Bookplanet: Barack Obama writes a best-seller

Obama’s New Book Is a Surprise Best Seller – by JULIE BOSMAN

Propelled by a potent publicity cocktail of “60 Minutes,” “Today,” “The Oprah Winfrey Show” and major magazine covers, Senator Barack Obama ’s new book, “The Audacity of Hope,” seemed primed for best-selling status.

But its rapid rise to the No. 1 spot on the New York Times nonfiction list next Sunday, placing the author, the freshman Democratic senator from Illinois, ahead of heavyweight authors like John Grisham , Bill O’Reilly and even Bob Woodward, is something of a publishing stunner.

Since it went on sale Oct. 17, the book has sold 182,000 copies, according to Nielsen BookScan, which accounts for about 60 to 70 percent of a new hardcover book’s sales by tracking purchases at large booksellers like Barnes & Noble, online retailers and independent bookstores. Mr. Obama’s publisher, Crown Publishers, said the book is in its seventh printing, with 860,000 copies in circulation.

For a book by a sitting member of Congress that is better described as a distillation of his political philosophy than a revealing memoir, its initial success had booksellers struggling to draw comparisons.

“Obama is out of the ballpark completely,” said Mark LaFramboise, a book buyer at Politics and Prose in Washington, a prominent independent bookstore that caters to a politics-hungry clientele. “Even comparing books by administration officials, nothing comes close. We’re expecting this to just build and build and build.”

Of course many political books, like those by Bill and Hillary Clinton , have been monstrous best sellers. “My Life,” by Mr. Clinton, has sold roughly 1.3 million copies, according to BookScan, and “Living History,” by Senator Clinton, has sold 1.2 million copies.

But Mr. Obama’s book, for which the publisher paid $850,000, occupies a place of its own in the political-book spectrum: it is not a tell-all, not quite a memoir and not a straight polemic. And books by members of Congress — like recent ones by Senators Trent Lott and Arlen Specter , for example — rarely end up at the top of best-seller lists. “Herding Cats,” by Senator Lott, a Mississippi Republican, has sold 11,000 copies, and Jesse Helms , the former senator from North Carolina, sold 3,000 copies of his political memoir, “Here’s Where I Stand.” (Both were published in August 2005.)

Even Crown, an imprint of Random House, had expected to be upstaged by another Random House author: Mr. Grisham.

“I can’t say we abandoned all hope, like most of those who entered October,” said Steve Ross, the publisher of Crown, referring to the crush of big names who released books last month. “But we heard from a number of people in our sales department who said: ‘I loved Barack’s book. It’s too bad that he decided to publish at the same time that John Grisham decided to publish his first nonfiction book.’ ” Mr. Grisham’s book, which went on sale on Oct. 10, has sold 394,000 copies, according to BookScan.

Glowing reviews for “The Audacity of Hope” have certainly helped drive sales. Writing in The New York Times, Michiko Kakutani called Mr. Obama, 45, “that rare politician who can actually write.” In The Washington Post, Michael Kazin praised Mr. Obama’s “knack for mixing stirring rhetoric about good and evil with practical policy ideas.”

Changing Hands, an independent bookstore in Tempe, Ariz., has sold “a tremendous number of copies,” said Gayle Shanks, the owner.

When Mr. Obama visited the store on Oct. 23 for a book-signing event, the 1,450-seat hall, a local theater, quickly sold out. He signed all 1,450-plus copies.

“I think we got in 500 copies initially,” Ms. Shanks said. “As soon as we knew we sold 500 tickets to his event in one day, we immediately ordered 1,000 more books.” She has since ordered 400 more copies.

When Senator Clinton appeared at the same bookstore to promote her book, she sold 900 copies, less than two-thirds of the yield at Mr. Obama’s event. “She was able to sign 900 books,” Ms. Shanks said. “But she cut us off at 900.”