Amanda Knox Scores $4M Book Deal

After a days-long bidding war, HarperCollins has obtained the rights to Amanda Knox's memoir in a $4 million deal, insiders tell the New York Times. Divisions of Random House, Macmillan, Simon & Schuster, and Penguin all reportedly bid on the book, which Knox says will be based in part on the journal she kept in prison. Lawyer Robert Barnett, who has represented other big-name authors such as Sarah Palin, was behind the deal.

"No one has yet heard Amanda Knox’s own account" of her accusation of the murder of Meredith Kercher in Italy, said Harper's publisher. "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." Italian prosecutors recently appealed Knox's acquittal. (More Amanda Knox stories.)