Taylor Swift may be winding her tour down this week, but the first full-time Swift reporter is just getting started.

Bryan West, the journalist who made waves as the Taylor Swift beat writer for The Nashville Tennessean and USA TODAY, is commemorating his 13 months on the job with a book recapping his reporting on the Eras Tour. “This Swift Beat,” (160 pages, $44.95) is available for U.S. readers to order online now before it begins shipping next week, and will be available for international readers to order on Amazon at some point this month.  

It chronicles West’s reporting on the record-breaking Eras Tour, during which he’s attended 15 in person and covered nearly 13 days worth of 3.5-hour shows via livestream. Through interviewing fans around the world and reporting on the tour’s enormous impact, West maintains that the Eras Tour has set a new bar for live music.

“I think this is a time we’re going to look back [on] and be like, ‘this was the concert of our lifetime,’ ” he says. “Living in Nashville, there are a lot of concerts that come through and when you’re walking in, you have to be like, ‘OK, this is not a Taylor Swift production. This is not going to be three and a half hours. It’s not going to be 45+ songs. It’s going to be an hour and a half.” 

Several books about Swift have debuted in recent months, including a new one about the tour from Swift herself. While the latter focuses more on the behind-the-scenes aspect and singer’s own perspective on the tour, “This Swift Beat” is about the news surrounding the Eras Tour and Swifties themselves. 

“What’s cool about this book that I really liked putting together was the fact that it was about the fans and finding out their stories,” West says. “There’s an entire community. This is one of the unique fandoms where there are so many niche experts.” 

But reporting on Taylor Swift as a full-time job requires so much more than just writing about music and interviewing fans. It’s driven West to cover every topic imaginable, from business and economic impacts to geopolitics and international terrorism. Sports, too, thanks to Swift’s boyfriend, Travis Kelce. West had only ever watched the Super Bowl for the commercials, but now he’s watching intently during every Kansas City Chiefs game. 

“Even when you think it’s quiet, a quiet Taylor’s creating. A quiet Taylor’s planning. If Tortured Poets was three years in the making, she already has the next three years planned out.

“With this beat, the most surprising thing is that Taylor truly touches everything,” he says. 

West has had a grab-bag of favorite moments from this nearly two-year tour, from fan projects to mid-song chants. But his personal favorite was night 4 in Paris, when he and a friend found two cheap tickets “maybe 20 minutes before the show” and decided on a whim to attend. It would wind up being Swift’s 87th show, the one where she blew kisses to Kelce in the stands and performed “The Alchemy,” her football-themed love song from TTPD, during the acoustic set. 

“We went and stood at the back of the floor and just danced,” West recalls. “And I remember being like, ‘I’m going to take this concert in and just remember this moment.” 

What’s next for Swift? We’ve talked to several music reporters over the last few months, all of whom have very different theories and wishes. (Rolling Stone writer Rob Sheffield previously told Taypedia about how he’s been covering Swift for her entire career and “should know better by now there’s no point trying to predict her next move, yet I can’t help it.”)

Aside from the inevitable releases of Reputation (Taylor’s Version) and Taylor Swift (Taylor’s Version), West is “convinced” she’s also working on TS 12, which he hopes will bring out “rocker Taylor.” And he predicts that, rather than an Eras Tour documentary, Swift will instead release a docuseries on the tour. 

“I am curious how she goes on tour again,” West adds. “Do you strip down the entire show and just do acoustic, almost resetting the experience? Do you maybe throw a Lover Fest, or a Taychella, or even a Comic Con-type thing, like Taylor Swift Con? Do you bring everyone to you for an event? Would she do a residency? Do you maybe do a completely different show? And that’s usually what she does.” 

Regardless of what Swift decides to do after night 3 of the Vancouver shows, rest assured: West will remain busy with his job. 

“Everyone always asks — and this is so interesting to me — ‘Do you have a job on December 9?’ And I’m like, ‘yes, it’s an indefinite job.’ Taylor doesn’t go away,” he says. “Even when you think it’s quiet, a quiet Taylor’s creating. A quiet Taylor’s planning. If Tortured Poets was three years in the making, she already has the next three years planned out. So I just know I’m going to be covering her as much as I can.”