# Behind the Books: A New Chapter for Oblio Press and a Long-Overdue Tribute to Christa
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I've just relaunched OblioPress.com. On the surface, it's a new home for the books published through Oblio Press, the independent publishing company that Christa and I established in 2004. There's a fresh design, a growing catalogue, a look at the books that are coming next, and a much deeper history of how this all began. But rebuilding the site made me realize something. I've spent more than three decades talking about the books I've written, the ideas behind them, and the rather remarkable career that unfolded because of them. I haven't always done nearly enough to tell the story of the person who helped make those books possible. That person is my wife, Christa. The new Oblio Press website: books that make a point, and the story behind them. It began with an eight-week sprint Travel back to late 1993. The Internet was still a mystery to most people. I was working from a home office, Rick Broadhead had assembled a remarkable directory of Canadian Internet resources, and a publisher at Prentice Hall Canada saw an opportunity for a book explaining this strange new world to Canadians. Rick and I got to work on The Canadian Internet Handbook. We had a $2,500 advance, an enormous amount to learn, and very little time. We wrote the manuscript in roughly eight weeks. Then Christa did something extraordinary. While holding down a demanding executive career at Unilever, she became the book's editor, designer and production department. Using Microsoft Word on Windows for Workgroups, she helped turn our rough material into something normal human beings could actually read, and prepared camera-ready pages for the publisher. We weren't following the traditional publishing playbook. We were moving at the speed of the technology we were trying to explain. On March 6, 1994, the Toronto Star ran a substantial article about the book, complete with a wonderfully formal photograph of Rick and me in our suits. By July 2, The Financial Post had placed it at number one on its paperback nonfiction bestseller list. I still have that clipping framed on my office wall. From a manuscript begun in November 1993 to a national bestseller in 1994. The new site documents the extraordinary speed of those early publishing years. Thirty-four books. An extraordinary few years. That first book changed everything. Rick and I went on to write or co-write 34 books during the Internet years, with more than 1.5 million copies sold. In 1996 alone, we released five titles in the space of a few months. At the same time, there were newspaper columns, television appearances, a radio show, keynote presentations and two very young boys growing up in the middle of our home-office adventure. It was exhilarating. It was exhausting. And it would never have happened without Christa's ability to bring order, clarity and discipline to an almost absurd pace of work. I've often called her my Fifth Beatle. That's my shorthand for the essential creative partner whose contribution doesn't always appear on the cover. She didn't merely correct grammar. She challenged Rick and me when our explanations made no sense. She argued about what belonged in a book and what had to come out. She organized, redesigned and rewrote passages, and knew when something wasn't ready. On Surviving the Information Age, she was a genuine research and creative partner, too. I've offered to put her name on books as a co-author. She's declined. But I've always believed her contribution deserved far more recognition than the small acknowledgments tucked inside the front pages. One of the sections I'm proudest of on the new site: recognizing Christa as the essential editorial and creative partner. Before Oblio Press, there was a partnership Those early Internet books were published by Prentice Hall and other established publishers. They came before Oblio Press itself. But they are the reason Oblio Press exists. In 2004, Christa and I created our own independent publishing imprint. Over the years, it has brought my work to readers and published books by other voices, including Scott Kress and Nicola J.D. Maher. The subjects have changed, from innovation and leadership to resilience, recovery and reinvention. The underlying approach hasn't: make the ideas clear, care about the reader, and get the details right. That's why the redesigned site has an entire section called Behind the Books. It isn't simply an author biography. It's the story of a publishing partnership, an evolving family business and the person who has shaped every manuscript along the way. Behind the Books: the publishing partnership that began long before Oblio Press was founded. A new website, and two new chapters The timing feels right. Being Unique, released in July 2026, is about the power of thinking differently and refusing to surrender your individuality. And coming in November 2026 is The Courage to Become: 251 Thoughts for Recovery, Resilience and a Better Tomorrow, a deeply personal collection drawn from ten years of my Daily Inspiration writing. The new site puts those books front and centre, while giving readers a place to explore the broader catalogue, the other Oblio Press authors, and the extraordinary story that started with that first Internet handbook. We're also beginning to work through decades of original articles, magazine profiles, photographs and publishing records. There's a lot more history to share, and I'm looking forward to bringing some of it onto the site. But for me, the most important part of this relaunch isn't the technology or the design. It's finally making something very clear: the writing may have my name on it, but the books have always been a team effort. Christa, this one's for you. Explore the new site: OblioPress.com. And take a few minutes to visit the publishing history and the story behind the books.

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Source: https://jimcarroll.com/2026/10/behind-the-books-a-new-chapter-for-oblio-press-and-a-long-overdue-tribute-to-christa/