Michelle Obama’s memoirs on track to be most successful ever

Michelle Obama’s autobiography Becoming is on course to become the most successful memoir in publishing history, after selling more than 10m copies to date, the former first lady’s publisher said on Tuesday.

Thomas Rabe, chief executive of German media group Bertelsmann, hailed the book as “the most notable creative success” of the past year. He added: “We believe that these memoirs could well become the most successful memoir ever.”

Penguin Random House, the publisher owned by Bertelsmann, won an intense bidding war for the rights to Barack and Michelle Obama’s autobiographies in 2017, paying out a record $65m in a two-book deal with the couple. The former president’s memoir has yet to be published.

The news came as Bertelsmann unveiled a 3 per cent increase in group revenues to €17.7bn for 2018, after the Gütersloh-based group made progress in shifting its business towards digital. It said revenues from digital operations now made up 49 per cent of the group total, up from 46 per cent the previous year.

Net earnings declined from €1.2bn to €1.1bn in 2017, however, reflecting restructuring costs and a goodwill impairment charge.

Bertelsmann’s RTL television group was again the main driver of revenue growth, after sales in the division increased 2 per cent to €6.5bn. Like other parts of the parent group, RTL is trying to reduce its reliance on traditional media formats by building up a streaming and video-on-demand service. Last year, it achieved revenues from digital activities and video-on-demand services of €985m, up from €826m in 2017.

The global television market has been shaken up in recent years by the rise of streaming services such as Netflix and Amazon Prime, and is heading for further upheaval after this week’s long-awaited announcement from Apple that it will launch a TV streaming service of its own. Mr Rabe said Apple’s launch had not come as a “big surprise” to competitors, arguing that Bertelsmann’s own model was in any case different from that of the global streaming giants. 

“Our strategy is not to try to imitate the global streaming platforms but to build local streaming platforms. Our clear objective is to become number one in local streaming in the key television markets in which we operate,” he said, pointing out that RTL already had 1m subscribers for its streaming service in Germany and the Netherlands.

“The video-on-demand market is crowded. More and more players are entering the market. Our strategy is: local, local, local. This has been our strategy for many years in linear television. This will be our strategy in non-linear television,” Mr Rabe said.

Source: Financial Times