Cissy Houston has agreed to write a book about Whitney Houston that will give fans “something to treasure”, book publisher HarperCollins announced on Monday.
Cissy Houston, 78, agreed to write a memoir the publisher says will reveal the “unabridged and unbelievable story” of her daughter, who died in a Beverly Hills, California, hotel bathtub in February at 48.
The still untitled book is scheduled to come out next February.
“When I lost my daughter Nippy [Whitney Houston’s nickname], the world lost one of the most beautiful voices and an extraordinarily beautiful and charitable woman,” Cissy Houston said in a statement released by the publisher.
“In sharing our story in this book, I hope to give her fans something to treasure, the way we all treasured Whitney. We are still receiving thousands of letters each day from her fans, and I hope reading this book will provide a deeper understanding into my daughter’s true story.”
Cissy Houston has agreed to write a book about Whitney Houston that will give fans “something to treasure”
HarperCollins wouldn’t divulge how much they’re paying Cissy Houston but said “a portion” of the proceeds will be donated to the New Hope Baptist Church in Newark, N.J., where Whitney Houston, whose many hits included The Greatest Love of All and I Will Always Love You, sang as a child.
Whitney Houston’s funeral was also held there.
Cissy Houston has had meetings with several publishers and the word in media circles is the book deal could be worth seven figures.
According to HarperCollins, Cissy Houston will write with “candor, honesty and respect” about her daughter’s remarkable career. She’ll also address Whitney Houston’s drug problems and her troubled marriage to fellow singer Bobby Brown.
Cissy Houston also will tell of her own grief.
“She will tell the unabridged and unbelievable story of her daughter’s life as well as her own, addressing Whitney’s brightest and darkest moments while helping fans around the world understand the complexities of this extraordinary star who died much too soon,” HarperCollins announced.
“Ultimately, Cissy will go behind the headlines to show the true, human side of this strong, successful yet complicated musical icon, capturing the dramatic depths and soaring range of an extraordinary woman, along with the pain and heartbreak of a grieving mother as she struggles with impossible loss.”
Cissy Houston recently released a new album of gospel tunes called Walk on By Faith, her first new music in more than a decade.
This will be Cissy Houston’s second book. She wrote the memoir, How Sweet the Sound, in 1998.
Amanda Knox finally has a book deal after months of tense battling between 20 publishers desperate for a big money windfall.
Amanda Knox, 24, of Seattle, Washington, has signed for a reported $4 million with publisher HarperCollins to write about her murder conviction and acquittal in Italy.
While the deal will be respite for her family who spent $1 million just dealing with her trial, it will provoke anger from her alleged victim’s relatives.
The deal is expected to distress the family of Meredith Kercher, 21, the British student who lived with Amanda Knox in Perugia, Italy, found in a pool of blood.
Amanda Knox, who was jailed for four years in Perugia, has only spoken publically once when she arrived back in the U.S. following her release last October.
Her family spent more than $1 million in legal, travel and living costs to be near her during the murder trial in Italy – and even more on her appeal.
Amanda Knox’s parents, Edda Mellas and Curt Knox, who divorced when she was aged just two, have put on a united front and took out second mortgages.
“Knox will give a full and unflinching account of the events that led to her arrest in Perugia,” a HarperCollins spokesman said on Thursday.
Amanda Knox has signed for a reported $4 million with publisher HarperCollins to write about her murder conviction and acquittal in Italy
The spokesman added that Amanda Knox will talk about her “struggles with the complexities of the Italian judicial system” and read back journals she kept in prison.
“Knox will talk about her harrowing experience at the hands of the Italian police and later prison guards and inmates,” he said.
HarperCollins is promising Amanda Knox will “reveal never before-told details surrounding her case” about “the most challenging time of her young life”.
The book, currently untitled, is tentatively scheduled for early 2013. The mammoth financial agreement was disclosed by the New York Times.
It was negotiated by Washington attorney Robert Barnett, who has worked for President Barack Obama and former President George W. Bush.
Some 20 publishers were interested in the book and Amanda Knox met with seven, all of whom submitted bids during a recent auction.
HarperCollins publisher Jonathan Burnham said that Amanda Knox, who studied creative writing, would work with a collaborator.
The company should be able to recoup some of its investment by selling TV interview rights on the back of the book.
Broadcasters are banned from paying for interviews but they routinely get around it by buying the rights to the interviewee’s book instead.
Amanda Knox’s editor will be Claire Wachtel, whose other authors have included crime novelist Dennis Lehane and journalist Cokie Roberts.
Publishers in recent years have shied from controversial defendants, especially since the fiasco of O.J. Simpson’s “If I Did It”.
That was a fictionalized account of Nicole Brown Simpson’s murder that was cancelled in 2006 by HarperCollins in response to public outrage.
After Casey Anthony was cleared last year of killing her two-year-old daughter, several publishers said they would not consider a book by her.
“I think it’s a huge gamble for somebody,” a publisher who had no intention of bidding on the story told the New York Times earlier this month.
“It’s not like she has been exonerated in a clear and definitive way.”
The value of her story has been compared to that of Jaycee Dugard, who was kidnapped and held captive for almost two decades.
Casey Anthony had a book published last July that has sold 1.2 million copies. But while the deal is good news for Amanda Knox, her legal issues are not over.
Earlier this week, Italian prosecutors asked the top court to reinstate the murder convictions of Amanda Knox and her former boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito.
Raffaele Sollecito, who had reportedly been considering seeing Amanda Knox at Christmas, has since been pictured kissing and cuddling Annie Achille.
Annie Achille is an Italian volleyball player who is also his distant cousin.
Amanda Knox meanwhile has been seen hand-in-hand in Seattle with her new boyfriend, guitarist James Terrano.
Prosecutor Giovanni Galati said he is “very convinced” that Raffaele Sollecito and Amanda Knox were responsible for Meredith Kercher’s death in November 2007.
But the Italian appeals court in October said the guilty verdicts against Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito were not corroborated by any evidence.
It added that the court hadn’t proven they were in the house when Meredith Kercher was killed.
A third defendant, Ivory Coast-born drifter Rudy Guede, was convicted in a separate trial of sexually assaulting and stabbing Meredith Kercher.
Rudy Guede’s 16-year sentence, reduced in appeal from an initial 30 years, was upheld by Italy’s highest court in 2010.
Meanwhile, a lawyer for Amanda 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.
Diya Lumumba was freed after two weeks in prison for lack of evidence. Amanda Knox later said she was “manipulated” during her lengthy police interrogation.
A judge set Amanda Knox’s sentence for slander at three years, less than the time she spent in prison. That meant she could leave Italy and return to Seattle.
