Is Taylor Swift Releasing a Book?

Over the past day, reports have emerged about Taylor Swift potentially releasing her debut novel. However, Swift herself hasn’t made any public statements regarding this. So, what’s the real story behind these rumors?

According to The Sun, Swift has filed a new trademark for a book titled A Girl Called Girl, which she supposedly wrote as a teenager. The trademark apparently covers merchandise and audio versions, suggesting that Swift might be preparing to release it to the public.

It’s important to note, according to the United States Patent And Trademark Office (USPTO), that maintaining a trademark registration requires filing specific documents at set intervals after the initial registration. The Sun mentions that Swift first secured the trademark for this book in 2015. Part of keeping a trademark active involves filing paperwork “between the ninth and tenth years after the registration date,” per USPTO.

Since it has now been nine years since 2015, it’s plausible that Swift is simply following the requisite procedures to keep her trademark active rather than moving towards an actual release.

Notably, previous mentions of the book used a slightly different title, A Girl Named Girl.

In a 2012 interview with Vogue, Swift discussed the book, recounting:

“We lived on this basin where all this magical stuff would happen. One time a dolphin swam into our basin. We had this family of otters that would live on our dock at night. We’d turn the light on and you’d see them, you know, hanging out, just being otters. And then one summer, there was a shark that washed up on our dock. I ended up writing a novel that summer because I wouldn’t go in the water. I locked myself in the den and wrote a book. When I was 14 [laughs]. Because of a shark!”

In 2013, she remarked in an interview:

“All my friends were back in Pennsylvania and so I had nothing to do. I had this epiphany; I’m going to be a novelist and I’m gonna write novels and that’s gonna be my career path. […] I would write different chapters of this book and send them back to my friends and I’d write them into the book under different names but totally describe their personalities. It was a really fun way to spend the summer. […]

You can convey a thought or a story or completely describe a character or a situation through words and the whole process of editing and re-editing and rethinking and imagining. I think that that’s what I loved about writing the novel and that’s what I love about poetry and songwriting.”

Additionally, in a 2015 interview for GQ, Chuck Klosterman wrote:

“We chat a little about Ryan Adams and a little about books. Swift mentions that she wrote a non-autobiographical novel when she was 14, titled A Girl Named Girl, and that her parents still have it. I ask her what it was about, assuming she will laugh. But her memory of the plot is remarkably detailed. (It’s about a mother who wants a son but instead has a girl.)”

More recently, a theory emerged that Swift had secretly written a novel called Argylle, which was adapted into a 2024 movie of the same name. However, the film’s director, Matthew Vaughn, debunked this rumor. He said, “I’m not a big internet guy, and it was actually my daughter who came up to me — this is the power of celebrity and the internet — and said, ‘You never told me Taylor wrote the book!’ And I’m looking at her going, ‘What are you talking about, Taylor Swift wrote the book? She didn’t write the book!’ And I was laughing because I was like, ‘It’s not true! She didn’t write the book!’ But my daughter was convinced of it.”