Obama is publishing the first half of his memoir right after the election.

Former President Barack Obama’s long literary struggle is over.

Well, half over.

On Thursday, Crown Publishing announced that the first half of Mr. Obama’s long-anticipated presidential memoir — “The Promised Land” — would be released on Nov. 17, after the election and in time for the holidays.

The first book, all 768 pages of it, took Mr. Obama about four years to complete, and will span his early political career, to the killing of Osama bin Laden in 2011. The split-it-up decision was made earlier this year when it became clear he was not likely to complete the entire tome anytime soon.

Demand for the book is expected to be extraordinary, and Crown, an imprint of Penguin Random House, has ordered a first printing for the U.S. edition of 3 million copies. To accommodate the order, Crown plans to print about 1 million books in Germany and has arranged for three ships, outfitted with 112 shipping containers, to bring those copies to the United States.

Mr. Obama and Michelle Obama sold their memoirs to Crown in 2018 as a package deal for a record-smashing $65 million. So far, it doesn’t look like they overpaid. Mrs. Obama’s book, “Becoming,” has sold more than 8.1 million units in the United States and Canada since it was published in the fall of 2018.