Why Is Britney Spears’ Memoir Suddenly Trending Again?
The Woman In Me dropped more than a year ago but the audiobook version is back on top of the charts.
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Britney Spears’ memoir The Woman in Me is back to number one on the audiobook charts after its release more than two years ago.
Named ‘Best Book of the Year’ by a number of outlets when it first came out, the memoir is up 143% in sales, per Amazon, and is now topping Amazon’s Audible Books & Originals section ahead of Colleen Hoover’s It Ends with Us.
The audiobook can be purchased on Amazon for $16 right now — a 12% discount that no doubt brought new listeners to take advantage of the deal. Even better: fans can also listen to the book for free with an Audible offer that gets you a month-long subscription for no charge. See full details here.
TOP OF THE CHARTS
Britney Spears 'The Woman in Me' (Audiobook)
Britney Spears’ memoir in audiobook form.
Revived interest in the book is likely due to talks that the memoir is being adapted into a film with help from Wicked director, Jon M. Chu and Universal Pictures. Little is known about the project, and in an interview with Rolling Stone, Chu confirmed as much, saying, “We haven’t written the script yet, we haven’t hired a writer yet. But in this initial conception, I think it’s a lot about how we treat people, young people, stars that we think we own, women, mothers,” Chu added. “There’s a lot of things in there that I would love to explore.” Back in 2022, Spears snagged a $15M book deal for the memoir, which was one of the biggest book deals of all-time.
Spears is also getting attention for her provocative Instagram posts, which often show the “Toxic” singer dancing or sharing her thoughts, free association style. While some fans have expressed concern over the singer’s posts, others point to the star’s memoir, where Spears wrote openly about feeling oppressed by her conservatorship. Supporters say she’s just living her authentic life, albeit on social media and in the public eye. Still, it seems the sentiment has switched from “Free Britney” to “Let Britney Be Free.”
In the memoir, Spears spoke on her relationships with Justin Timberlake, Kevin Federline and Sam Asghari, and lots of other details about her life, though she took to Instagram to clarify the “purpose” of her book. “My book’s purpose was not to offend anyone by any means!!! That was me then…that is in the past!!!”
Spears added that most of the events in the book happened 20 years ago and that she’s not harping on the past. “Hopefully I can enlighten people who feel particularly alone in most cases or hurt or misunderstood!”
BESTSELLER
'The Woman in Me' (Hardcover)
The bestselling book is also on sale in print.
The book is available as a hardcover, e-book and audio book (listen to The Woman in Me for free with a trial from Audible). You can buy the memoir at various retailers including Amazon (also available on Kindle), Barnes & Noble, Target, Walmart and Bookshop. The audiobook is narrated by actress Michelle Williams.
In the memoir, Spears opens up about everything from her childhood and career to her conservatorship, and reveals never-before-told stories from her past. She writes about joining the Mickey Mouse Club, sharing a dressing room with Christina Aguilera, meeting Timberlake for the first time, landing a record deal at age 15 and more. Elsewhere in the book, Spears gets candid about shaving her head in 2007 and being under a conservatorship for 13 years.
“I’d been eyeballed so much growing up. I’d been looked up and down, had people telling me what they thought of my body, since I was a teenager. Shaving my head and acting out were my ways of pushing back,” she explains in the book. “But under the conservatorship I was made to understand that those days were now over. I had to grow my hair out and get back into shape. I had to go to bed early and take whatever medication they told me to take.”
Spears’ debut memoir is a “brave and astonishingly moving story about freedom, fame, motherhood, survival, faith, and hope,” according to a press release from publisher Gallery Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster.
Announced in July 2023, more than a year after Spears was released from a 13-year conservatorship, the book reveals “for the first time her incredible journey — and the strength at the core of one of the greatest performers in pop music history,” per the news release.
