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{UAH} Michelle Obama's 'Becoming' Is a Massive Hit With 725,000 Copies Sold In Just One Day

Michelle Obama's 'Becoming' Is a Massive Hit With 725,000 Copies Sold In Just One Day

Adam Rowe

(Photo by Marvin Joseph/The Washington Post via Getty Images)GETTY

Former First Lady of the U.S. Michelle Obama's new memoir Becoming is officially the fastest-selling book of 2018. It debuted on Tuesday, November 13 and immediately sold more than 725,000 copies in the U.S. and Canada across all formats and editions. That's the largest single-day sales total for any 2018 book published from Penguin Random House, Becoming's publisher and the world's largest trade publisher.

Not only did Becoming see massive first-day sales, but also the memoir continued selling well for its entire first week. Barnes & Noble, Inc. announced on Monday that it saw the biggest first-week sales of any book sold by Barnes & Noble this year and also saw the best first-week start of any non-children's book in the past three years. Though the retail bookseller didn't release specific numbers, their press release does note that the memoir's first-week sales have beaten Bob Woodward's Fear: Trump in the White House, topping its record-breaking 1.1-million-unit first-week sales.

The first printing of Becoming totaled 1.8 million hardcover copies, and Penguin Random House has already gone back to press for an additional 800,000 copies for a new total of 2.6 million in print. An audio edition, read by Michelle Obama, is available in digital and physical formats, and the book will be published in 31 languages across the globe, with a Spanish-language edition available now. 

"We knew Becoming was going to be one of the biggest books of the year, but it has now officially had the best first week of sales of any book in 2018, and is among the fastest sellers in Barnes & Noble history," Liz Harwell, Senior Director of Merchandising, Trade Books at Barnes & Noble, said in a press release. "This is definitely the must-have book of the holiday season."

The first-week sales for Obama's Becoming are the highest since Go Set a Watchman's July 2015 record. Bob Woodward's Fear is now in second place for first-week sales in 2018, with James Comey's A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership in third place.

In other words, saying that political non-fiction is powering the 2018 publishing industry is a bit of an understatement. Given the recent conversation about drooping fiction sales (they dropped 16% between 2013 and 2017, according to data released by the Association of American Publishers), it's no wonder that the political environment has been raised as a potential explanation. As Obama's Becoming indicates, however, the public's interest in political reading material extends beyond that of the current administration.

I write on the strategy behind the publishing industry and on how the business of storytelling is spilling out into other mediums like graphic novels, podcasts, apps, and fan fiction sites. I'm a senior writer at startup news site TechCo, and a contributor for the Barnes and...

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Gwokto La'Kitgum

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