I published Illegal Astronauts, Book 1 on January 2nd, 2026. But getting there was a journey even after the book was written, edited, and matched to a fitting cover.

The difficulties at this stage came from two general directions. The first, that I wanted Illegal Astronauts, Book 1 to be an official book registered in the appropriate places. The second was that to actually produce the book in both ePUB (digital) and softcover formats, I'd need to comply with some very specific document requirements.

For the former, this began with registering and purchasing ISBN numbers for my own use. These are a set of 13-digit identifiers issued by brokers working on behalf of the International ISBN Agency and are the global standard for uniquely identifying a written work. And, at least in the USA, they are not cheap. This is because only a single broker is allowed to operate in any given country and the private holding company, Bowker, owns that right in the USA. As such, they can effectively, and do, set the price to whatever they want.

As for the latter, I planned from the beginning to have my final draft of Illegal Astronauts, Book 1 in the Markdown format. Those of you who are familiar with software engineering will recognize this format right away. At its core it is a simple, plain text layout system that allows for basic formatting notations. What's perfect for me is that it readily converts into HTML and CSS like you'd find on any website.

This conversion to HTML allowed me to programmatically assemble my raw manuscript into various output formats. This includes the fully featured ePUB format and the hyper-specific export requirements for a physical print PDF. Something that requires special formatting considerations like offset inner margins and a constrained set of colors for images among numerous other details.

With all this together, I was able to register and receive an official copyright for my novel which is now available as a Kindle eBook or softcover from Amazon, and as a PDF or ePUB from Itch.io.