Former President Barack Obama’s latest memoir, A Promised Land, has broken first-day sales records for the largest publishing house in the world.
According to a statement by Penguin Random House imprint Crown, A Promised Land sold more than 887,000 books on Tuesday, Nov. 17, 2020, the first day in the U.S. and Canada, ABC News reports.
“We are thrilled with the first day sales,” Crown publisher David Drake said in a statement obtained by ABC News. “They reflect the widespread excitement that readers have for President Obama’s highly anticipated and extraordinarily written book.”
The first-day figures outpaces the phenomenal success of Becoming, the memoir penned by Obama’s wife, former first lady Michelle Obama. In 2018, Becoming moved 725,000 units on its first day and has gone on to sell more than 10 million copies worldwide.
My memoir, A Promised Land, is out today. I hope you’ll read it. My goal was to give you some insight into the events and people that shaped me during the early years of my presidency. Most of all, I hope it inspires you to see yourself playing a role in shaping a better world. pic.twitter.com/hdZysCpCN9
— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) November 17, 2020
A Promised Land is the first volume of a two-book series of “presidential memoirs,” the publishing house stated. This first book begins with Obama’s political infancy and goes through to the monumental killing of Osama Bin Laden in 2011.
Obama said the book is a “reckoning” of his eight-year tenure in the White House.
“I’m hoping that it gives people some idea about what it’s like to be president of the United States,” he added, according to ABC News. “I’d like people to get a sense of what Michelle and I as a family, with our kids, went through in this big transition. Maybe most of all, I want to give young people, hopefully, some inspiration.”
