The spark that led to The Zeronauts was a conversation John Elkington had with Nick Bellorini, then Publisher at Earthscan. Nick asked whether John had a new book in mind; John said not really; but then he thought again and said, well, there was this idea about zero.

The story of John's awakening to the strange world of zero is told in the book, on pages xvii-xx, xxi-xxiv and 1-2.

The book, John's eighteenth, was developed through 2011, with help from an unexpected Bellagio Fellowship from the Rockefeller Foundation, with the final page proofs sent to Earthscan/Routledge at the end of March 2012. The thinking also benefitted enormously from a three-year grant from the Skoll Foundation and from a series of projects developed at Volans since its formation in 2008.