Now the former president's new memoir, "A Promised Land," is breaking records for the book's publisher, Crown, an imprint of Penguin Random House.

Hundreds of thousands of people pre-ordered "A Promised Land" ahead of Tuesday's release date.

Those pre-order sales, plus first-day sales, totaled 887,000 units "in all formats and editions in the U.S. and Canada," Penguin Random House said on Wednesday.

The publisher said this result represented "the largest first-day sales total for any book ever published" by the company.

Penguin and the rest of the publishing industry anticipated this moment: Obama's memoir, the first of two expected volumes, has been the talk of book world.

For the United States and Canada, Crown printed 3.4 million copies of the hardcover edition.

Barnes & Noble CEO James Daunt told Publishers Weekly earlier in the year, "This will be a book of rare consequence. That it will sell as no other book has done since July 21, 2007" — when "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" came out — "is immensely cheering to booksellers."

One bookstore in Washington, D.C. even opened at midnight Tuesday morning to sell copies of "A Promised Land."

Booksellers expect that the memoir will remain a top seller throughout the holiday season.