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Barack Obama memoir sells record 1.7 million copies in first week

Barack Obama's A Promised Land sold more than 1.7 million copies in North America in its first week, roughly equal to the combined first week sales of memoirs by his two immediate predecessors

“My advice to President Trump is, if you want at this late stage in the game to be remembered as somebody who put country first, it’s time for you to do the same thing,” Obama said

Barack Obama

AP Washington

Former President Barack Obama's A Promised Land sold more than 1.7 million copies in North America in its first week, roughly equal to the combined first week sales of memoirs by his two immediate predecessors and among the highest ever for a non-fiction book.

Crown announced Tuesday that it had increased its initial print run from 3.4 million copies to 4.3 million. Sales also include audio and digital books.

A Promised Land, the first of two planned volumes, was published Nov. 17 and sold nearly 890,000 copies just in its first day.

Among former White House residents, only Obama's wife Michelle approaches his popularity as a writer. Her "Becoming," published in 2018, has sold more than 10 million copies worldwide and is currently in the top 20 on Amazon.com.

 

George W Bush's Decision Points sold 775,000 copies its first week and Bill Clinton's My Life topped 1 million in eight days. The two presidential memoirs have now each sold between 3.5 and 4 million copies, totals that Obama's book should easily surpass.

No non-fiction comes close to the pace set by J K Rowling's Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, which in 2007 sold more than eight million copies in its first 24 hours.

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)

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First Published: Nov 25 2020 | 6:56 AM IST

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