By Jeph Ajobaju, Chief Copy Editor
Barack Obama has made multiple histories with A Promised Land, his memoir that sold nearly 890,000 in the United States and Canada in its first 24 hours, the most in such genre, and is on the cusp of becoming the bestselling presidential memoir ever.
This is the first of his two volumes on the historic journey of the first Black president of the United States which lasted two terms from 2009 to 2017 but with layers of preparation dating back to his childhood.
Obama has already registered his literally prowess with two books Dreams from My Father (1995) and The Audacity of Hope (2006). Both have sold millions of copies.
Both he and his wife, Michelle, have a book deal withPenguin Random House reportedly worth millions of dollars.
Michelle already broke new ground in 2018 when her own memoir Becoming sold 725,000in the first 24 hours.
Becoming 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.
The first-day sales of A Promised Land, which set a record for Penguin Random House, includes pre-orders, e-books and audio, as reported by The Guardian (UK).
Eyeing 500K sales in 10 days
“We are thrilled 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 anticipated and extraordinarily written book.”
The only book by a former White House resident to come close to that sales figure was Michelle Obama’s own memoir Becoming, which sold 725,000 copies in North America its first day and has topped 10 million worldwide since its release in 2018.
By midday on November 18, A Promised Land was No 1 on Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble.com.
James Daunt, the chief executive of Barnes & Noble, said that the superstore chain easily sold more than 50,000 copies in the first 24 hours and hoped to reach half a million within 10 days.
“So far it has been neck and neck with Michelle Obama’s book,” he said.
Comparison with other books
By comparison, Bill Clinton’s My Life sold about 400,000 copies in North America in its first day and George W Bush’s Decision Points approximately 220,000 with sales for each memoir currently between 3.5 million and 4 million copies.
The fastest selling book in memory remains JK Rowling’s seventh and final Harry Potter novel Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, which came out in 2007 and sold more than 8 million copies within 24 hours.
Obama’s 768-page memoir was released just two weeks after Election Day and has already made headlines for its account of his time in the White House, key moments in his presidency – such as the fight over the Affordable Care Act and the killing of Osama bin Laden – and his reflections on the rise of Donald Trump.
“To read Barack Obama’s autobiography in the last, snarling days of Donald Trump is to stare into an abyss between two opposite ends of humanity, and wonder once again at how the same country came to choose two such disparate men,” wrote The Guardian’s Julian Borger in his recent review.
Obama himself acknowledges that he didn’t intend for the book, the first of two planned volumes, to arrive so close to a presidential election or to take nearly four years after he left the White House.
In the introduction, dated August 2020, Obama writes that “the book kept growing in length and scope” as he found more words were needed.
He was also working under conditions he “didn’t fully anticipate”, from the pandemic to the Black Lives Matters protests, to, “most troubling of all”, how the country’s “democracy seems to be teetering on the brink of crisis”.
Risky timing
According to The Associated Press (AP), Obama’s memoir, which came out on November 17, and has a list price of $45, had unusually risky timing for a book of such importance to the author, to readers, and to the publishing industry.
It came out just two weeks after Election Day and could have been overshadowed had the race still been in doubt or perhaps unwanted by distressed Obama fans if Trump had defeated Democratic nominee Joe Biden.
But Biden won and his victory likely renews interest in an era when he was Obama’s trusted and popular vice president.
Rare stature
Because of the coronavirus pandemic, Obama will not go on the all-star arena tour Michelle Obama had for Becoming.
But he benefits from the attention of any memoir by a former president and by the special attention for Obama, who has the rare stature among politicians of writing his own books and for attracting as much or more attention for how he tells a story than for the story itself.
AP recalls that Obama has already written two acclaimed, million-selling works, Dreams from My Father published in 1995; and The Audacity of Hope, which came out in 2006.
His new book covers some of the same time period as his previous ones, while continuing his story through the first two and a half years of his presidency and the 2011 killing of Osama bin Laden by the Navy SEALS.
Publishers Weekly praised the book as “shot through with memorable turns of phrase,” while other reviews were more qualified, calling the book all too reflective of Obama’s thoughtful, even-handed style.
The New York Times’ Jennifer Szalai wrote that the “most audacious thing” about “A Promised Land” is “the beaming portrait” of Obama on the cover.
The Washington Post’s Carlos Lozada noted that in “domestic policy and foreign affairs, in debates over culture and race, Obama splits differences, clings to the middle ground and trusts in process as much as principle.”
“It turns out he is not a ‘revolutionary soul’ but a reformist one, ‘conservative in temperament if not in vision.’ Behind those dreams, the audacity and all that promise is a stubborn streak of moderation,” Lozada wrote.
Obama’s book is the highlight of publishing’s holiday season and for some independent bookstores, the potential difference between remaining in business or closing.
Publishing sales have been surprisingly stable during the pandemic, but much of the benefit has gone to Amazon.com as readers turned increasingly to online purchases.
The American Booksellers Association, the independent sellers’ trade group, has warned that hundreds of stores could go out of business if holiday sales fall short.
Kris Kleindienst, co-owner of Left Bank Books in St. Louis, anticipates selling around 1,000 copies by the end of the year, a number which makes “a HUGE difference” for annual revenues, she wrote in an email.
Sarah McNally, owner of McNally Jackson Books in Manhattan, said she sold around 600 copies in the first 24 hours, a pace exceeded only by the final Harry Potter book.
“It’s not hard to be a bright spot this year, a year when we would have gone out of business without federal aid,” McNally said. “But Obama does feel like a savior, as do our customers for buying this from us.”