Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour Book – the official book of the tour, of the albums, of the hits by the world’s number one artist (just don’t tell Billboard) – is off to a flying start.
According to a report in The Hollywood Reporter the book has notched up 814,000 sales in its first weekend.
Wisely choosing to launch during the US’s Thanksgiving weekend, the book has clearly found favour with shoppers searching for the ideal gift for a resident Swifty, or those simply in need of an extended Swift fix as the Eras tour finally grinds to a halt in Canada with the last gig having taken place yesterday in Vancouver.
The book’s sales have so far only ever been bested by the first volume of Barack Obama’s presidential memoirs, A Promised Land, which has narrowly retained its number one slot by selling 816,000 copies its first week on shelves in 2020.
Perhaps more remarkably, the book is currently the subject of a Target store exclusive, meaning that while the American retail giant is putting its full weight behind shifting the tome, it’s still got the rest of retail, online (aka Amazon) and the sprawling Christmas retail period to come.
It’s essentially an extended, hard-backed tour program spanning 256-pages with more than 500 photos and personal ‘reflections from Swift’, and while it’s proved a huge hit, fans have taken to social media to spell out the existence of spelling mistakes and complain about some blurry photos.
Still, could be worse.
Putting the star’s US success into perspective alongside similarly weighty UK fare, Boris Johnson’s Unleashed – covering all the fun he had as London mayor, dragging us out of Europe, then catching Covid full in the face - notched up 42,528 sales in its first week, and dropped 62% in its second.
That at least outsold David Cameron’s 2019 memoir, For the Record, which earned 20,792 sales in its first week.
And things could be even worse. Liz Truss only sold 2,228 copies of her memoir, Ten Years to Save the West in the same timeframe.
Looks like we have a winner.
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