Taylor Swift fans lined up at Target to buy her self-published book. It turned out to be riddled with errors.

• Taylor Swift released “The Eras Tour Book” at Target on Friday.
• It instantly became Target’s best-selling book of the year.
• The book had some issues, from typos to printing mistakes.

Black Friday was a Swiftie holiday this year — though it didn’t bring every fan holiday cheer.

Taylor Swift released “The Eras Tour Book” along with a vinyl and CD version of “The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology” on Friday.

Eager fans lined up in the wee hours of the morning to get a copy. Business Insider spoke to shoppers who arrived at a Lynchburg, Virginia, store at 3 a.m. to ensure they could secure the book and vinyl album.

Amid the excitement of a new Swift product, some fans quickly pointed out that the book had multiple printing and layout errors. Publishing experts told Business Insider that Swift’s decision to self-publish might have contributed to the hiccups.

Representatives for Swift, Target, and ST8MNT, the brand agency credited with art direction, design, and illustration, did not respond to requests for comment.

The ‘Errors’ Tour Book

Swift sidestepped traditional publishers for her 256-page coffee table book, publishing it through Taylor Swift Publications and selling it exclusively at Target for $39.99. It features over 500 images, some of which fans had never seen, and Swift’s musings on the tour.

Following the book’s release, some Swifties posted on social media about issues they noticed in their copies of “The Eras Tour Book” — or as they called it, “The Errors Tour Book,” a nod to an inside joke between Swifties to refer to mistakes the singer made on the tour.

Some of these problems seemingly appear in multiple copies, like the “Folklore” song “This Is Me Trying” being listed as “This Is Me Rying” in a section about surprise songs. The same section lists “Gold Rush,” a track from “Evermore,” as one word, even though the song is two words.

Likewise, the book listed Swift’s stop in Toronto as “November 14-16, 22-23,” but she also played in the city on November 21.

Shoppers also questioned the book’s layout and photos. A handful of pictures of Swift were arranged in a two-page spread with the singer in the center, which fans said made it difficult to see her.

Others said images in the book appeared slightly blurry, which made them wonder if they were stills from “The Eras Tour” film instead of high-resolution shots.

Aside from typos, Swift’s written sections — including notes to the fans, paragraphs about each era of the tour, and information about her pre-show rituals — garnered mixed responses, with some expecting more insights from Swift herself despite it being largely marketed as a photo book.

Eryn Kieffer, a 23-year-old content creator and longtime Swiftie from Los Angeles, told BI she loved the sections Swift wrote but had anticipated more behind-the-scenes content.

“I thought there would be a lot more little blurbs about the making of the show,” she said. “Not full essays, but like, ‘Oh, here’s me behind stage,’ you know, little things and a few more behind-the-scenes pictures.”

Still, Kieffer said she would have wanted the book even if she had known there wouldn’t be as much behind-the-scenes content.

Many other fans also shared how much they loved the book on social media in the days after the book’s release, regardless of production missteps.

Printing problems

The biggest problem with the book appeared to be printing issues in certain copies of Swift’s book. The text was bleeding off the pages in some — though it’s unclear if that was a stylistic choice — and others said they had books printed entirely upside down or with folds on random pages.

Erik Hane, the founder of Headwater Literary Management, told BI that working with a traditional publisher may have helped Swift avoid the typos and misprints.

“The errors being described are ones that a competent production department — or honestly, most production departments of any quality — at a traditional publisher would have caught and corrected before printing,” he said.

“This is especially true for the quality and caliber of publishers that would have been available to Taylor Swift had she chosen to traditionally publish,” Hane added.

Jessika Hazelton, manager and creative director at The Troy Book Makers, a book publisher based in Schodack Landing, New York, told BI that a rushed timeline could also have contributed to the errors.

“We often tell our clients there is no such thing as a perfect book,” Hazelton said. “Even if the copy was well-edited, and everything was reviewed carefully before the book goes to print, it is possible for mistakes to slip through.”

“For something like this ‘Eras Tour Book,’ I suspect there was a tight deadline to get the book out in time for the holidays, and it was not looked over as thoroughly as it might have been,” she said.

Hane told BI that Swift’s business reasons for self-publishing — like saving money and having total creative control — made sense. Still, the errors might be a side effect of that decision.

“This is one of the drawbacks of that choice: You don’t get the production expertise that would have caught and corrected these mistakes and perhaps would have even added value to the physical package of the book in other ways we’ll never know about,” he said.

Traditionally published books can have errors, too

Traditionally published books aren’t always error-free.

For instance, when Red Tower published Rebecca Yarros’ “Iron Flame” in November 2023, readers said they received misprinted copies, sharing photos and videos of books printed backward or crooked.

Likewise, social media users shared that they received misprinted copies of Sally Rooney’s “Intermezzo,” published by the Macmillan imprint Farrar, Straus and Giroux in September.

Red Tower and Macmillan did not respond to requests for comment from BI.

Despite the misprints, Swift’s decision to self-publish seemed to pay off from a business perspective.

A Target representative told BI that by 10 a.m. ET on Friday, just hours after it became available, “The Eras Tour Book” had become Target’s highest-selling book of 2024. On Sunday, Swift also released a second stock of “The Tortured Poet’s Department: The Anthology” vinyl at Target to meet fans’ demand.

Read the original article on Business Insider