Right. 

Matt: The only way to get that data is… 

Lauren: The only way to get that data is to actually try it. 

Matt: Sell direct. 

Lauren: Yeah. One of the things that I think, one of the other ways that I think that you could kind of make this work, because I do ultimately want to try to, I think the way to wrap this up right now is to tie it up to like, how small business owners, indie authors, indie publishers can take something away from this themselves. 

Matt: yeah. 

Lauren: But like, to go back to the, how would you handle selling it exclusively at Target, marketing it as a Target exclusive, and then a month from now turning around and saying like, hey, now we're gonna make it available on our website. You can still create an exclusive edition, and this is something that I think that indie authors could do. You know, you say this is going to be a Target exclusive edition. We're selling 100,000 copies and those Target exclusive editions are all going to have in them… a insert front page that is a letter from Taylor with a printed signature on it, and then the front cover of the book is going to have iridescent foil on the title and whatever. You know? Okay. And then all the editions that come after that don't have that foil and don't have that like introductory cover letter in it. 

Matt: So they suck. 

Lauren: Not even worth the $40 anymore. Which also, for the record, the price point on this book is insane. 

Matt: 39.99. 

Lauren: That is so. 

Matt: For 256 color pages. 

Lauren: Full color pages. I thought it was gonna be twice that. 

Matt: I mean it easily could - but that's also a benefit of her selling. 

Lauren: I know. 

Matt: She gets to determine the price and what the profit margin is there. And if she wants to give her fans a break and not take such a high margin, she can do that. Cause now she's not splitting that money with anybody, really. 

Lauren: Yes. Yeah. Cause she's not, she's keeping the rights and she's keeping the revenue, so. 

Matt: I guarantee you had this book been done by Penguin Random House or somebody like that it'd be easily double or triple that price. 

Lauren: Oh, $100. Absolutely, without a doubt. So yeah. I think there are ways to take lessons from this and apply them, even if you are not a global superstar.

Matt: I think that absolutely there's lessons you can take away - I don't know about lessons, that might be a little bit -

Lauren: Oh I thought you were going to say I don’t know about global superstar. 

Matt: - condescending. 

Lauren: And I was going to say, we can take this outside. 

Matt: I think - You can catch me outside.

Lauren: How ‘bout that? 

Matt: Listen, I don't want to fight over Taylor's, you know, I already told you she's above a list celebrity status.

Lauren: That's true and I'll take that. 

Matt: Doesn't mean, you know, I'm gonna go listen to any of her albums.

Lauren: I don't want you to.

Matt: There's not enough screaming in those albums for me, but lessons is probably a strong word, but I do think there's inspiration to take away from this. I do think that if you look hard enough and you look at all of the details surrounding this transaction, or for lack of a better word, I do think there's probably some signals and some insight here. At the small to medium size, people have been doing this already. People with audience sizes of 5,000, 50,000, 5 million, they're already doing this. They're self-publishing, they're selling direct, they're making money, they're getting their books into the hands of their fans in a way that the fans can appreciate. Because only they can truly understand what their fans want and will purchase. 

Now when you start seeing it on Taylor Swift-sized levels, to me that's inspiring, that's inspiration. Are there lessons? Sure, I don't know if I call them lessons, but there's certainly things you can take away from here. And it certainly, I think, continues to bolster some of the value props of self-publishing. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: You know what I mean? Like those things we talked about speed to market and flexibility and control and you know, all those things. But at the end of the day I never thought I would find inspiration in something Taylor Swift did, but here we are. 

Lauren: Here we are. I'm not upset about it. 
Matt: I didn't think you would be. 

Lauren: I am really not. But I think, okay, so to your point about maybe lessons is not the best word. Maybe you're right about that. 

Matt: I mean, call it what you want, I just. Whatever. 

Lauren: Do you know that's the title of a Taylor Swift song? 

Matt: Oh my God. Can we just wrap this up? 

Lauren: No. 

Matt: I'm really regretting this now. 

Lauren: No, I do - I do want to say maybe what I mean by lessons is not necessarily lessons so much as it is… We are all watching, this is probably the largest scale self-publishing effort we are going to see in a hot minute. And it's, I think it's a great opportunity for people that are working on a smaller scale to watch how it unfolds. Watch what she has already done, watch what she's going to continue to do as we reach publication date. At the time this episode comes out the book will not actually have been published yet. So, I'll bring my copy and when I get my hands on it for our next recording after it. 

Matt: We can't wait. 

Lauren: I'm sure you're all so excited to see it. But you know, pay attention to how it unfolds and what goes on, and pay attention to what articles get written about it from a business perspective and a publishing perspective and see how you can then turn around and apply that to your own stuff.

Let the billionaire with a bunch of people to help her do the experimenting and then you get to pay attention to the results of the experiment and figure out how you can use that for your own business practices. 

Matt: All right. Anything else? 

Lauren: I feel like I had one more point and I can't remember what it was. This is what happens when we don't have an outline. Oh well. 

Matt: I'm okay with that. 

Lauren: All right, all right. 

Matt: I don't know that do this every time. 

Lauren: Yeah, no. 

Matt: I just like to point out by the way that, that your shirt was completely coincidental. 

Lauren: Oh yeah. Yes, actually this was my Taylor’s Version shirt, which is officially licensed Taylor Swift merch, bought from her store. I do have a lot of Taylor Swift stuff that isn't. 

Matt: Why would you say that on air? 

Lauren: Well, because it's stuff like the Lost Bro. Like, I have a lot of Lost Bros shirts that are - 

Matt: Taylor inspired. 

Lauren: Taylor and Disney - Yes. 

Matt: Okay. 

Lauren: Yes, no, I don't -  

Matt: Let's not get anybody in any trouble. 

Lauren: Yeah, no, no, no, I don't. I don't mess with that. 

Matt: You have a lot of Taylor-inspired merchandise. 

Lauren: Yes. 

Matt: Just like we both have a lot of Disney-inspired merchandise. 

Lauren: Exactly. 

Matt: Yeah, okay. 

Lauren: You know, if this episode had been about copyright, maybe we could have talked about that.

Matt: Nobody wants to talk about copyrights for an hour. 

Lauren: Email us and or leave a comment on this post on social if you would rather have heard about copyright for published authors. 

Matt: I got 10 bucks because we get zero emails about copyright. 

Lauren: Okay. Well, you're probably right. That doesn't mean anything. 

Matt: We'll see. 

Lauren: Okay. In the meantime, thank you for listening to whatever that just was. 

Matt: Whatever this was. 

Lauren: Whatever this was. If we have any more information about it, we'll be happy to share it with you, don't you worry.

Matt: I'm sure they'll be waiting on baited breath. 

Lauren: I'm sure they will be. In the meantime you can always go back and listen to other episodes. You can find us on Lulu social media. You can find us on YouTube for any video episodes that you haven't watched yet. 

Matt: Or lurking around your local Target on the 29th of November.

Lauren: One of those local targets will have me there. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: I'm not telling you which one. All right. Until then thanks for listening and we'll be back next week.

Matt: Later.