Former president Barack Obama and former First Lady Michelle Obama have signed with Penguin Random House, according to a press release. The news followed a bidding war that reportedly exceeded $60 million for publishing rights to both their books, according to the FT. The exact numbers of the deal were not disclosed.
The priciest presidential book deal before the Obamas was Bill Clinton's 2004 memoir, which was bought for $15 million.
Who else was bidding: HarperCollins, which is owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp, Simon & Schuster, which is owned by CBS, and Macmillan.
Irony: FT pointed out that if HarperCollins had won the bid, the Obamas books would have been under the same publisher as Fox's Bill O'Reilly, who was a huge critic of Obama.
