The Bookseller.com

6th July 2009

Canongate makes Obama number one

11.11.08 Catherine Neilan

Canongate has signed a third book by the US president elect Barack Obama, which comprises nine key speeches from the presidential campaign as well as the acceptance speech given last week. The news came as Canongate's two published Obama books rushed to the top of the paperpack non-fiction chart in the week of the US election, with Dreams from My Father providing the publisher with its first non-fiction paperback number one for at least five years.

The new book, acquired from Random House in the US, is due out in the second week of December and will sell as a hardback for £12.99. Jamie Byng, publisher at Canongate, said the initial print run was likely to be 50,000. The firm has already printed 550,000 copies of its two other Obama books - memoir Dreams from My Father and political 'vision statement' The Audacity of Hope - for both UK and export markets. Byng said he expected a further 100,000 copies to be printed across both titles.

In the week ended 8th November, Dreams from My Father, published in June this year, rose from 11th place to number one, while The Audacity of Hope, published in February, re-entered the non-fiction paperback chart to claim the second spot. The books sold 10,918 and 10,078 respectively last week, and have sold 61,442 and 81,572 copies since launch in the BookScan-measured retail market. They also hold the top two positions in the independent retailer charts.

Byng described them as "exceptional books [generating] exceptional sales". He added: "Obviously we had high hopes, but for them to become one and two after only four days of his being elected is fantastic. Even before, they were getting great word-of-mouth attention, because he is incredibly articulate, a real wordsmith. All this just makes people more interested in reading him on the page."

Overall, the Barack bounce helped push book sales up from £35.3m to £35.7m week-on-week, with about 200,000 more books sold. Compared with the same week last year, however, sales were down by 6.6%. Guinness World Records maintained its position at the top, but chat-show bad boy Jonathan Ross saw sales of his memoir Why Do I say These Things? slide further, selling just over 5,200 copies in the week (compared with 5,791 a week earlier), and slipping down four places in the hardback non-fiction chart to twentieth position.

Bestseller News Canongate Barack Obama Home Jamie Byng Catherine Neilan

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