Barack Obama’s New Book Breaks Records for Penguin Random House

Former POTUS Barack Obama‘s new book A Promised Land, released Nov. 17, bagged the largest first-day sales total for any book ever published by Penguin Random House.

The publisher announced this week that Obama’s book sold more than 887,000 units in all formats and editions in the U.S. and Canada on its first day of publication. The full week total, meanwhile, was 1,710,443 units in all formats editions for the same regions. As with the daily feat, the first week sales—per Penguin Random House—also stand as the largest week-one total for any book ever released by the publisher.

A Promised Land is the first volume in a planned two-book series. At the time of this writing, a release date for the second book has not been made public. 

Obama has supported the book’s release with a number of social distancing-friendly media appearances, including an extended interview on Complex’s own 360 With Speedy Morman. That interview saw Obama going in-depth on a number of key 2020 issues, including Trump’s refusal to concede the election despite losing and the importance of individual fact-checking during an age of widespread misinformation.

“Just because somebody posts something on Instagram doesn’t make it true,” Obama cautioned when asked for his thoughts on personal responsibility with regards to social media. “And I think we have a habit now of, just because the format’s nice and it looks official, that we automatically accept it. And I think we’ve got to develop our own filters of recognizing.”