Eleanor Catton may have gone into the history books as the youngest ever winner of the Man Booker prize at 28, but what do the rest of those history books say? We looked at the data on every single winning author and book since 1969. The results (might) provide a (sort of) useful guide to would-be writers.

1. If you're young, wait a bit

There have been 44 Booker prize winners so far (three people have won twice, and once it was awarded a bit ambiguously). Of the winners Catton isn't just the youngest; she is only a little over half the average winner's age – 48.8. The oldest winner was William Golding, who was 69 when he won the 1980 award for his novel Rites of Passage.

2. Write 374 pages

Catton has also attracted attention for the length of her winning novel, at 832 pages. Size isn't everything (Penelope Fitzgerald won in 1979 with a book that was just 144 pages long) but if averages are a safe bet, you had better write 374 pages.

3. Pick a short title

Booker Prize 2011.jpg

Winning titles tend to be three words long and contain 15.4 characters including spaces. Starting with a "the", like Catton's The Luminaries, isn't a bad idea – 20 of the winning books started their title with a solid three-letter definite article.

4. Get a private education

These days, around 7% of pupils in the UK attend an independent school, but among Booker prize winners (22 of whom were born in the UK and 28 had a British nationality when they won) it's much higher – 61% were privately educated.

5. If you can, study in Oxford

One in five of the winners graduated from the University of Oxford and half were educated in the UK. But a degree isn't everything – James Kelman didn't finish his course at the University of Strathclyde, Ben Okri's funding fell through at the University of Essex, Nadine Gordimer and Peter Carey dropped out while three prize winners didn't have any university education at all.

6. Be a man

30 of the 44 winners have been men. In fact, more women won the prize between 1969 and 1991 than have since.

7. Write about death loads and love a fair bit

This infographic created by Christian Tate looked at the 13 books longlisted for the prize in 2011 and analysed which themes occurred most frequently. Death dominated in every single book while love was a key theme in just six. Corruption and theft were dealt with five times while east London came up more often than homicidal cowboy brothers, cannibalism or an escaped tiger.

Image: Christian Tate. Click to expand

8. Keep your name simple

Only six of the winning authors used initials on their covers – PH Newby, VS Naipaul, JG Farrell, JM Coetzee, AS Byatt and DBC Pierre. The rest stuck to a straightforward forename-surname combination.

9. Get published more, and get published with Jonathan Cape

Only four individuals have ever won the Booker prize for their first work. On average, acclaim comes after seven published works. If you have the luxury of choosing between various publishers, go for Jonathan Cape – they have backed eight of the 48 books that have won.

10. Now wait for the money

Sales of books that win on average soar by 10.6% afterwards. However, part of that depends on how strong your standing was before the prize – Hilary Mantel's book Wolf Hall saw sales go up only 5% while Howard Jacobson's The Finkler Question received a 19% boost.

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Mona Chalabi is teaching a Masterclass, Mastering spreadsheets: how to work with data, at the Guardian's London offices on 26-27 October. Learn more and book