Life imitating art. I don’t claim to be especially prescient, but the Russian-Ukraine conflict and Nord Stream 2 was the obvious background for the story I wanted to tell on hybrid warfare. My novel, Full Spectrum Cyberwar tells the story of what is currently playing out this week.

The graphic above illustrates how current affairs have impacted my book sales. I typically sell one book per month, so it’s easy to note trending from a zero sales line. The top graphic displays ebooks in orange and print in gray. Roughly half these are from the UK and roughly half are my second book Full Spectrum Cyberwar. The bottom graphic displays page reads from an Amazon program termed Kindle Page Reads. It allows Amazon Kindle Unlimited subscribers to buy by the page rather than commit to an actual book purchase. The royalties are significantly less, and I don’t have to opt-in to selling in this program, but it’s less about the revenue and more about getting people to read my book.

Especially with the Kindle pages-read program, the trend in my book sales is clearly correlated with Russia’s attack on Ukraine. Readers are searching for things like GRU and Nord Stream 2 paired with the term cyberwar. Hard to be proud of that, but the anti-mimesis is interesting nonetheless.