Amanda Knox gets $4-million book deal
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Amanda Knox, the American student who was cleared of murder charges in October 2011 after spending four years in an Italian jail, will tell her story in an upcoming memoir. HarperCollins paid $4 million for the book, it was announced Thursday.
‘Knox will give a full and unflinching account of the events that led to her arrest in Perugia and her struggles with the complexities of the Italian judicial system,’ HarperCollins said in a statement. ‘Aided by journals she kept during her imprisonment, Knox will talk about her harrowing experience at the hands of the Italian police and later prison guards and inmates. She will reveal never before-told details surrounding her case, and describe how she used her inner strength and strong family ties to cope with the most challenging time of her young life.’
In the publishing world, $4 million is a lot of money. It’s twice what Dick Cheney is thought to have gotten for his memoir, ‘In My Time.’ Cheney spent decades as one of the most powerful men in the Republican party and was vice president for eight years.
As for the men who’ve called the Oval Office their own? President Bill Clinton was paid a whopping $15 million for his memoir ‘My Life’ -- which clocked in at a whopping 992 pages. President George W. Bush’s book ‘Decision Points’ was smaller, and sold for a $7-million deal. Bush was a two-term president, and his book covered the Sept. 11 attacks. Can Knox’s memoir really be worth more than half as much?
Knox was an American college student studying abroad in Perugia, Italy, when her roommate Meredith Kercher’s throat was slashed in 2007. The sensational case, which attracted international media attention, involved Knox’s then boyfriend and, the Italian courts had contended, a sex game gone wrong. In 2009, Knox was found guilty of the brutal murder; in 2011, she was cleared of murder charges after spending four years in an Italian jail.
When we asked readers in October if Knox should get a book deal, almost 900 said she should. Would they still say so, knowing that the deal would be worth about 80 times a years’ salary earned by the average American family?
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-- Carolyn Kellogg
