Among the details on Target’s product page for the official Taylor Swift Eras Tour commemorative book—256 pages; 500 images and personal reflections written by Swift—was one unusual tidbit buried under the header “Specifications.” Most of Swift’s fans surely glossed over the section, which provided information less relevant than the book’s cost ($39.99) and release date (in stores on Black Friday and online the next day). But the book industry noticed: Her publisher is listed as “Taylor Swift Publications.” The superstar is bypassing traditional publishers and releasing her book herself. This perhaps isn’t so shocking—she loves to cut out a middleman. Swift issued her Eras concert movie directly to AMC Theatres and began rerecording her early albums after an ownership dispute; she also has a long-standing retail relationship with Target, which will be the book’s exclusive retailer.

For the companies that produce and sell books, this could be interpreted as a warning sign, because every dollar spent on what is sure to be a massively successful product (Swifties are such prodigious spenders that economists feared her tour would trigger a surge in European inflation) is a dollar that publishers are missing out on. Instead, her decision is less a bellwether for a big-name-oriented industry than a sign of the times—a symptom, not a cause, of a shift in the relationship between these businesses and the famous.

The day after Swift announced her book, David Shelley, the CEO of Hachette, one of the “Big Five” book publishers, said something at the Frankfurt Book Fair that got far less attention: He shared that Hachette will focus on introducing readers to an author’s existing catalog, in order “to have a business that isn’t super reliant on hits.” Best sellers, established tentpoles of the industry, were now “icing on the cake,” he explained. The book industry still welcomes the hype and sales that a star can bring, but more and more, publishers also rely on what they already have: generations’ worth of older titles—what they call the backlist.

Shelley’s sentiments reflect longer-term trends for celebrity authors. Swift isn’t the first star to finesse her own advantageous publishing situation. Lately, various writers with meaningful personal resources—money, followers, notoriety—have struck out on their own or made nontraditional arrangements. Colin Kaepernick and Donald Trump have released books through their own outfits. In 2022, Brandon Sanderson, a prolific and popular sci-fi and fantasy writer, raised millions of dollars through a Kickstarter to self-publish four of his novels. Colleen Hoover, the mega-best-selling author of genre fiction, has continued self-publishing books even after entering into a relationship with Atria Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster (along with signing contracts for forthcoming titles with two additional publishers).

But despite the profit incentives of doing everything yourself, it seems unlikely that every celebrity will follow in Swift’s footsteps. Publishing a book is hard and expensive, and requires more than just publicity know-how. Few stars, especially those merely looking to burnish their personal brand, will have the stamina or interest to source editors, lawyers, designers, proofers, rights specialists, and all of the other professionals required to create, distribute, and sell a book. The editing process in particular is useful to many people “regardless of their stature,” Jane Friedman, who reports on the publishing industry, told me. Plus, the less glamorous parts of publishing—How do you get your title into a local bookstore in Des Moines, or Munich? What happens if your shipment of books falls into the sea?—are better left as someone else’s problem. Many celebrities less enthusiastic than Swift about building an empire may think, as Friedman put it, “Do I really need to futz around with this?” (Swift, with her Target relationship and merchandising expertise, is well equipped to futz around with it.)

If the value that publishers bring to authors can vary, the value that famous people bring to publishers has traditionally been significant. Shelley, the Hachette CEO and a self-professed Swift fan, told me that “obviously, I’d be lying if I said it wouldn’t be my dream for us to publish a Taylor Swift book.” A big best seller can buoy a business. At the 2022 antitrust trial over the proposed merger of Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster, executives explained that “publishing is a portfolio business, with profitability driven by a small percentage of books.” This setup means that a lot of resources are still marshaled toward projects for established authors, many of them famous.

But “celebrities are not some financial saving grace of traditional publishers,” Friedman told me. They can be meaningful contributors to a company’s bottom line, she said, but “they require as much work to sell well as most titles.” Simply slapping a famous name on a book doesn’t always move product. Sometimes, celebrities parlay their name and following into big-time sales and hype—though, of course, not all of them (or their projects) are created equal. Britney Spears’s 2023 book, The Woman in Me, sold nearly 1 million copies, according to Circana Bookscan, which tracks sales numbers. In other cases, performance is less spectacular—see Billie Eilish’s self-titled 2023 book, which sold only about 81,000 copies. Readers want something new and compelling to dig into, especially when they can see endless images and posts from their favorite stars online anytime. That sales variability for even big-name authors is part of why publishers have been doubling down on their new (old) stream of revenue.

The “Vegas” model of betting on a few big titles each year is receding in favor of a focus on what a company has already published (or obtained by acquiring the backlist of a competitor), Thad McIlroy, a publishing-industry analyst, told me. Long a smaller concern of publishers, interest in backlists accelerated as Amazon and social media scrambled the way books are sold and discovered. (See Chris Anderson’s 2006 book, The Long Tail, published by Hachette, for more on that phenomenon.) Early in the pandemic, people were buying lots of books, many of them old, and this accelerated the shift: In 2020, two-thirds of book sales were backlist titles, and by 2022, that number was closer to 70 percent. Shelley reaffirmed to me what he’d said at Frankfurt: Although one-off wins are “always fun,” an emphasis on the backlist and working with authors across multiple books is central at Hachette. TikTok in particular, he added, has “fundamentally altered” the way people find books, allowing decades-old works—he cited the late sci-fi author Octavia Butler’s novels as an example—to find new and engaged audiences online.

Nothing happens very quickly in the publishing world, and a sudden break from big hits is unlikely. Swift’s new book is more likely to become a memento than a classic; in the coming years, a more conventional project from the singer could well result in the kind of traditional book deal any publisher would be delighted to make. Already, the industry is awaiting her next work—Memoir? Long-rumored novel?—and guessing, or at least hoping, that she will turn to them.

Even so, one of the most likely (and most prudent) courses for the Big Five over the longer term may be to spend less energy chasing big names. Maris Kreizman, an author with deep experience in the industry, told me that she was optimistic about the change in priorities. “I hope that this would take some of [publishers’] attention away from landing the celebrities,” she said. “The amount of time and energy they spend on those kinds of books could be used to help other books grow and find an audience.” This virtuous cycle can happen only if publishers place the same kind of faith in other authors that they've been placing in famous figures; with fewer celebrities in the picture, perhaps they can focus on the weird, vibrant work of smaller authors. That sort of exodus, far from casting a chill through the book world, might actually make it more interesting.

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When I was teaching indoor cycling every week, an unexpected benefit of the gig was free ice cream. One of the class regulars had an ice-cream machine at home and sometimes brought samples for me to try, in flavors such as pumpkin and pistachio. I think he did this not only because he was a nice person but also because in class, I was the nicest version of myself: warm, welcoming, and encouraging to the point of profound corniness, despite my usual caustic tendencies.

I noticed this friendliness in others too. Two people who met in my class started dating. Strangers who became friends there went out for post-workout coffees. Two of the other class regulars invited me to go skiing with them. Many of the good friends I have at age 35 are people I met in exercise classes I attended regularly. These experiences have convinced me that group fitness classes are the best place to make friends as an adult—an idea supported by research that suggests that the glow of exercise’s feel-good chemicals has interpersonal benefits.

Once, countless friendships were born in what the sociologist Ray Oldenburg called “third places”: physical spaces that aren’t a home or a workplace, don’t charge (much) for entry, and exist in large part to foster conversation. Over the past several decades, though—and especially as a result of the pandemic—third places such as bars and cafés have begun playing a much smaller role in social life, depriving American adults of opportunities for chance encounters that can lead to friendships. Perhaps that’s partly why Americans rank improving their relationships among their top New Year’s resolutions.

Group fitness classes don’t exactly fit the definition of a third place: They cost money, and the primary activities within them are sweating, grunting, and skipping a few reps when the instructor isn’t looking. But they fulfill many conditions that social-psychology research has repeatedly shown to help forge meaningful connections between strangers: proximity (being in the same place), ritual (at the same time, over and over), accumulation (for many hours), and shared experiences or interests (because you do and like the same things).

[From the December 2019 issue: I joined a stationary-biker gang]

Sussing out shared interests can be horribly awkward when you meet someone new at work or even at a party. Group fitness classes make it a little easier, Stephanie Roth Goldberg, an athlete psychotherapist in New York, told me. “Automatically, when you walk into a fitness class, you likely are sharing the idea that ‘We like to exercise,’ or ‘We like to do this particular kind of exercise,’” she said. “It breaks the ice differently than standing in a bar or at someone’s house.” Of course, breaking the ice still requires someone to say something, which, if you’re sweaty and huffing, is frankly terrifying. Whether I’m an instructor or a classmate, one simple tactic has never failed me: I simply walk up to someone after class and say, “Hey, good job!”

Proximity, ritual, and accumulation all require a certain amount of time, which can be hard to come by in a country that requires and rewards long hours at work. But you’re already making time for exercise class, and it provides those conditions; benefitting from them mostly requires acknowledging that you’ve already set yourself up for friendship. Danielle Friedman, a journalist and the author of Let’s Get Physical, told me that breaking through what she calls the “social code of anonymity” is key to making friends. “If you’ve been going to the same class for a while and start seeing the same people, don’t pretend like you’ve never interacted before,” she said.

That kind of friendliness requires adopting the clichéd feel-goodery inherent in many group fitness classes. In my spin classes, I’d cringe whenever I caught myself doling out motivational platitudes—mostly “We’re all in this together!” because I needed the reminder too, as I tried to talk and spin at the same time. Inevitably, though, someone would “Woo!” in response and reenergize the whole room. I’d load up my playlists with high-tempo remixes of early-aughts Top 40 hits and catch people singing along. One of my favorite instructors in a class I attended regularly instituted “Fun Friday,” when we’d warm up by doing silly little relay races or grade-school-style games; my blood ran cold the first time she told us to partner up for this cheesefest, but I had a blast. Everyone did.

In a world that prizes ironic detachment, embracing such earnest silliness can feel deeply uncomfortable. But—and you might as well get used to hearing this kind of phrase now, if you’re going to start attending classes—you just have to push through. “When you’re sweating, feeling a little out of control of your physical self, whooping and yelling, there’s a vulnerability,” Friedman said. “If you buy in, then you’ve shared something. There aren’t that many contexts as adults where you have that opportunity to be vulnerable together.”

[Read: Why making friends in midlife is so hard]

A room full of grown adults flailing, shouting, and running miles without ever going anywhere is a fundamentally ridiculous prospect. Ridiculous things, however, play a crucial role in connecting with others: They make us laugh. Studies show that laughing with others facilitates social connection by helping us feel that we have more in common. The “happy hormones” released during exercise—endorphins, dopamine, and serotonin—are also associated with bonding. In particular, exercising in sync with others promotes close relationships.

Even if you don’t find your next best friend at Zumba, getting into a fitness habit of some kind might help you meet people and make friends in other spaces. “The more that people can step out of their comfort zone in one setting, the less intimidating it is to do in other settings,” Goldberg said. Perhaps you’ll even become the version of yourself who inspires people to bring you homemade ice cream. Win-win.