Michelle Obama’s 2018 memoir, “Becoming,” was one of the best-selling books of all time, with more than 17 million copies sold worldwide. Now a new book is coming out this fall, Penguin Random House announced on Thursday.
The book, called “The Light We Carry,” to be published Nov. 15, is about staying positive in challenging times, she said.
“How do we overcome our fears?” Ms. Obama said in a video announcement for the project. “How can we channel our frustration into something positive? And how do we rekindle that flame that is inside each of us?”
She continued, “I’ve talked to many loved ones, many of you, about what we all seem to be dealing with, and what has come out of that process is actually my book.”
“The Light We Carry” will feature some of Ms. Obama’s approaches to those challenges, including taking the high road, and encouraging readers to work through their fears and find strength in the community.
Penguin Random House said the book will be published in 14 languages and the first print run in the US will reach 2.75 million copies. Like her memoir, “Becoming,” it will be published by Crown, an imprint of Penguin Random House.
“As the world grapples with an unprecedented health pandemic, deep political divisions, social and racial injustice and fear of the future,” Penguin Random House chief executive Markus Dohle said in a statement: “I am confident her new book will provide us all with some much-needed reassurance, while reviving a spirit of optimism about the power we all have to positively shape our personal and collective future.”
Mrs. Obama’s memoirs took readers on her journey from her childhood on the south side of Chicago to her time as the first black first lady. A notable DailyExpertNews book of the year, it has been translated into 50 languages. The audiobook version, which she narrated, won a Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album.
But given the sales they’ve made, it seems to have been a good bet for their publisher. In addition to “Becoming,” which industry tracker BookScan described as one of the best-selling books of all time, the first volume of Obama’s presidential memoir, “A Promised Land,” has sold more than 8 million copies worldwide since its publication in 2020.
That means the Obamas have sold 25 million books in the past four years.
