Prince's memoir in the process of being completed, agent says

Prince’s memoir is in the process of being completed.

Speaking on Variety‘s “Strictly Business” podcast, the agent representing the book claimed it’s set to be published around the holiday season after years of work putting it together.

A representative for Random House told EW on Wednesday that the book “is currently not scheduled to be published in 2018.” ICM, which represents agent Esther Newberg, did not immediately respond to EW’s request for clarification.

In March of 2016, about a month before Prince died at the age of 57, news broke that Prince had struck a deal with Random House imprint Spiegel & Grau for a memoir. “This is my first [book],” Prince said of the project before he died. “My brother Dan is helping me with it. He’s a good critic, and that’s what I need. He’s not a ‘yes’ man at all, and he’s really helping me get through this … We’re starting from the beginning from my first memory, and hopefully we can go all the way up to the Super Bowl.”

Newberg said on the podcast that the deal was struck between Prince, ICM, and Spiegel & Grau in a most unconventional way: Three editors met with Prince at his home in Paisley Park as they hammered out the details. “It’s never been done before,” Newberg said of the process. “Editors don’t like to be in the same room making their pitches to the same potential clients. We had to do it because I knew he would not want to meet individually with editors.”

Upon its initial announcement, the book, tentatively titled The Beautiful Ones, was described as “an unconventional and poetic journey through his life and creative work.” However, little is known about it at this point, and its fate was unknown in the wake of Prince’s untimely death. Now it appears clear that the project will be completed. According to Newberg, Prince was committed to the writing process, even submitting around 50 handwritten manuscript pages before his death. Newberg added to Variety that these pages may be included in the final book, as a sort of commemoration to his work on the memoir.

No additional details on how the memoir is to be completed are yet known. Representatives for Prince’s estate did not respond to a request for comment.