Honoring the 10 year anniversary of a pop star, a book will be released without her knowledge.

Taylor Swift, arguably one of the biggest pop stars of our generation has a book coming out October 24th, 2016 but is not writing it.

I was excited when I heard that Taylor Swift was releasing a memoir, until I read further. Instead of fans creating new content such as stories about meeting her or what Swift means to them, past interviews of Taylor Swift and supplementary content will be consolidated into one book.This does not seem like a great use of fans, and I see this mainly as a way for Simon & Schuster to make money.

Simon & Schuster is publishing the book and used crowdsourcing to gather material for the book. Simon & Schuster states on their website that Taylor Swift is not involved in the creation of the book. I assume the statement is for liability reasons and to avoid confusion from fans who thought Taylor Swift had written her own book, as I did.

The lines that seperate a fan from a producer are becoming blurred as more content is created and produced by fans. Audience interaction is an integral part of the business model of media today, and Simon & Schuster clearly realizes this; they even created a #Swiftfanbook hashtag for the book and encourage users to submit fan made content for the book.

There is interpretive play going on, as each fan gets to have fun with the book by entering in contests which allow them creative control. The contests allowed fans to create a title for the book, design a cover, and become an honorary author- i.e. the face of the book and have the chance to work with the editors of Simon & Schuster. The cover for the book has not been released yet.The winners received a stipend ranging from $2,000 to $10,000 if chosen.

Since both the fans and book publisher are working together who owns the intellectual property? The fine print of the contest states that Simon & Schuster will pay the fan royalties, but will ultimately own and have creative control over the fan created content. The contest asks fans to submit photos they have taken of Swift which allows Simon & Schuster to avoid paying large sums for high quality photos of Swift.

Is this a smart marketing tactic and means of Simon & Schuster honoring the fans of Taylor Swift? Or is this a way for Simon & Schuster to spend little money and while making a big profit?

I wonder if Taylor Swift will comment about the book and whether the book will do well. You can pre-order the book here.