Star Wars Icons: The Rise of Inkstone Books

Go behind the scenes of Inkstone Books, one of the premier providers of special edition Star Wars books as their founder, Brett Kirchner, shares his journey of Star Wars bookselling.

Jul 17, 2025

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Eric
Hello, everybody. Welcome to a special Youtini conversation with Brett Kirchner, founder of Inkstone Books. Inkstone has taken the Star Wars book community by storm lately with their incredible special editions. And as massive fans of Brett's work here at Youtini, we are super excited to be partnering together, and we’re going to start out by taking you behind the scenes of one of the coolest operations surrounding the world of Star Wars publishing and book selling through the man himself.

Now, Brett, before we get into the books themselves, I just want to know, how did you get into Star Wars in the first place? Who introduced you? What was your watch order? All that good stuff.

Brett
I must have been about five when my parents showed me the Original Trilogy on VHS - the pre-special edition VHS, which is dating myself a little bit.

Box set for Star Wars Original Trilogy featuring half-face cutouts of Darth Vader, a stormtrooper, and Yoda

Lucasfilm

Eric
Were they those ones that had the half faces on the covers?

Brett
They were!

I was all primed up for Phantom Menace and, in particular, the advertising blitz that surrounded Phantom Menace across every industry, so that was really when I got really into Star Wars.

And it was the time period leading up to and surrounding Attack of the Clones when I really got into the Expanded Universe of everything. I remember, in the lead up to Attack of the Clones, going on the Star Wars website - which looks substantially different back then than it does now. And they had the databank and character entries for every character; not just Anakin, Obi Wan, Padmé but also for all of the background aliens that show up in Dex's Diner.

That's when I realized, “Oh, okay…there's a lot going on here. A lot more than just a movie.”

Eric
Those were like gold to us back then too, because it's not like we had a ton of websites we were going to back in 2002 – that was like the only thing we had.

The StarWars.com official website from 2002 featuring Count Dooku in front of Clone Troopers

StarWars.com

Brett
Definitely. It was one of the few websites that I think my parents were fairly comfortable with me going on and realized knowing that I wouldn't run into anything…especially untoward.

Eric
Absolutely, absolutely.

Now, as you were going through the databank and getting ready for Attack of the Clones, did that lead you into the books as well? How old were you when you got the first actual novel?

Corey on our team famously began at the end of Legacy of the Force, which is still the most insane starting point I’ve ever heard. Did you have a little more of a normal introduction or did you just go on blind faith?

Brett
Slightly more normal, but it's still sort of towards the end of a particular series.

It was sort of during that Attack of the Clones window when I was really, really into Star Wars, as a 10 or 11 year old, and my parents got me a copy of Return to Ord Mantell, which is the third to last of the Young Jedi Knight books. But the reason I was given that one is it was a kids book, but it also said “the beginning of a new trilogy” at the very top…omitting the fact that there were eight books that preceded that new trilogy. But it seemed like a natural entry point.

Cover for Star Wars: Young Jedi Knights - Return to Ord Mantell featuring Han Solo, Jaina Solo, and Jacen Solo in front of the Millennium Falcon

Random House Worlds

Eric
Young Jedi Knights was also my first back in the day, but I was the weird person that started with book number one.

Brett
Well, yeah, some people like that. [laughs] But there's truly an approach for doing Star Wars non-sequential storytelling, even in book form.

Eric
Definitely.

Brett
And then about the same time, the book that really got me into the books was not actually a novel. I got a copy of the original Essential Chronology and cracking that open and immediately finding 4,000 years before the movies with Ulic Qel-Droma, Naga Sadow, and all of those characters…my mind was kind of expanded in a way that it never quite recovered.

Cover for the Star Wars Essential Chronology from 2000 featuring characters like Luke Skywalker, Darth Maul, Yoda, Emperor Palpatine and more

Random House Worlds

Eric
Oh, absolutely. Now speaking of the book side of things, did you know at that young age or slightly older that you wanted to eventually get into book selling? When did that particular spark ignite? Because it's a wonderfully specific industry.

Brett
No, it was not. I say it's a fairly recent development in my life and by recent, I mean sort of the past decade. Growing up, I was a huge reader. My parents really encouraged me to read from a very young age and also were book collectors themselves, so from about the age of 10 or 11, sort of Star Wars age, I started to receive signed copies of kids fantasy books and young adult fantasy books as gifts, and began cultivating an appreciation for collectible books in addition to just books themselves perhaps younger than a lot of people are perhaps paying close attention to things like if a book is a first edition or anything like that.

You know, we would always joke about having a bookshop as a pipe dream one day, but I always thought I was going to be, well, initially a doctor, and then I took a really bad organic, organic chemistry class. And then I finished university as a mechanical engineer and went into healthcare IT (so there was still sort of a strong healthcare component).

And then after a couple years of that and not being particularly happy, I decided it was time for a change, so I came back to the UK to do a Master's Degree in Medieval History, which is in itself not the most normal career path. And then doing that while working part time at the book shop, which then became full time, which then led me to where I am now.

Eric
Wow. I mean, again, every journey is different, but that is an impressive amount of twists and turns.

Now the younger age when your parents introduced you to special editions has kind of defined your career now, but as a kid, did you have a concept of the special covers, the special art, the signature? I feel like books are almost unique in that way. Yeah, you can have someone sign a Blu-ray or something like that, but what is it about books over the years that you think has made it so important that you get new art or that an author signed the page?

What is it that you think makes that such an everlasting part of the industry?

Inkstone Books edition of Dark Lord: The Rise of Darth Vader by James Luceno featuring Darth Vader with an ignited lightsaber and black sprayed edges

Inkstone Books

Brett
I think that one of the big differences with a book, as compared to something like a DVD or a video game or something you could get signed is obviously a book has an editor, it has someone who's done the cover art, but the product that you are reading was created by generally one person as opposed to an entire ensemble of people working on a product. And so getting the one person that is responsible to sign that…I think there's a more personal connection with that book than necessarily getting one of 10 actors who are one of 500 people that actually worked on the film to sign a DVD or something like that.

I think that more than anything is the reason why sort of books, signed books have been as popular as they've been for as long as they are. But special editions, certainly of the kind that we've been doing with the sprayed edges or the designed edges and the foil artwork and all of that stuff, is actually, on a mass market perspective, a fairly recent development. I mean sprayed edges – I remember when they first started going sort of 10 plus years ago and thinking “Oh, this is amazing!” And then we did the first edge that had a pattern on it and thought “Oh, it is never going to get any better than this!
Special editions as we currently think about them have really exploded in the last decade and before that, they were more restricted to the leather bound fine press edition or something like that, which were and still are a lot more expensive than what we've been working on.

Eric
Definitely. Now, before we get into what you've been working on, just a quick question to kind of round that out: Is there a special edition you remember from your childhood or a signed copy that sticks in your head? Or even as you got older, was there one that you remember being like, “Oh, this is what's possible?

Brett
The first signed book that I really remember was the first Artemis Fowl book – specifically because that was the first one where I went to go see the author to get it signed as opposed to buying it from a bookshop or somewhere where it had been pre-signed or delivered as signed or something like that. So that signing is still pretty firmly in my head as sort of one of the formative experiences as a book collector.

And then a special edition – and it wasn't the most elaborate special edition – The City We Became by N. K. Jemisin was the first special edition that I organized with a publisher myself at the last bookshop that I worked at, so that one's always special.

It was the origin point for everything that came afterwards.

Inkstone Books edition of Dark Lord: The Rise of Darth Vader featuring foiling of Vader's lightsaber

Inkstone Books

Eric
Let's get into the nitty gritty of it all. You mentioned a little bit here before you started Inkstone and you really revolutionized what's possible in Star Wars books, you did have a career in book selling. That was after, I believe, the engineering, the medicine, and the medieval history. So where did you exactly start that professional journey in book selling before you decided to kind of strike out on your own and create all these beautiful things we love?

Brett
When I was working on my Master's Degree in London, I started working part time at a bookshop in London that specialized in signed and rare books. Initially, as a part time bookseller, it was all the restocking shelves, working on window displays, all that kind of thing. And then after I started working there full time, I got more involved with buying the books for the shop, deciding what we would stock, and that then transitioned into becoming sort of the point person to work on all of the shop's special editions.

That allowed me to get a lot of experience. And while I was doing that, I launched a science fiction and fantasy book subscription for that bookshop that was doing signed special editions…and I started the conversations and got the first Star Wars books going.
So the Star Wars books have always kind of been a project of mine across various bookshops I've worked at. Light of the Jedi, the first High Republic book, was the first one that we were doing, and I thought, well, you know, it's a new publishing era. There probably won't be that much background material required. It might be a good place to start for people who aren't as into Star Wars books as I am.

And sort of all of the Star Wars special editions kind of grew out of, out of working on that.

Cover for Star Wars: The High Republic: Light of the Jedi by Charles Soule featuring Avar Kriss, Elzar Mann, Burryaga, and Loden Greatstorm

Random House Worlds

Eric
Absolutely. Gosh, what a time that was; it really felt like a unique moment.

Was there another singular moment as you were working at these other places where you realized that you wanted to create what Inkstone would become? like “This is good, I'm liking making this, but I want to create an entirely new thing, and I think I can do it.

Brett
I don't think that there was a specific time where I just had a realization that I should be doing this on my own. It was just a sort of accumulation of gathering the right experience and getting the right feel for everything. And like I said, I'd always kind of dreamed and joked about having a shop of my own.

At some point in 2021, I sort of thought, “Okay, if I'm going to do this – if I'm going to give this a shot – this is the time to do it. I've got the experience now, I've got the contacts that I would need in order to do it, I know what people like and what people don't like, and I'm still young(ish). So this seems like a good time to take a bit of a swing and see if I can make it stick.

Eric
So how did you actually go about accomplishing those first steps? I think there's a lot of folks reading and listening here that have dreams of their own and are just afraid to really take that leap, so how did you actually practically decide, “Okay, I'm getting up tomorrow, here's what I'm going to do to get to Inkstone.

Inkstone Books edition of Reign of the Empire by AlexanderFreed featuring Mon Mothma talking to the Imperial Senate and blue sprayed edges with aurebesh writing

Inkstone Books

Brett
It took a lot of late night talks with friends and family to sort of work through the logistics and all of it. And I think deciding initially to be, as we still are, online only meant that I could think about opening a shop without having to worry quite as much about overhead and utility bills and all that stuff that a shop would entail.

I was very fortunate to have a lot of very good contacts at all of the different publishers, so when I decided it was time to start out on my own, I immediately got in touch with them and started having the conversations required to get, you know, the billing accounts and all of that.

And then I started talking with them to look at the new books that were coming out that I would potentially want to do special editions of, either as standalones or for the subscription. Unfortunately, or fortunately, publishing is very much a it's-who-you-know-business, and I was quite fortunate to know the right people who were able to help me in those initial days get the right conversations going to get the business pieces moving along.

Eric
If there's anything that folks in almost any industry have learned in the last five years, it’s that knowing the right people, getting the right contacts in, especially in a job market that's a little less stable everywhere than it used to be, has never really been more important.

But of course, Inkstone doesn't just publish Star Wars novels, but at what point did you realize just how much fans were going to love Star Wars specifically? Did that start growing from the top or was there a moment when you're like “Oh my gosh, this Star Wars thing…I think it has some legs.

Inkstone Books edition of Sanctuary: A Bad Batch novel featuring the Marauder ship going through hyperspace in foiling and helmets of the Bad Batch on the sprayed edges

Inkstone Books

Brett
I always sort of knew going into launching Inkstone that Star Wars books could work.

I had done a number of the High Republic and a couple of standalone special editions through 2021 & 2022, so I knew that there was an audience for it. Obviously starting a new company means that you do not have that audience – you have to find that audience a second time – the hope was that I would be able to grow the Star Wars books into its own section of the company.

And we were fortunate enough with the Canon books that we were able to start with Inquisitor: Rise of the Red Blade, which was a really good, strong book to start with. And we were very fortunate, as we were in a lot of things, a couple years ago that some very good people found us on social media – on Instagram especially – and shared our announcement, shared the books when they got them, and really helped connect our products, our books, with the Star Wars people that were going to be interested in them.

Once we started teasing and eventually talking about the Legends books, that helped tap into a further readership that has really helped the Star Wars books take off. Each Star Wars book is quite good in that the momentum builds on the previous one and the audience continues to grow as people sort of come in and out depending on what they're interested in.

Inkstone edition of Inquisitor: Rise of the Red Blade by Delilah S. Dawson feauring an Inquisitor with a red lightsaber with sprayed red edges

Inkstone Books

Eric
Oh, absolutely. Seeing those Legends titles has been so unique, because many of these never even received any kind of special editions during their print run. Some never even got a hardcover. Why was it so important to you to offer those classic titles?

Brett
They were something that I really wanted to do for a very long time. Like you said, a lot of them either only had hardbacks via the book club format, which is slightly shorter than the normal hardbacks, and a couple of them have never had hardbacks at all. All of the Legends and old EU books came out before all of these fancy special editions were really a thing. There's a couple of slipcase editions of the Heir to the Empire trilogy and a couple of things like that, but broadly speaking, nothing like what we've been working on. So for an old EU Legends head like me, who until he was old enough to understand the difference of canonicity levels, was as Star Wars as the movies, it was always something that I wanted to do.

The last bookshop I worked at when I was doing the High Republic books – they really focused on new releases, and so there was never an opportunity to tap into what was as much Star Wars to me as anything else. So when I started Inkstone, I talked with Penguin and Del Rey about doing the Legends stuff even before I talked with them about doing the Canon special editions. It was always sort of at the forefront of my mind.

It took a lot of very long conversations. I mentioned it first to them in Summer of 2022 and the first Dawn of the Jedi was shipped in January 2024, which gives a bit of a hint as to how long we’d been working on something. It was very satisfying to be able to get things across the line and to be able to do the artwork and the packages that we've been doing on them.

Inkstone Books edition of Dawn of the Jedi: Into the Void featuring blue sprayed edges

Inkstone Books

Eric
It's been phenomenal to see, especially for us. Ever since we started Youtini, we've made a point that Legends and Canon can absolutely coexist. It's a beautiful way to support each community to see a special edition company give legitimacy, for lack of a better phrase, to both of them. Your artwork on each, your treatment of each is so intense and so, so impressive.

On that note, we've talked now about your love of the editions and the beginning of Inkstone, but how do you go about designing a special edition of a Star Wars book? From the announcement of a title to the moment it comes to my porch, what happens from your point of view to make those edges and to get the covers?

Brett
It's slightly different depending on which canonicity we are working on. Obviously, with the Legends books, because they've all been out for a long time – and I've read almost all of them at this point – after we've talked with Del Rey and Disney about what we're going to be working on next, it's really easy for me to go, “Okay, I know this book. These are the characters. This is what goes on in this book. These would make good art ideas.” And then we sort of go from there.

On the Canon side of things, we see the announcements sometimes a little bit in advance, but generally around the same time that everybody else does. So then I'll start talking with my contacts at Penguin and Del Rey, saying, “I'd love to do a special edition of this book. Can we start looking at timelines, costs” all that sort of thing. And then once we have an agreement with them to do a special edition, that's when we really start working on the artwork for the Canon books.

Inkstone Books edition of Star Wars: Sanctuary - A Bad Batch novel featuring the helmets of Hunter, Wrecker, Omega, and Tech sprayed on the edges

Inkstone Books

So obviously for the Canon books, I don't know what's in them. I can sort of guess based on, you know, it's a Bad Batch book. Okay, Bad Batch characters are going to be in it. But, you don't know the extent of all of that. So wherever possible, I'd like to get a manuscript as early as they'll let me have it so I can read it and really get a good understanding for the characters, plot, and beats that are in the book.

Sometimes the manuscript's not ready by the time we need to send or get the artwork done, so I'll talk with the editors to say, “Do these characters show up in this book? Is this going to happen?” to get a good understanding of what's going on with it so that when we can create the artwork that we think will match the book. All of the artwork that we do with the foil and more recently on the edges is artwork that I've had an artist do specifically for the book.

With some special editions, non-Star Wars special editions, the publisher will come up with the artwork for it. But I really want to handle these as in house as we can without me being an artist specifically, since I've got such strong opinions about Star Wars.

Eric
Nothing wrong with that.

Brett
We'll put together sort of a design package that we think will work for the book, send it over to Penguin and Disney, talk with them and make alterations to the artwork depending on their feedback and whether or not they think it'll look good on the book.

One example of that was our edition of Darth Plagueis. The idea I originally had was to have Plagueis in the hood sort of as it is on the finished edition, but it also originally had Sidious and Maul in front of him in foil. We talked with Disney and they wanted us to really focus on Plagueis, which ended up being the right call. It’s an iterative, collaborative process to get the artwork in a position where everybody involved is happy with it.

Inkstone Books edition of Darth Plagueis by James Luceno featuring a foil cover of Darth Plagueis in his hood and red sprayed edges

Inkstone Books

Eric
That process obviously works some wonders. You mentioned some of the editions you've done – if folks haven't seen the most recent release here, Sanctuary…the Bad Batch with the helmets and the Marauderthe amount of extra stuff that goes on on this book cover for especially the price that you're able to put it at, is frankly insane. I know a lot of collectors, myself included, really bemoan a blank cover under a dust jacket. So that stuff's always just so fascinating to see.

It seems like Inkstone is already such a cornerstone of the Star Wars collectible market, but you're still growing pretty exponentially, and we at Youtini are so excited to partner with you going forward. To close us out, you clearly have so many ideas and you clearly work so hard to grow. What do you hope to see as Inkstone evolves for years to come? Is the dream of the storefront still going on? What do we have to look forward to for the next years of Inkstone?

Brett
A bookshop that customers can come into and browse our books is definitely something that we'd like to get sorted out in the short term. The dream for that would be for it to be not just a book shop, but a space where people can come in the evenings and play Dungeons and Dragons with their friends or board games. A nice collaborative space where people who share all of our hobbies and interests can sort of hang out and form a community. Obviously doesn't help all the international customers, but that's something that we're keen to do.

Inkstone Books edition of Reign of the Empire: The Mask of Fear by Alexander Freed featuring foiling of Mon Mothma in the Senate and blue sprayed edges with aurebesh writing

Inkstone Books

From the design thing, we've started doing the designed edges on the Canon books, like you said, with Sanctuary and the helmets and with Reign of the Empire and the Aurebesh text. We're hoping to be able to start doing those on the Legends books as well. It might not have escaped some people that we've only done standalones so far. We are hoping to start working on some of the longer series and trilogies that are in the Legends collection at the moment and do some really cool unified designs across those series so that they really line up and match nicely on a shelf.

From a Star Wars perspective, that’s where we're trying to go in the next year or two at least on the Legends front. Canon is obviously, we don't know what's coming out after November, so we'll find out when you find out and then see what we can do.

Eric
In the meantime, we'll keep an eye out for that 19 book New Jedi Order Inkstone series.

Brett
If I could do those with the Japanese artwork on them in some capacity, I would die of happiness and could, you know, retire.

Eric
Well we can keep it going and make sure that Del Rey and Penguin and Random House and everyone knows how much we love these editions and these books. Obviously you'll be seeing a lot more of Inkstone over at Youtini in the coming times on our Instagram and our website. But if we're not enough, Brett, as we round out here, where are people going to go online to find you? You mentioned word of mouth is a great tool for Inkstone, so the floor is yours to tell people where they can get these books and where they can see your announcements and all that good stuff.

Inkstone Books logo

Inkstone Books

Brett
Yeah, we are at www.inkstonebooks.com where we sell all of our books, Star Wars and otherwise. We've got a nice little Star Wars page that highlights all of our Star Wars books and a Star Wars specific newsletter. We're also on every social media platform that I am aware of under the name Inkstone Books.

We do a lot of announcements on that but we also do some teasers of things ahead of time. We've recently teased our next two Legends books, one of which might have been announced by the time you are listening to this. But, you know, always in motion, the future is. Definitely check us out on social media for hints and teasers and all sorts of fun Star Wars and science fiction and fantasy content.

Eric
Fantastic. Well every time a new edition comes up, we'll make sure to let you all know so you can get your hands on them, because there is no sign of slowing down with Inkstone, and we're very excited to keep on working together as the years go on. Brett, thanks so much for telling everyone about your process here, and we can't wait for what you're going to do next with Inkstone.

Brett
No problem. Thank you so much for having me.

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