Much like the clinical effects of Covid-19 on the human body – difficult to follow and sometimes unexpected – the repercussions of the pandemic on the American book industry go far beyond the difficulties posed by the closure of bookstores and the increased demand linked to the confinement of part of the population. The first symptoms appeared in the spring, when uncertainty over the course of the pandemic encouraged publishers to postpone their big releases until the fall, a season already crowded due to the presidential campaign.
But if shifting the next Jo Nesbø or Martin Amis is certainly boring but not impossible, out of the question, on the other hand, to plant the publication of the most anticipated book of the year. Announced in March 2017, when the Obama couple signed a more than $ 60 million contract with publishing giant Penguin Random House for the publication of their respective Memoirs, and following the phenomenal success of Becoming, Michelle Obama’s autobiography published exactly two years ago (more than ten million copies sold), A Promised Land is in fact only a first volume, which covers the political beginnings of the former Democratic president, until the death of bin Laden in 2011.
848 pages in translation
Announced in September for a worldwide release on November 17 (in France, by Fayard editions), preceded by a massive media and commercial plan, the book is an unprecedented editorial event. Its thickness (768 pages in original version, 848 in translation) is in itself a technical challenge. Its price (45 dollars, 32 euros) shows the commercial stake.
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Finally, the circulation is unprecedented: three million copies are currently being printed for the American market. There is no doubt that Joe Biden’s victory at the finish should help make the rather rare (and therefore eagerly awaited) word of America’s first black president resonate even louder.
“When ordering, the publisher explicitly advised us to count large because there was a risk of quickly running out of stock”, Richard Howorth, independent bookseller
Not wanting to run any risk of out of stock on the eve of the end of the year celebrations, the publisher played the safety card with this colossal first edition. Richard Howorth, owner of the independent Square Books in Oxford, Mississippi, took his precautions: “When ordering, the publisher explicitly advised us to count large because there was a risk of quickly running out of stock ”, he explains. On the Friday or Monday preceding publication, Howorth will therefore receive the four hundred copies that he has pre-purchased and that he will store in his warehouse before putting them on the shelves, on Tuesday the 17th in the morning. An ambitious figure for his bookstore, which had sold three hundred and fifty copies of the Becoming by Michelle Obama.
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