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HC US acquires Amanda Knox memoir

17.02.12 | Bookseller Staff

HarperCollins US has acquired world rights in a memoir by Amanda Knox, the American student cleared of murdering her British housemate Meredith Kercher in Perugia in 2007, in a deal worth a reported $4m (£2.5m) after a seven-way publisher auction.

According to Associated Press reports, Knox was represented by Washington attorney Robert Barnett, with some 20 publishers interested at the outset, and seven involved in an auction for the title. It is understood the book, which is currently untitled, is currently scheduled for release in early 2013. HarperCollins UK has yet to confirm that it will be the book's UK publisher.

In a statement, HarperCollins US publisher Jonathan Burnham said the memoirs would give Knox "the opportunity to tell the story in full detail". 

Burnham said: "Many accounts have been written of the Amanda Knox case, and countless writers and reporters have speculated on what role, if any, was played by Knox in that tragic and terrifying sequence of events.

"No one has yet heard Amanda Knox's own account of what happened, and this book will give Knox an opportunity to tell the story in full detail, for the first time. It will be the story of a crime and a trial, but also a moving account of a young woman's struggle to cope with a nightmarish ordeal that placed her at the center of a media storm, and led to her imprisonment."  

He added: "She'll write a very thoughtful, reflective and serious book about what happened. And that moves this book away from the world of tabloids, the lurid side, to something more compelling and, in a way, more longstanding."

Executive editor Claire Wachtel will edit the title.

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