Note 2: Why Do Book Lovers Love Taylor Swift So Much?
Midnights broke records for streams in a day...was it Bookstagram? (probably not but let's discuss)
Initially, I wasn’t going to talk about Taylor Swift. Nothing against Taylor or her album, but simply because the only marketing strategy it needed was to BE a new Taylor Swift album.
With nearly 65 million monthly listeners on Spotify, 229 million Instagram followers, and a history of chart-topping albums that have equally been cultural phenomenons; Midnights breaking Spotify, Amazon & Apple Music records for streams and sales in a day isn’t surprising to anyone.
What made me change my mind was seeing just how engaged the Bookstagram community was with the release of Midnights 📚
Bookstagram: Proper noun
The community of book and reading-oriented accounts on Instagram, characterised by artful photos of books. (WordSense Dictionary)
A wonderful corner of Instagram where you will find a subculture of people who eat, sleep and breathe books. They’re avid readers, book collectors, reviewers, authors, pretty cover enthusiasts, storytellers and above all friends. (My Dictionary)
The #bookstagram alone has 82.1M posts, not including the various niche hashtags.
See also : BookTok & BookTube.
What I have noticed, in my time lost within the pages of bookstagram, is that book lovers LOVE Taylor Swift (and Harry Styles but this isn’t about him right now).
It almost feels like a requirement. A book in one hand, iced coffee in the other, ‘All too well’ playing in your headphones…bliss.
Swifties make themselves known and profess their love for T.Swift and her music in their bios, account names, memes, stories and posts.
This peaked with the Midnights challenge …
What is the Midnights challenge 📚✨ -
Back in August when Ms. Swift announced her 10th studio album, Midnights, she described it as detailing the ‘stories of 13 sleepless nights’, little did she know that the bookstagram community would take to this concept so deeply.
A few weeks and the #bookstagrammidnights / #midnightsbookchallenge was born.
The aim, simply, is to share 13 books that gave you sleepless nights.
This was just the beginning. The day of the release saw floods of reactions to each track and self-classifications of what group you belonged to - were you a ‘Vigilante Sh*t’ or a ‘Sweet Nothing’ type of person…increasingly the answer was c) all of the above. It’s still being talked about and dissected all over the book web from booksta to booktok.
What IS it that this community connects so strongly with Taylor and the Taylor Swift Cinematic Universe? I have a few thoughts...
Storytelling 📖 - Taylor has been dropping reels on her Instagram detailing the process and story behind tracks on the album. Do you know who loves a good story? Readers!
Poetic lyrics ✍️ - Similar to the above, something Taylor has always been good at is good writing and telling a story. She openly discusses her personal struggles, life, heartbreak and love - relatable topics for this online bookish audience primarily Gen Z - Millennials.
Main character music ✨ - There’s just something about the music that Taylor Swift makes and her brand, that feels very ‘main character’. This trend has been everywhere in the last couple of years, along with the idea of romanticising your life. You can’t listen to ‘Lavender Haze’ and tell me it doesn’t belong in a hair-blowing-out-the-window YA/coming-of-age film scene from 2012.
Shared values ❤️ - A big part of Taylor’s brand is being pro-women and creating a strong community with the women in her life. This dates back to the ‘Bad Blood’ music video and her ‘squad’ and is repeated in Midnights with videos starring Haim, Laura Dern, Dita Von Tease and a feature from Lana Del Rey (controversies aside). Bookstagram shares these values and finds community not only in books but in being Taylor Swift fans.
Nostalgia ☁️ - Quite simply they grew up on Taylor. ‘Love Story’ was released in 2008 and you’ll be hard done by to find a 00’s playlist or karaoke set that doesn’t feature this work of art. This young audience has grown up alongside Taylor.
It’s romantic and it’s ‘anti-heroine’ 💋 - Both two very popular book genres.
Also, she likes to read herself so a big bonus!
Even better if?
How can you get better than record-breaking? You probably can’t, but in terms of continuing Taylor’s success and further cementing her relationship with this audience Taylor could:
Create an entire soundtrack/album for a book adaptation - There are many book adaptations in the works, Taylor was recently in the soundtrack for the controversial ‘Where the Crawdads Sing’ movie with ‘Carolina’ but this could go even further. There are many more in the works, books like The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo that bookstagram loves, instead of one single could she produce the full movie soundtrack full album for a book movie similar to Kendrick Lamar and Black Panther or Maisie Peters and Trying?
Release a physical book of the writing process/stories behind the songs, draft lyrics and doodles similar to poetry anthologies like Rupi Kaur. There is speculation that she might have already done this as a poetry collection named ‘The Lavender Haze’ was released just days before the album by a seemingly fictional author…and I hope it’s true!
Lastly, release a stationery collection - Not merchy stationery splashed with her name, but genuinely pretty and useful pieces like Papier. This audience uses a lot of pens, highlighters and sticky notes for annotations as well as book journals.