London - Madeleine McCann’s parents have signed a multi-million-pound book deal to tell their story.
Kate and Gerry McCann’s emotional account of their three-year-old’s disappearance from a Portuguese holiday apartment is an attempt to raise money to continue the search for her.
Profits from the book - which is expected to be one of next year’s best-sellers - will be donated to the family’s official fund to find Madeleine. The book, simply entitled “Madeleine”, will be published in May next year to coincide with the fourth anniversary of their daughter’s disappearance.
It comes after they revealed earlier this month that the dwindling fund would run out of money by early 2012.
Within weeks of Madeleine being snatched from a holiday apartment in Praia da Luz in May 2007, money from the public poured into the Find Madeleine Fund.
At its height it stood at £2 million. But now there is just £300 000 left.
Precise details of the publishing deal have not been released, but a source said it included a “substantial” advance and included “enhanced royalties” - giving the couple a bigger share of profits from sales of the book, which will be priced at £20.
Kate McCann, 42, said: “My reason for writing is simple - to give an account of the truth. Publishing this book has been a very difficult decision and is one that we have taken after much deliberation and with a very heavy heart.
“However, in the last few months, with the depletion of Madeleine’s fund, it is a decision that has virtually been taken out of our hands.”
Transworld won the rights to publish the book - which is being written by the McCanns themselves and is already part-complete - in the UK, the Commonwealth and Europe. - Daily Mail