IT looks set to be one of the shrewdest business deals ever struck.
A small Edinburgh publishing house is set to reap a massive windfall after securing the UK publishing rights to two of Barack Obama's best-selling books.
Canongate Publishing secured a deal with the president-elect almost two years ago – when he w
as yet to start the campaign that would eventually lead him to the White House.
Orders for the books – The Audacity of Hope and The Dreams of My Father – have shot up, following his sweeping election victory, and Canongate ordered the print of an extra 120,000 copies immediately after result was announced.
Today they were expected to agree the printing of a further 100,000, to keep bookshops across Britain well-stocked ahead of an expected Christmas rush.
Jamie Byng, managing director of Canongate Publishing, who has never met Mr Obama, insisted he had pursued the deal purely because he believed the books were a great read.
"I was delighted at the election result for so many different reasons, not least because I think Barack Obama is an incredibly inspiring person," he said.
Sales at some shops have doubled, and with 300,000 copies sold before the election result, the company now expects to top more than 500,000 before Christmas.
Overall sales could eventually outstrip the publisher's last big success, Yann Martel's Booker Prize winning novel The Life of Pi, which sold two million copies.
As well as the new print run, Canongate has also just released an audiobook of Mr Obama reading Dreams From My Father, which won a Grammy in 2007.
At the time Canongate began negotiations, Mr Obama, still a junior senator for Illinois, was relatively unknown in the UK.
Mr Byng scooped the extraordinary deal after an Australian publishing partner told him about The Audacity of Hope, published in the US in 2006.
He read it, then read Dreams of My Father, and was so impressed he began a four-month campaign to secure the rights to the book.
The deal was eventually signed in early January, 2007, just days after Obama declared his presidential candidacy.
"When we heard he was running for president, obviously as a publisher you are pleased because it is only going to raise his profile," said Mr Byng
Jon Howells, of Waterstones admitted sales of Mr Obama's books were going through the roof. "If books sales were votes, Barack Obama would have been in the White House a long time by now," he said.
Dreams of My Father, a personal memoir about Obama's journey to find out about the African father he had very little contact with growing up, was originally published in 1995.
The Audacity of Hope is a more political book, expanding on his political vision.
