While it's a lot of money it's not out of keeping with the kind of sales they would have expected for his book. In it's first month "A Promised Land" sold 3.3M

While it's a lot of money it's not out of keeping with the kind of sales they would have expected for his book. In it's first month "A Promised Land" sold 3.3M copies [1] and was the best selling book in the US for 2020! It's not clear to me what sort of "access to power" connections Penguin Random House would be getting out of this, and it's very clear that they got a lot of sales. [1] https://global.penguinrandomhouse.com/announcements/a-promised-land-by-barack-obama-sells-more-than-3-3-million-units-in-u-s-and-canada-in-its-first-month-of-publication/ https://global.penguinrandomhouse.com/announcements/a-promis...