Defeated US vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin is looking forward to using an "unfiltered forum" to tell her story, after signing a deal to publish her memoirs next year.
The deal for the controversial Alaska governor's as-yet-untitled memoirs, which will detail both her personal and political life, was struck with HarperCollins, with the autobiography set for publication in spring 2010. Financial terms were not disclosed, although rumours late last year suggested the Alaskan governor and 2008 vice presidential candidate could earn up to $7m for telling her story.
"There have been so many things written and said through mainstream media that have not been accurate, and it will be nice through an unfiltered forum to get to speak truthfully about who we are and what we stand for and what Alaska is all about," Palin, who will write the book with a collaborator, told her local paper, the Anchorage Daily News.
"It will be nice to put my journalism degree to work on this and get to tell my story, Alaska's story," said Palin, who graduated from the University of Idaho. She has kept diaries for much of her life, she added, which would help her write the book. "My journaling really ramped up when I found out that I was pregnant with Trig and then Track was going off to war and I found out Bristol was pregnant. When we had those episodes in our lives come to the surface, it was very therapeutic for me," she told the Alaskan paper.
Harper publisher Jonathan Burnham told the Associated Press that the book – which Palin said she hoped would become a bestseller – would be the story of "the soccer mom and the political operative, and how one became the other". It will be co-published by HarperCollins imprint Harper, and by its subsidiary Zondervan for the Christian market.
The deal is only the latest in a slew of political memoirs signed up by publishers. In March former president George W Bush signed with Random House for a book on the decisions he has made, both personal and political, while his wife Laura struck a deal at the start of the year for her own autobiography. Both, like Palin's, are scheduled for a 2010 release, and negotiations for both, like Palin's, were handled by Washington lawyer Robert Barnett, who has struck deals in the past for Tony Blair and Barack Obama.