The Obamas may have found a new niche in the literary world. Two years after former First Lady Michelle Obama’s Becoming memoir made a record-breaking debut, Barack Obama’s memoir, A Promised Land, almost went platinum out the gate.
The release sold a whopping 890,000 copies in the U.S. and Canada in one day, a record for publisher Random House. The record-setting sales figure includes digital and physical copies of the book, and pre-orders.
“We are thrilled with the first day sales,” David Drake, of Penguin Random House’s Crown Publishing imprint, said on Wednesday (Nov. 18). “They reflect the widespread excitement that readers have for President Obama’s highly anticipated and extraordinarily written book.”
Mr. Obama bested Mrs. Obama by more than 100,000 copies, as Becoming sold 725,000 on day one, but became one of the most successful memoirs in history.
Described as the “first volume” of Barack’s “presidential memoirs,” A Promised Land chronicles the former president’s “improbable odyssey from young man searching for his identity to leader of the free world.”