Barack Obama's new book is a "blockbuster hit"

NYT: Obama’s New Book Is a Surprise Best Seller
By JULIE BOSMAN
Published: November 9, 2006


Senator Barack Obama’s new book is a blockbuster hit.

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.”...

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/09/books/09obam.html

It's a very good book. He talks a bit about his background, but it really focuses on his political philosophy and his perspective on American politics in general. It's very interesting. :-)

It's amazing how seldom the store employees manage to find where I've put them.

There's often a great deal of "dead space" between the bookshelves.