Mark your calendars for February 28, 2023. That is the day Florida governor Ron DeSantis will be releasing his new book, “The Courage to Be Free: Florida’s Blueprint for America’s Revival,” which may just turn out also to be his blueprint for a presidential run in 2024.

According to Fox News, the book will be published by Broadside, the conservative imprint of HarperCollins Publishing, and “will chronicle his life in public service in a new book that will publish in late February in what will be seen by political pundits as another step by the conservative champion toward a possible 2024 presidential run.”

DeSantis is coming off a whopper of a reelection win in the Sunshine State, having turned 62 of the state’s 65 counties red. That’s what you call a Reagan-esque electoral shellacking. Presumably, his new book will share lessons learned on the campaign trail and his ideas on how to take those lessons and apply them nationally. The book will also “cover key moments in DeSantis’ life, from “growing up in a working-class family, playing in the Little League World Series, working his way through Yale University and Harvard Law School, volunteering for the Navy after 9/11 and serving in Iraq.”

The 2024 presidential election is already underway — yeehaw — after Donald Trump announced his candidacy on November 15. Speculation has run rampant on whether or not DeSantis would also throw his hat into the ring, with DeSantis having previously said he wouldn’t run against Trump. But times they are a-changin’.

The fact of the matter is that a book release during an election cycle is a sure indicator that a potential candidate is thinking very seriously about running. The news of DeSantis’ 2023 book throws grease on the “will he or won’t he?” fire pit of political prognostication.

And DeSantis isn’t alone. Trump’s vice president and potential primary challenger, Mike Pence, recently released his own memoir, “So Help Me God,” in which he relayed his thoughts on the events of January 6 (something he won’t be doing for the J6 House committee). Weirdly — wink, wink — Pence’s book came out on November 15, the same day Trump announced his third run for the White House. Quite the coincidence.

Former governor and Trump’s U.S. Ambassador to the U.N., Nikki Haley, beat all the boys to the punch by releasing her most recent book, “If You Want Something Done: Leadership Lessons from Bold Women,” back in October. Axios is reporting today that:

Nikki Haley, U.N. ambassador under President Donald Trump, said Tuesday that she would take the Christmas holiday to mull a possible 2024 presidential bid, contradicting her statement last year that she wouldn’t enter the race if Trump opted to run again.

“We are taking the holidays to kind of look at what the situation is,” the former South Carolina governor said during an event at her alma mater, Clemson University, sponsored by Turning Point USA. “If we decide to get into it, we’ll put 1,000% in, and we’ll finish it.”

Like DeSantis, Haley had previously declared she would not challenge Trump if he decided to run in 2024. All that has changed in recent weeks with Trump taking some heat for the GOP’s less-than-stellar midterm showing, not to mention him picking unnecessary fights with DeSantis and having some unsavory characters to dinner at Mar-a-Lago.

Let’s not leave out Former Secretary of State and CIA Director, Mike Pompeo, whose book, “Never Give an Inch: Fighting for the America I Love,” is expected to be published in January. Pompeo has stated he will run for president in 2024 whether or not Trump enters the race.

The increasingly crowded bookshelves in the Politics section of your local bookstore is a pretty good indication that a crowded Republican presidential primary is in the offing. We’ve all got a lot of reading to do.