But Tony Abbott's emphatic victory inSeptember and Labor's execution by friendly fire has produced a rush of self analysis and political navel gazing seldom seen by Australian booksellers.

On the bookshelves is the memoir of former Green's leader Bob Brown (Hardie Grant), the cross-bencher Rob Oakeshott (Allen & Unwin), a biography of Tony Windsor (Allen & Unwin), Bob Carr's diaries as a gadfly foreign minister (NewSouth), Greg Combet's The Fights of My Life (Melbourne University Press), Mark Latham's analysis The Political Bubble (Pan Macmillan), Joe Hockey's biography by Madonna King (Penguin) and the cabinet diaries of Gareth Evans (Melbourne University Press). 

They will soon be joined by tell-tale books from Julia Gillard (Random House) and Wayne Swan (Allen & Unwin), David Day's biography of Paul Keating and John Howard's account of The Menzies Era, both by HarperCollins. Next year comes the memoirs of Peter Garrett (Allen & Unwin), Tony Windsor (Melbourne University Press) and Anna Bligh (HarperCollins).

The only major political figure to maintain his silence is Kevin Rudd, who is fully engaged with a research project at Harvard among other things, according to a spokesperson. There was a Rudd book offered up late last year, says one publisher, about his political philosophy rather than a memoir  The ability to publish a Chinese edition was a pre-requisite. But for now, ''a book may be something considered down the track,'' the Rudd spokesperson said.

The memoir and biography serve as therapy for departing parliamentarians, says spin doctor Sue Cato, and is regarded as an opportunity to place their version of events on the public record and put behind them the betrayals, the compromises and the headlines.

With the non-stop news cycle, ''a lot of people feel they haven't been able to get their side of the story up and it's an attempt to ensure their version of history survives'', says Cato.

For a young Turk such as federal Treasurer Joe Hockey, still in Parliament, a biography is akin to a job application for leadership. A sign of intent, if you will.

Cato isn't the only one to wonder if these books will ever find a mass readership, given voter disillusionment with the two-party system and diminishing levels of political engagement, as measured by declining party membership and voter participation.

''There are so many books out, there is so much scar tissue and diminution of the roles of politicians by politicians in recent times that the political memoir has become less compelling," she says. ''Does anyone truly want to relive therancour of the past five or seven years?''

In the hierarchy of biographies and memoirs, a prime minister trumps a minister, and a minister trumps a mere MP. The greater the distance between public departure and publication, or the more defining the term in office, the more appealing the book, says Louise Adler, chief executive of Melbourne University Press. ''Those, and the kind of excoriating analysis that Mark Latham’s Diaries provided, are the memoirs that seem to resonate with the reading public.''

The political junkie or insider represents the core readership of the memoir or biography, and they tend to buy along partisan lines. It used to be said memoir writing was a Labor reflex and Labor memoirs sold best in independent bookstores because book buyers were from the so-called left-leaning intelligentsia. John Howard and Peter Costello, says Adler, rewrote the book industry rules after selling more than 96,000 and 33,000 copies respectively, many copies through major chains and discount department stores the cognoscenti were unlikely to patronise. Howard's Lazarus Rising remains the biggest selling political memoir of the last decade, and Gillard will have to match Howard's stellar sales if Random House is to recoup its reputed $400,000 advance.

Critical success comes down to the ability of the politician to tell a story that genuinely illuminates the political process rather than settling old scores, saysbiographer Jacqueline Kent.

But a cold-eyed reader evaluates thevalue of a memoir or a biography on the insider knowledge and ''secrets'' revealed. In many contracts, Kent says, there is a clause where the writer is asked to assure the publisher the truth is being told to the best of the writer’s ability.

''Memoirs are partisan, it is the viewpoint of the individual politician rather than the dispassionate assessment that piques our interest,'' says Adler.

''As a publisher you yearn for the inside story, the unvarnished truth, but a book is also written for the record, it is a legacy. Obviously the politicalmemoirist is making judgments, calibrating party loyalties against the temptation to settle scores and, because politicians are like the rest of us – merely human – there is usually a fair degree of generosity in the self-assessment.”

Australian laws of defamation are a major constraint in the writer telling the unsparing truth, says Kent. ''Believe me, these books are well and truly legalled by publishers before they reach the bookshops. This occasionally means that the book is blander than it could be.''

Kent wrote The Making of Julia Gillard and anupdateThe Making of Julia Gillard: Prime Minister will appear in November. She believes there is some truth to the suggestion the popularity of the memoir and the political biography is a response to a confessional culture.

"I’m old-fashioned enough to think that, when it comes to books, the quality of writing is what matters, and fortunately there are some wonderfully written memoirs and autobiographies," she says.

''There's a lovely line by the Australian poet Bruce Dawe: 'Pain alone said nothing great.'

''Interesting, isn’t it, that Andy Warhol was so right about everybody’s 15 minutes of fame, and he died before the real advent of social media.''