José María Aznar must have broken some kind of politician's record. While the Spanish prime ministerial chair still bears his imprint, he has published an account of his time in office. His successor, José Luís Rodriguez Zapatero, was sworn in just over a fortnight ago.
At least no one can accusing Mr Aznar of cashing in on his popularity. When his party lost the general election, he was hardly an esteemed figure. Amid accusations he had misled the public over the Madrid train bombs, his ruling People's Party lost its lead in the polls and the chance of a third consecutive term in office.
Many voters were outraged he continued to blame the armed Basque separatists Eta for the attack despite growing evidence Islamist bombers had struck inside Europe. So this would not be the best time for him to release his memoirs, you may imagine. But you, it is safe to assume, are not Mr Aznar.
Compare him with a contemporary, the former US president. Bill Clinton is guaranteed a huge audience for his memoirs, but the book is still not finished. It was originally intended to have been published around the same time as Hillary's - presumably to convince the rightest of rightwing Americans that the devil had taken charge of the bestseller lists.
But that never happened. Bill had other things to do. (His wife, meanwhile, sat in the US Senate.) He now says he is writing flat out to finish the book, called My Life, for publication at the end of next month. "I'm working around the clock ... and I'm killing myself because I want it done," he told Vanity Fair. "It was hard enough to live my life the first time. The second has been really tough."
His publisher is said to be "despairing", and his editor, Robert Gottlieb, reportedly sleeping at the former president's home to help him finish.
There are clear differences between the two men's writing methods and no doubt their entire outlooks. Mr Aznar is a former regional tax inspector who clung doggedly to his moustache through eight years in office; Mr Clinton we all know about.
There is, moreover, an element of choreography in the Aznar publication: he knew he was stepping down and had appointed a successor (who is now opposition leader). Perhaps more unusually, his wife had her own book out a few weeks ago. Called My Eight Years in the Moncloa (the Spanish equivalent of Downing Street), it is billed as the first memoir by a Spanish prime minister's wife and an honest and involved day-to-day account of her life. It is currently No 1 in the nonfiction charts of Casa del Libro, one of the country's biggest book chains.
Joel Rickett, deputy editor of the Bookseller, identifies three types of political memoirs that publishers the world over try to sell.
First come the plain good books, such as the Alan Clark diaries and those by politicians regarded with some affection - shorthand for Tony Benn. Second are the memoirs of the biggest of the big names - the cream of former prime ministers and presidents, who need write only about their time in office in order to get sales.
Third come the lower-ranking people who can supply a couple of revelations or - as in Robin Cook's case - a trenchant criticism of the government that will make news. The hope here is that sales or revenue will be driven by newspaper serialisation.
"Going even further down, you get Edwina Currie, where there was one single revelation," Rickett explains. "But that is a classic example of a political memoir that was exhausted by the serialisation: everyone thought they knew what was in it, there was nothing left, and it just sort of died."
Ms Currie's book sold fewer than 10,000 copies. For those who categorise these things, it joins Norman Lamont's in the ranks of political memoirs we would really rather forget. See also Fowler, Norman.
But political memoirs can make business sense. Margaret Thatcher's two volumes, John Major's unexpectedly good read and the Hillary Clinton book were all genuine bestsellers. The Bush-at-war sub-genre, a school led by journalist Bob Woodward and bulked up by the more acerbic insider accounts of Richard Clarke and Paul O'Neill, is having a good 2004 and injecting new life into the political tome.
Revelations from the Clinton and Aznar books could nevertheless be thin on the ground.
The former Spanish PM has (sort of) made waves with an admission that his fight with Eta may have distracted him from the threat posed by Islamist militants but that is about it. We can expect little more from Mr Clinton's My Life. One "friend" who spoke to Vanity Fair said he was using the book as an opportunity to set the record straight. And if you are looking for scandal, those who have seen the manuscript say there is little on that woman, Miss Lewinsky. Some enterprising bookshop should put My Life on special offer with the Starr report.
Iain Dale, head of internet bookshop Politicos, says it is ultimately a thirst for knowledge that drives political book sales. Biographies of Tony Blair were in demand when he became first Labour leader and then prime minister, and the same would probably be now true for the Conservative leader, Michael Howard, if the books were there.
Mr Clinton's and Mr Aznar's aside, now is not a golden time for political memoirs. Clare Short has yet to publish - though there is talk that her peak time may have passed - and Tim Renton, Tory chief whip at the end of the Thatcher era, is one for the summer. Enough said.
Of course, the memoir we are all waiting for is Alastair Campbell's, the one we got an expletive-heavy taste of during the Hutton inquiry. But will we want the book more the longer we have to wait? Dale is not so sure.
"Campbell has got to be very careful because the longer he leaves his diaries, a) the less he's going to get for them, and b) the less interest there is going to be in them," he says. "I don't think he has made a publishing deal, but if he wants to, he'd better get on with it."
Mr Aznar could have had the right idea. Unless you are the most powerful man in the world, there is perhaps merit in getting your book out while the readers still care.
