By Bob Minzesheimer, USA TODAY
Amanda Knox, the 24-year-old exchange student from Seattle, whose murder conviction and eventual acquittal became a media sensation, has signed a book contract.
Publisher HarperCollins confirmed Thursday that it had signed Knox to write a memoir - as yet untitled -- based, in part, on the journals Knox wrote while in an Italian jail for four years. It's scheduled to be released early in 2013.
As is typical, financial terms were not disclosed, although one executive, speaking on background, confirmed that it's a seven-figure deal.
Knox has said little publicly, beyond a short expression of gratitude after she was released in October.
In a statement, HarperCollins promised that "Knox will give a full and unflinching account" and include "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."
Earlier this week, Italian prosecutors asked the nation's highest criminal court to reinstate the murder convictions of Knox and her former boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito.
Prosecutor Giovanni Galati said he is "very convinced" that Sollecito and Knox were responsible for the Nov. 1, 2007, stabbing death of Meredith Kercher, a 21-year-old British student who shared an apartment with Knox in Perugia.
In October, the appeals court ruled that the guilty verdicts against the pair were not corroborated by any evidence, and that the court hadn't proven they were in the house when Kercher was killed.
A third defendant, Ivory Coast-born Rudy Guede, was convicted in a separate trial of sexually assaulting and stabbing Kercher. His 16-year sentence, reduced in appeal from an initial 30 years, was upheld by Italy's highest court in 2010.
A lawyer for Knox recently filed an appeal of her slander conviction in Italy. The same court that overturned her murder conviction upheld the charges for slander — for falsely accusing bar owner Diya "Patrick" Lumumba of involvement in the slaying.
Lumumba was freed after two weeks in prison for lack of evidence.
An Italian judge sentenced Knox to three years in jail on the slander conviction. That was less time than she spent in prison, which allowed her to leave Italy and return to Seattle.
