Within a week of its release in the United States, the book became a #1 New York Times best-seller, selling 1.1 million copies in all formats.

[1] A film adaptation directed by Jon M. Chu and produced by Marc Platt is currently in the works at Universal Pictures as of 2024.

[2] On February 21, 2022, it was reported that Spears signed a $15 million book deal for her then-upcoming memoir, one of the biggest book deals of all time,[3] three months after a Los Angeles Superior Court Judge formally ended her conservatorship.

[12] The Woman in Me chronicles Spears's journey to stardom, the publicized challenges she faced, and her endeavors to break free from a longstanding conservatorship that once controlled her life.

[14][15] Spears also writes that she was marketed as innocent, even though she had been a regular smoker since the age of 14 and lost her virginity around the same time.

[17] Spears writes that Timberlake continuously cheated on her: "Photographers caught Justin with one of the girls from All Saints in a car.

"[7] After the break-up, her public image suffered, she started to burn out, and began abusing the prescription drug Adderall.

"[18] Spears also dives into the rocky relationship with her sister Jamie Lynn and apologizes to Jamie Lynn's Zoey 101 co-star Alexa Nikolas (referring to Nikolas as "that young actress") for yelling at her, adding that she was pregnant and emotional at the time.

[19] Spears discusses her relationship with Kevin Federline and the struggles she faced after becoming a mother, including suffering from postpartum depression.

The memoir also goes into further detail and provides new perspective about widely publicized events in Spears' life, including shaving her head and attacking a paparazzo with an umbrella.

"[7] Writing for Forbes, Toni Fitzgerald stated that the memoir "changes the conversation on mental health" and child stardom.

[citation needed] Following its publication, it appeared on weekly book sales charts in multiple countries.

[25] On January 8, 2024, Publishers Weekly included the book in their top ten best-sellers list of 2023 with 908,000 printed copies sold in the US.

[33] In the book, Spears stated that Timberlake had acted inappropriately and put on a blaccent when meeting the singer Ginuwine.