I was both saddened and shocked tonight to discover the following message sent by Zondervan on Friday evening:
Subject: Changes At Zondervan
Date: Fri, 22 May 2009 19:25:24 +0100
From: Danz, TracyDue to the current economic climate, internal changes within Zondervan have been necessary. It is with regret that I must announce the elimination of our position based in the UK of Senior UK Sales & Marketing Manager. As such, Ian Matthews is no longer employed by Zondervan. Please be assured that we are determined to serve our customers within the United Kingdom well, and will be working closely with our distributor to the Christian Market, Send the Light Distribution. However, if you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact me.
Sincerely,
Tracy Danz
Tracy Danz
Vice President of Product Sales
Zondervan
In a short message received from Ian himself, he writes:
Your prayers and those of your blog readers would be greatly appreciated as Chava & I seek God’s path for us.
Ian, my prayers are with you, and I’m sure others will say the same. To put it mildly, this is not Zondervan’s finest hour.
- Zondervan part company with Matthews: Christian Marketplace, July 2009
May 24, 2009 at 10:34 am
wow, thats not nice news at all
May 24, 2009 at 10:52 am
Especially coming so soon after Ian put so much work into promoting Steve Chalke’s latest at CBC/CRE.
Part of the problem, I guess, is that Z are not a Christian publishing house: they’re just an imprint of HarperCollins, and for an organisation like HC it’s not about mission, it’s about money…
May 26, 2009 at 8:57 am
I find the way this announcement is phrased quite disturbing. It reads as though the person involved is just a secondary consideration to the ‘elimination of our position’.
I’ve never met you, Ian, but you will be in our prayers.
May 26, 2009 at 2:20 pm
My thoughts exactly, John. Ian gave Zondervan several years of excellent service and was always very helpful whenever I made any enquiries. To be dropped like this without any acknowledgement of that service seems, to say the least, very clinical — not what I’d expect from a company claiming to be Christian!
May 26, 2009 at 8:12 pm
This is not nice news or good.
I am getting more and more concerned at the sacrifice of good servants and contacts in such sudden ways – to me this says much and it’s not at all good. It certainly seems to take the ‘Christian’ out of Christian book trade and Publishing.
I have to admit that in the past few months I have systematically been getting more and more disenchanted with our so called ‘Christian’book trade and ‘Christian’ publishing houses & suppliers.
If we cannot act it then we cannot preach it as it is by our actions that we are known. How we treat other people in times of crisis is surely a key thing in reflecting that.
Still they will be working closer with their distributor to the Christian trade, STL – thats good then.
However with the pricing/overpricing error going on with Zondervan product and STLD wasn’t it Ian that stepped in and made us all feel better and more assured on that one in the end? Though I fully acknowledge that it was working in tandem with STL, But for me there is a place for both surely, a without Ian there directly how would this have actaully played out? Just a concern.
Also it is worth pointing out that about 18 months/2 years ago Gardners also became a distributor for Zondervan? I’m assuming that was as distributor to the non-Christian trade because they seem to have a lot of their stock and I have to admit I tend to get my Zondervan books from them quite often – but then I do tend to use Gardners more than STL due to carrying the general stock as well as the Christian side.
I did not work much with Ian, but it was good to know he was there and available and from all reports and the few experiences I did have he served Zondervan and the Christian book trade well.
My prayers and hopes for a new job soon go out to you Ian.
July 2, 2009 at 3:02 pm
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