Barack Obama may or may not be the next U.S. senator from Illinois, but after his well-received keynote address at the Democratic convention plenty of publishing people think he has the right stuff for the best-seller list.

Mr. Obama’s agent, Jane Dystel at Dystel & Goderich, says that she has been discussing publishing plans with Crown, which is about to reissue his first book, originally published in 1995.

There has been talk at a rival house that there was an auction being held for rights with a seven-figure offer on the table, but Ms. Dystel said those murmurs were untrue.

Crown’s corporate partner Random House had the good fortune to have published Mr. Obama’s memoir of an unusual upbringing, signing him after he became the first black president of the Harvard Law Review. Though “Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance” had long been out of print, Crown’s Three Rivers Press imprint was planning on releasing a trade paperback reissue of the book at the end of August.

Due to what the house calls “Overwhelming bookseller demand,” it now has moved up the release and expects the book to be in stores by August 10. The book was no. 10 on Amazon’s bestseller list last night.

Booklist said in a review after original publication, “His search for himself as a black American is rooted in the particulars of his daily life; it also reads like a wry commentary about all of us….Obama argues with himself on almost every page of this lively autobiographical conversation.”