How (Not) to Sell a Military Memoir in Britain

In this study, we look at all (n=15) military memoirs published between 2001 and 2010 in Britain about military participation in the Afghanistan conflict, to establish the factors which determine whether a military memoir becomes a better-seller (adjusted sales >15,000 copies), or not. We look at three aspects of the book: content (i.e. type of plot), cover (e.g. whether rank or the award of medals is mentioned) and author features (e.g. rank, sex, co-authorship by another established writer, foreword by well-known person), and analyse data on these aspects, compared to sales figures, using SPSS. We find only two factors that correlate with higher sales: rank and the award of a medal.