Former President Barack Obama has set another record. According to the Associated Press, the former POTUS has sold nearly 890,000 copies of his latest book, A Promised Land in the United States and Canada in the first 24 hours of its release. This is putting the Obama memoir on pace to be the best-selling presidential memoir in modern history.
In the meantime, the first-day sales are a record for Penguin Random House, which includes pre-orders, e-books, and audio.
“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.”
As of midday Wednesday, A Promised Land had topped Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble.com. James Daunt, CEO of Barnes & Noble, said the superstore sold a staggering 50,000-plus copies on the book’s first day. Daunt told the AP that the book, which has a list price of $45, should sell half a million copies within 10 days.
By comparison, the only book by a former White House resident that has come close to selling this many copies is Michelle Obama’s 2018 memoir, Becoming, which sold an astounding 725,000 copies in North America on its first day. That book has sold more than 10 million worldwide and is in such demand that a paperback hasn’t been released yet.
You can catch Obama with Oprah Winfrey as her latest guest on a new episode of The Oprah Conversation. The show, which premiered globally on Apple TV+ on November 17, can be viewed for free until Tuesday, December 1.
“This book was worth the wait,” said Winfrey in a written statement. “Everybody who reads it is going to be on this journey from the grueling and monotonous grind of the campaign, to taking us inside the Oval Office and the Cabinet Room and the Situation Room and sometimes, even the bedroom. This book has both the intimacy and the grandeur coming through in this memoir, and I have so been looking forward to speaking with him about all of it.”