In person, Amanda Knox came across as soft-spoken, smart, almost scholarly, naming literary novels that she found moving. She said it was a longtime dream of hers to be a writer. And her book, she told the publishers, editors and publicists who listened raptly, would be the true and unvarnished story of what happened in Perugia, Italy.

“Everybody fell in love with her,” said one publishing executive who attended a meeting, echoing the sentiments of a range of people who have met Knox recently to discuss publishing her memoir.

Her personal charm aside, however, Knox’s story is complex, disturbing and still hotly debated by a public that loves to take sides when it comes to did-she-or-didn’t-she tales.

This makes the next step trickier for publishers who are vying this week for the rights to her memoir, whose blockbuster allure comes against a backdrop of unsettling details: Knox was arrested in 2007 in the murder of her roommate, Meredith Kercher, in what prosecutors described as a sex escapade gone wrong, spent four years in an Italian prison and was eventually exonerated in October after an appeals court overturned the original conviction.

The surge of media attention that will surely accompany the book’s release — normally a good thing for publishers — comes with risks. To some members of the public, Knox was an innocent abroad who was imprisoned for a crime she did not commit. To others, she is a cunning femme fatale who got away with murder.

And that brings some difficult questions: Do book-buying Americans see Knox as a sympathetic figure? And if the book commands a seven-figure advance, as is widely expected, will it be worth it?

“I think it’s a huge gamble for somebody,” said one publisher who did not intend to bid on the book and declined to be named because the auction was taking place privately.

Nevertheless, the book has set off a frenzy among publishers who have seen its dramatic possibilities as viewed through Knox’s eyes: an account of what happens when a young, middle-class student from Seattle goes abroad to Italy, is accused of killing her roommate and is trapped helplessly in what many Americans see as a brutal and archaic Italian court system. Much of Knox’s book, publishers said, will be based on her recollections from her time in Italy, recorded in diaries that she faithfully kept while in prison.

The publisher that finally acquires Knox’s book may also pick up bragging rights, publicity and the opportunity to use her celebrity to attract other authors, even if her book doesn’t sell spectacularly.

The Knox family has taken its time in telling their story. Knox returned to her hometown immediately after being freed on appeal in the central Italian city of Perugia, the place where she and her ex-boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, had been convicted of murder and sentenced to 26 and 25 years in prison respectively.

(Sollecito, who is living in Italy, has acquired a literary agent and a ghost writer and is planning to shop a book of his own as soon as this month.)

Knox’s low profile has only made her story more coveted. “The book will have very broad resonance,” said an executive whose publishing house is among the bidders. “The world has heard from everybody else, but the world has not actually heard from Amanda Knox.”

Booksellers, who have a finely tuned sense of what will take off with their customers, said the success of the book will rest on how it is written and whether Knox comes across honestly to readers. “I think if it has an authenticity and reflective quality, it could be huge,” said Roxanne Coady, the owner of the R.J. Julia bookstore in Madison, Conn. “If it is a variation of a PR campaign to clean up her reputation, I think it will flop badly.”