# 34 Books. 1.5 Million Copies. One Remarkable Publishing Adventure. And We’re Just Getting Started
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From an eight-week writing marathon in 1993 to a national bestseller, decades of books, and the reinvention of Oblio Press in 2026. I've just relaunched my publishing company website, Oblio Press. And the opening screen looks like this: Well, that's not entirely accurate. The publishing company has actually been around since 2004, and the story behind it goes back much further than that. In fact, it goes all the way back to November 22, 1993. At precisely 10:54 AM. I know the exact time because I documented it. That was the moment I began writing what would become The Canadian Internet Handbook, the first book in a rather remarkable publishing adventure that would ultimately involve 34 books co-authored with Rick Broadhead, more than 1.5 million copies sold, an extraordinary amount of media coverage, several publishers, and a home office that somehow became a book production factory. There was also one particularly important person who made much of this possible: my wife, Christa. But I'm getting ahead of myself. I've spent the last little while rebuilding Oblio Press, the independent publishing house that Christa and I established in 2004. We now have a completely redesigned website, a growing catalogue of books, several new titles on the way, and a rather extraordinary historical archive that we're finally beginning to organize. The process has been quite a journey into our past. And in many ways, an opportunity to figure out what comes next. The timeline behind the first Canadian Internet Handbook, from the initial manuscript to the Financial Post bestseller list. It started with a book about something most people had never heard of In late 1993, the Internet was still a mystery to most people. There was no Google, no Facebook, no Amazon as we know it, no smartphones, and certainly no ChatGPT. The World Wide Web was in its infancy, and the idea that ordinary people would soon spend much of their lives connected to a global digital network seemed rather far-fetched. But a few of us could see that something extraordinary was beginning to happen. Publisher Ken Proctor at Prentice Hall Canada recognized that there was a need for a practical guide to help Canadians understand this strange new technology. He brought together Rick Broadhead and me to write it. Rick had assembled a valuable directory of Internet resources. I had the technical background to explain the emerging technology and what people might do with it. Together, we began writing. And then things became a little crazy. We completed the manuscript in approximately eight weeks. Eight weeks! Today, when I'm working on a book, that seems like an impossibly short period of time. But back then, we were caught up in the extraordinary excitement of something new, and there was a real urgency to get the information into people's hands. The Internet was moving quickly. We thought we should too. By February 1994, the book was going to press. On March 6, the Toronto Star published an article about it, complete with a photograph of Rick and me holding the finished product. And on July 2, 1994, The Canadian Internet Handbook reached number one on the Financial Post paperback nonfiction bestseller list. I still have the original framed bestseller chart. At the time, I don't think any of us quite appreciated what we had started. The real publishing operation was happening at home There's an important part of this story that deserves more attention than it has received over the years. Christa. When Rick and I were writing that first book, Christa was the person who helped turn our words into an actual publishing product. She wasn't simply proofreading a manuscript. She was editing it, challenging the content, designing its layout, and preparing the camera-ready pages that the publisher needed. And she was doing something rather remarkable for 1993. She typeset the entire book using Microsoft Word running on Windows for Workgroups. This was not exactly a conventional professional publishing workflow at the time. But it worked. And it worked extraordinarily well. That first project established a creative partnership that has continued throughout my writing career. I've often referred to Christa as my "fifth Beatle," although given how much work she has done over the years, that description probably understates her contribution. She became the editor who would challenge our assumptions, restructure material, question whether a chapter made sense, and tell us when something simply wasn't good enough. Sometimes rather directly. She also handled design, production, organization, and an extraordinary amount of the behind-the-scenes complexity involved in getting books finished. In 1995, she joined our home-office business full time. And from that point forward, the publishing operation became very much a family enterprise. The partnership behind the writing, editing, typesetting and production. Then came the 34-book publishing marathon What happened next still seems a little improbable when I look back on it. Rick and I kept writing books. Lots of them. We wrote about the Internet, electronic commerce, online personal finance, health information, the future of technology, and the emerging digital economy. We worked with major publishers, including Prentice Hall and Stoddart, and somehow managed to keep up with an industry that was changing almost daily. There were deadlines, interviews, book tours, media appearances, new editions, and endless requests to explain what this Internet thing was actually going to mean. The Internet was becoming a phenomenon, and we were documenting its emergence in real time. Eventually, the tally reached 34 books and more than 1.5 million copies sold. One of our titles, Selling Online, even resulted in a 60,000-copy custom edition for Visa. That's an extraordinary number of books to have written in what now seems like a remarkably short period of time. And while Rick and I were the names on the covers, Christa was an essential part of the machinery that kept the whole thing going. She was helping make it possible to produce one book while another was being researched, a third was being edited, and a fourth was already heading to the printer. I sometimes wonder how we managed to do it. I also sometimes wonder whether we were completely out of our minds. Probably a little of both. The early Internet bookshelf: 34 books and more than 1.5 million copies sold. The publishing company came later By the early 2000s, my professional life was changing. The technology writing and media work that had occupied so much of my time in the 1990s was evolving into something different. I was spending more time on stage, working with organizations that wanted to understand the future, the impact of technological change, and the opportunities emerging from accelerating innovation. My career as a futurist and keynote speaker was expanding. But the writing never stopped. In 2004, Christa and I established Oblio Press. The idea was straightforward: create an independent publishing home for books with a distinctive point of view. It would give us the freedom to develop, shape, and publish material on our own terms. Over the years, that included books about innovation, disruption, leadership, reinvention, and the future, as well as selected works from other authors. The company has never been intended as a mass-production publishing operation. It's been something more personal. A place for ideas that matter to us. And perhaps that explains the tagline we now use: Books That Make a Point. Why rebuild Oblio Press now? That brings us to 2026. Over the last few years, I've found myself writing more books than ever, often drawing on the extraordinary collection of stories, research, and observations that have accumulated from more than three decades of working with organizations worldwide. I've written about organizational mediocrity, leadership, resilience, the courage to be different, and the need to keep moving forward through turbulent times. And the books have increasingly become an important complement to my keynote work. The stage provides an opportunity to challenge an audience with a big idea. A book gives me the opportunity to take that idea further, develop the thinking, share the underlying research, and explore the lessons in greater depth. But the old Oblio Press website no longer reflected what we were doing. It was time for a reinvention. So over the last little while, I've been rebuilding the entire site, creating a proper catalogue, documenting the company's history, organizing the publishing archive, and developing dedicated pages for our books. The new Oblio Press website is a much more complete reflection of what the company has become. It also provides an opportunity to tell stories that have been sitting in boxes, folders, and filing cabinets for decades. A new publishing home for the books, the authors and the stories behind them. What's coming next? The catalogue now brings together books that reflect different parts of my work and life. Being Unique, published in July 2026, explores why originality, curiosity, and the willingness to be different have become increasingly important advantages in a world where everyone has access to many of the same extraordinary tools. The Courage to Become, planned for publication this November, is a particularly personal project. It brings together 251 reflections on recovery, resilience, courage, and the possibility of building a better tomorrow. It's drawn from my Daily Inspiration series, which began in 2016 and has since produced thousands of reflections. Then there's How Innovation Happens, planned for early 2027. (I haven't told my wife about this one yet. Shhhhh!) This book is intended to bring together 101 practical lessons on thinking bigger, moving faster, and making change happen. Each lesson explores an idea, the actions required to put it into practice, and two real-world case studies. It's a project that draws on decades of keynote research and my long-standing belief that innovation isn't magic. It's a discipline. And it's one that I'm particularly excited about. How Innovation Happens, planned for early 2027. And then there's a book I wrote when I was 15 This might be my favourite part of the entire story. Long before the Internet books, before the keynote stages, before Oblio Press, and before I had any idea what my professional life might become, I was a teenager in Grade 11. I was supposed to be studying poetry. Instead, I approached my teacher with a different idea. Could I write a novel? Apparently, the answer was yes. So I spent the next two and a half months writing a Cold War thriller called The Lion's Den. I finished it, handed it in, and eventually moved on with my life. But the manuscript survived. Years later, when Christa started dating me, she found it sitting on a shelf in my apartment. Unknown to me, she started reading it on the subway during her daily commute to and from work. I had absolutely no idea! Apparently, she thought it was worth keeping, because she moved the manuscript to a safe place. And there it remained, through the years that followed, while we built a life together, raised a family, wrote dozens of books, and launched a publishing company. Years later, she went back to that old manuscript and retyped the entire thing. And then, for Christmas, our son Willie designed a wonderful cover for it. And now, all these years later, we're preparing to publish it through Oblio Press in 2027. Written at the age of 15. Being published in 2027. I'm not going to pretend it represents the literary achievement of the century. It was written by a 15-year-old kid! But there's something remarkable about holding a creative idea from your teenage years and realizing that, decades later, you finally have an opportunity to bring it to life. And there's something even more remarkable about the fact that the person who discovered it on a shelf all those years ago is the same person who helped build the publishing company that will finally bring it into print. In many ways, it feels like bringing the entire story full circle. The Lion's Den: written at 15, being published in 2027. The technology has changed. The creative partnership hasn't. As I've been working through the relaunch, I've found myself reflecting on how dramatically the world of publishing has changed since 1993. Back then, we were creating camera-ready pages in Microsoft Word, working with physical manuscripts, coordinating with publishers and printers, and trying to get books into stores before the information they contained became outdated. Today, publishing is an entirely different proposition. Digital tools allow authors and publishers to handle processes that once required substantial production teams. Online distribution provides access to audiences around the world. Print-on-demand changes the economics of inventory. And artificial intelligence is beginning to influence everything from research workflows to how readers discover books. The tools keep changing. The methods keep changing. The business models keep changing. But I've come to realize that the most important part of our own publishing story hasn't changed very much at all. It's still about ideas. It's still about the writing. And it's still about the creative partnership that began when Christa helped Rick and me turn an extraordinarily ambitious eight-week manuscript into a finished book in 1994. Rick and I might have written 34 books during those early Internet years. But none of it would have happened in quite the same way without Christa's contribution. And the Oblio Press story that followed has been built on that same foundation. Reinvention has always been part of the story There's a certain irony in all this. For more than three decades, I've stood on stages around the world challenging organizations to reinvent themselves, rethink their assumptions, and move boldly into the future. I've spent an extraordinary amount of time telling leaders that their past success doesn't guarantee their future relevance. I've encouraged them to embrace new technologies, challenge established practices, and recognize opportunities that might be emerging just beyond their current field of vision. And somewhere along the way, I realized that the very same advice applies to my own small independent publishing company. Oblio Press needed to evolve. So we evolved it. The result is a new publishing home that reflects both the history behind our work and the books we intend to create in the years ahead. It's a place where the past and future can exist together. The 1994 Internet handbook. The extraordinary publishing years that followed. The books about leadership, innovation, and reinvention. The forthcoming work on resilience and originality. And yes, even a Cold War thriller written by a restless teenager who had absolutely no idea what the next half-century would bring. I'm delighted that we've finally given these stories a proper home. And I suspect we're nowhere near finished. Welcome to the new Oblio Press. Explore the publishing company and our remarkable history at obliopress.com. jim@Jims-MacBook

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Source: https://jimcarroll.com/2026/11/34-books-1-5-million-copies-one-remarkable-publishing-adventure-and-were-just-getting-started/