On the first day of publication, Barack Obama’s A Promised Land sold more than 887,000 units, including pre-orders, in all formats and editions in the US and Canada. (The book’s first print run is 3.4 million hardcovers.) Two years ago, Michelle Obama’s memoir sold more than 725,000 units in its first day on sale and 1.4 million units in the first week.
For comparison: Simon & Schuster set a company record for US opening-day sales with Mary Trump’s Too Much and Never Enough, about President Donald Trump, which sold 950,000 units on July 14, 2020. But Obama has handily beaten the sales of memoirs by George W. Bush (220,000) and Bill Clinton (400,000).
Jane Friedman has spent her entire career working in the publishing industry, with a focus on business reporting and author education. Established in 2015, her newsletter The Bottom Line provides nuanced market intelligence to thousands of authors and industry professionals; in 2023, she was named Publishing Commentator of the Year by Digital Book World.
Jane’s expertise regularly features in major media outlets such as The New York Times, The Atlantic, NPR, The Today Show, Wired, The Guardian, Fox News, and BBC. Her book, The Business of Being a Writer, Second Edition (The University of Chicago Press), is used as a classroom text by many writing and publishing degree programs. She reaches thousands through speaking engagements and workshops at diverse venues worldwide, including NYU’s Advanced Publishing Institute, Frankfurt Book Fair, and numerous MFA programs.
