First African-American US President Barack Obama’s “A Promised Land” sold more than 1.7 million copies in its first week in North America which is roughly equal to the combined first week sales of his two immediate predecessor memoirs and is also among the highest for a non-fiction book ever.
On Tuesday, Crown announced that it has increased its initial print run of 3.4 million copies to 4.3 million. The 1.7 million copies of “A Promised Land” sold in the first week includes audio as well as digitals books. “A Promised Land” is the first of a planned two volume series published on November 17, 2020 and nearly 890,000 copies was just sold in its first day.
Barack Obama’s wife Michelle approaches her popularity as a writer with “Becoming,” published in 2018 and more than 10 million copies were sold worldwide and currently, it is in the top 20 on Amazon.com.
George W Bush’s “Decision Points” sold 775,000 copies in its first week while 1 million copies of Bill Clinton’s “My Life” were sold in eight days. Now, the memoirs of each of the two presidential have sold between 3.5 and 4 million copies which can be easily surpassed by the Obama’s “A Promised Land”.