Former President Barack Obama’s “A Promised Land” sold more than 1.7 million copies in North America in its first week, roughly equal to the combined first week sales of memoirs by his two immediate predecessors and among the highest ever for a nonfiction book.

Former President Barack Obama’s post-White House memoir isn’t expected to be released this year, setting up the likelihood that the highly anticipated book will drop during the 2020 campaign. Publisher Penguin Random House started alerting foreign partners and others about the status of Obama’s book on Tuesday. The former president has been writing the book himself, handwriting a first draft on legal pads, the same technique he used for numerous White House speeches and his first best-seller, 'Dreams from My Father.'