President Barack Obama has another best-seller on his hands.
The first volume of Obama’s presidential memoirs, “A Promised Land,” which hit shelves Tuesday, sold more than 887,000 copies (including preorders) across all formats in the U.S. and Canada on its first day of release, publisher Penguin Random House announced Wednesday.
It’s on track to be the best-selling presidential memoir in modern history. By comparison, Bill Clinton’s “My Life” sold around 400,000 copies on its first day and George W. Bush’s “Decision Points” around 220,000, with sales for each memoir currently between 3.5 million and 4 million copies.
“We are thr!lled with the first day sales,” said David Drake, publisher of the Penguin Random House imprint Crown.“They reflect the widespread excitement that readers have for President Obama’s highly ant!cipated and extraordinarily written book.”
“A Promised Land” charts Obama’s path to the White House up to 2011 and the k!lling of L*den. In it, the 59-year-old former president reflects on his legacy and the space between his presidential ambitions and the political reality of a Republican-controlled House and Senate that ha-mpered them.
Obama also authored the memoirs “The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream” (2006) and “Dreams from My Father: A Story of Ra-ce and Inher!tance” (1995), as well as the 2010 children’s book, “Of Thee, I Sing: A Letter to My Daughters.”
Barack isn’t the only best-selling writer in the Obama family. Former first lady Michelle Obama’s 2018 memoir “Becoming” sold 725,000 copies on its first day and more than 1.4 million copies in its first week of release, becoming one of the fastest-selling nonfiction books in history. It has since sold 10 million copies worldwide and is still so in demand that Crown, which publishes both Obamas and reportedly paid around $60 million for their books, has yet to release a paperback.
This Article First Published On USATODAY