Alternately, you may be so intelligent and articulate and research-savvy that your book will be of scholarly interest, regardless of your background. I recommend staying away from political fiction unless you are that brilliant (and/or a celebrity). If you think you may be brilliant enough, ask yourself whether you could get tens of thousands of people to read your blog. If they won’t read for free, they almost certainly won’t pay money for your work.

*Cadet Davis has suggested a revision here… “I think that you’re probably right about the author’s background being particularly important in political nonfiction, but I don’t think you have to hold a high rank to have an interesting perspective.  I imagine that a young soldier could easily sell an account of what he saw and learned during his tour in Iraq.  Whether he wrote it as a coming-of-age memoir or a more conventional polemic, he could plausibly clear his advance.”