Former President Biden has sold his presidential memoir for a $10 million advance – far less than the lucrative deals won by the Obamas and Bill Clinton, according to a report.
Biden, 82, made a deal with Hachette Book Group for an advance of around $10 million, people familiar with the matter told the Wall Street Journal.
The book’s publisher, Hachette’s Little, Brown & Co., has not yet set a publication date.
Former President Barack Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama, meanwhile, sold the rights to their memoirs to Penguin Random House for a record-breaking $60 million in 2017.
Alfred A. Knopf, which is owned by Penguin Random House’s parent firm Bertelsmann, paid $15 million for former President Bill Clinton’s 2004 memoir “My Life.”
President Trump did not publish a presidential memoir after his first term.
At an event earlier this month, Biden said he was “working my tail off” to write a memoir.
Biden was represented by Creative Artists Agency, which sold Hachette worldwide rights for the book.
The agency also represented Biden for his 2017 memoir “Promise Me, Dad: A Year of Hope, Hardship and Purpose,” which chronicled his last year with his oldest son, Beau, who died from brain cancer in 2015.
Hachette and CAA did not immediately respond to The Post’s requests for comment.
In May, a spokesperson for Biden announced that the former president has an “aggressive” form of prostate cancer, though it “appears to be hormone-sensitive, which allows for effective management.” It’s likely that his health could impact the timeline of his memoir’s release.
Biden has hinted that the memoir will cover his four years as president. The longtime politician also served eight years as vice president during the Obama administration.
He dropped out of the presidential race in late July last year after a disastrous debate performance and freezing episode ramped up accusations that he was mentally unfit to serve.
Biden’s book is set to follow the best-sold presidential memoirs in history.
Within its first 24 hours, Barack’s memoir “A Promised Land” sold 890,000 copies in the US and Canada, surpassing Michelle’s “Becoming” at 725,000 first-day copies and Bill Clinton’s “My Life” at 400,000.
Just one month after its release in 2020, sales of Barack’s memoir had surpassed 3.3 million copies – close to the then-lifetime total of Clinton’s and George W. Bush’s, at 3.5 million and 4 million copies respectively.
