The Obamas could be in for a $45 million payday from book deals after leaving the White House, the New York Times reports.
President Barack Obama, already an accomplished author with a bestselling memoir “Dreams From My Father,” could, together with his wife, Michelle, land the biggest post-presidency book contracts in American history.
“His is going to be easily the most valuable presidential memoir ever,” Raphael Sagalyn of the ICM/Sagalyn Literary Agency told the Times.
Sagalyn predicted to the Times that Obama could earn $30 million with a two- or three-book contract and said Michelle Obama “has the opportunity to sell the most valuable first lady memoir in history.”
But the Times report indicated that the real figure for the Obama memoirs might be lower than the dollar signs imagined by enthusiastic literary agents.
Publishers, the ones who actually have to pay the exorbitant sums, quoted much lower figures to the Times, speculating that Obama would do well to get more than $12 million and his wife would be lucky to get more than $10 million.
Still, as the Times noted, those sums are enough to pay the estimated $22,000 monthly rent in the Washington mansion the Obamas reportedly plan to move into.
And they’d be left with enough spare change to buy that rented summer home on Martha’s Vineyard.
*Culled from The Hill
