Sylvester Stallone's memoir The Steps was acquired by William Morrow, a HarperCollins imprint, in a deal Deadline reported on June 11, 2024 following what the trade described as a heated auction, with UTA selling the book to editor Mauro DePreta. The project, years in the making, arrives as one of the season's flagship celebrity publishing events.
How was the deal confirmed?
Deadline's exclusive report of June 11, 2024 stated that William Morrow had nabbed the rights to The Steps, a new memoir by the three-time Oscar nominee, and that William Morrow, a HarperCollins imprint, would publish the book in the United States. The report named the agent on the sale, UTA, and the acquiring editor, Mauro DePreta, the level of detail that distinguishes a confirmed publishing deal from industry chatter.
The anatomy is standard for star memoirs of this tier. A literary agent or the author's existing agency runs an auction among imprints, editors bid, and the winning house announces terms that usually leave the advance undisclosed. Deadline's announcement story followed exactly that pattern: deal, imprint, editor and agent on the record, figures kept private.
What is The Steps about?
The title references the Philadelphia Museum of Art steps Stallone famously climbed in Rocky, and the memoir traces the long route from a difficult beginning to that triumph. As reported by the Associated Press in its September 2026 coverage of the book's launch, the actor discussed the memoir at New York's 92nd Street Y on September 28, 2026, telling the wire's interviewer that he no longer thinks of himself as an underdog. "It would be so disingenuous to say you're an underdog, 'as he said from his penthouse,'" Stallone said, according to AP. "Yeah. Come on. I am a lucky dog."
The launch timing was deliberate. The memoir arrives in the anniversary season of the film that made him, turning a personal book into a cultural moment with a built-in calendar hook, the kind of synchronization publishers plan years ahead when they acquire a star's life story.
Why do publishers pay for star memoirs?
Because named lives sell reliably. A star memoir arrives with a pre-existing audience, a publicity apparatus the author already knows how to run, and a backlist effect: the book keeps selling as the person's career continues. The risk is inverted from debut fiction, where the publisher builds the audience; here the audience exists and the craft question is whether the book delivers the intimacy it promises.
| Stage | What happens | The Steps example |
|---|---|---|
| Sale | Agency auctions the memoir among imprints | UTA sold the book in a heated auction (Deadline, June 2024) |
| Acquisition | Winning imprint and editor announced | William Morrow, editor Mauro DePreta |
| Production | Writing, editing, legal review over multiple years | Deal in 2024; publication in 2026 |
| Launch | Publicity tour tied to anniversaries and events | 92nd Street Y appearance, Rocky anniversary season (AP) |
How did the launch unfold?
The Associated Press, syndicated on September 29, 2026, reported that Stallone, who turned 80 in July, reflected on fifty years of Rocky while promoting the memoir, balancing the film's outsider mythology against the mogul's ledger of a long career. The pairing of anniversary and autobiography is the publishing playbook executed at full scale: the book becomes the artifact of the moment rather than a separate product.
For the industry, star deals like this one anchor seasons. They fund lists, guarantee media inventory across television and print, and reliably top bestseller charts in release week, which is why auctions for the biggest names run hot and why the editor and agent on the deal are named in the announcement, as DePreta and UTA were here.
How long do star memoirs take to reach print?
Longer than readers expect. The Steps was sold in June 2024 and reached shelves in 2026, a two-year production span that is typical rather than slow, because a memoir of this profile moves through drafting, structural editing, fact-checking against decades of coverage, and legal review before a single copy is printed. The launch date is then chosen for its cultural moment, which in this case was a fiftieth anniversary worth waiting for.
The timetable explains why auction reports read as early signals. When Deadline named the imprint, editor and agency in 2024, it was recording a decision whose public payoff would not arrive for years, a bet both publisher and author were making on where the star's cultural standing would be at publication.
What does the deal say about celebrity publishing now?
The two-way value is the modern part. The publisher gets a guaranteed event; the star gets a curated record that will outlast the news cycle, often timed to a career milestone, exactly as The Steps was timed to Rocky's fiftieth anniversary. The auction heat Deadline described in 2024 was the market pricing that certainty in advance.
The genre's discipline has also improved. The strongest star memoirs, and early coverage suggests The Steps aims for this, carry reflection rather than mere chronology, which is what AP's launch coverage emphasized: an octogenarian star measuring the distance between the underdog he played and the life he actually led.
