Memoir of PM stint outsold by air fryer cookbook

Liz Truss’s book about her 49-day stint as prime minister has sold only about 2,000 copies despite a promotional media blitz.

Ten Years to Save the West: Lessons from the Only Conservative in the Room, which combines an account of Truss’s time in office with a call to arms for the political right, shifted 2,228 copies in Britain during its first week on sale.

Nielsen sales data put Truss’s effort in 70th place on last week’s bestsellers’ list. Among the titles that sold more copies were The Ultimate Air Fryer Cookbook and More Confessions of a Fortysomething F**k-Up.

Truss, 48, insists that her book is “not a traditional political memoir”. In it she describes how Queen Elizabeth II warned her to “pace herself” when she became prime minister. The monarch died just a few days later, which Truss writes left her feeling “utterly unreal” and caused her to ask: “Why me? Why now?”

Biteback, the publisher that paid Truss an initial advance of just £1,512 for the book, pointed out that the sales still made it the sixth bestselling nonfiction book in the UK last week. The company, owned by the former Conservative donor Lord Ashcroft, specialises in political books – a tough section of the market where few books sell in large numbers.

By comparison, David Cameron managed to sell about 21,000 copies of his memoir in its first week, while Tony Blair’s autobiography sold 92,000 in the same timeframe. Although Truss’ figures pale in comparison, she beat both of her predecessors as prime minister on a copies-sold-per-day-in-DowningStreet basis.

Margaret Thatcher was estimated to have sold 500,000 copies of her memoir, but other occupants of No 10 have mixed records when it comes to book sales. John Major’s memoir sold only 5,415 copies in its first week, but went on to top 200,000 in total. Edward Heath’s The Course of My Life struggled to top 20,000 copies, while Gordon Brown’s My Life, Our Times sold about 30,000.

Truss has also been promoting the book in the US, where she appeared at a number of Republican events and warned about “establishment elites” stopping her implementing her plans for Britain. The book has already been edited to remove a quote misattributed to the 18th century Jewish banker Mayer Amschel Rothschild that has been used in antisemitic conspiracies.

The Guardian’s reviewer described the publication as “one of the most shamelessly unrepentant, petulant, politically and economically jejune and cliche-ridden books I’ve read”.