Stan Gundry has spent much of his professional life at Zondervan Academic where he is currently senior v-p and publisher. As he begins his 41st year with the company, PW caught up with Gundry as he looks back on his multifaceted career to discuss the changes he has seen in the market.

Also a theologian, professor, and author, Gundry got his start in publishing after having served as a pastor for five years in Washington State and teaching at both the Moody Bible Institute and Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Illinois for 12 years.

“I often like to tell people I didn’t think I’d end up as a publisher, but everything in my background led to it,” he tells PW.

In 1979, Gundry’s wife, author Patricia Gundry, had a two-book contract with Zondervan and was preparing to attend a meeting to present her work. The publisher also invited Stan to its Grand Rapids, Mich. headquarters to hear about a role at the company. “Basically they wanted me to build an academic program they had started several years earlier, but that no one person mandated,” Gundry says.

He began working at the press in January 1980, acquiring and editing textbooks, Bible commentaries, and other resources for Christian scholarship. “It was a one-man show, but by the late 80’s, we had 20-30 academic titles a year.”

While responsible for some of the contract and sub-rights negotiations, Gundry was tasked with meeting a Southern Baptist mega-church pastor and a potential author: Rick Warren. “He came to my attention in the early 1990’s, and my boss said ‘You need to go after him,’ but I had the hardest time getting an audience,” Gundry recalls.

After flying to Warren’s Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, Calif., Gundry and Warren spoke for hours.

“He said, ‘What can Zondervan give to me that I can’t do on my own,’” Gundry tells PW. “I said, ‘Well Rick, if you start your own publishing operation and publish your books under your own imprint, it will be subject to suspicion that the books were only published because you were the boss. If you sign with Zondervan, we bring to you the credibility we have from decades of publishing.’”

Warren’s first book, The Purpose Driven Church, was published under Zondervan Academic in 1995 as a church resource, and it has sold 1.5 million copies to date, according to the publisher. The second book, The Purpose Driven Life, published in 2002 and became an instant bestseller that was voted one of the most influential Christian books of the 20th century by the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association. In English alone, The Purpose Driven Life has sold over 30 million copies.

Today, Zondervan Academic publishes 50-60 titles a year, including this spring’s lead title, The Quran with Christian Commentary: A Guide to Understanding the Scripture of Islam by Gordon Nickel (April 28). “I’m excited about its contribution to this area and I think it will be around for a long time,” Gundry says.

Current trends in academic religious publishing include books on Christian apologetics and the philosophy of religion, according to Gundry. “Those books do very well for us and I don’t see that diminishing,” he says. “With the challenges of religious pluralism and fact that people of faith encounter non-Christian religions such as popular atheism—they’re very interested in seeing the Christian faith as intellectually credible.”

Gundry, who experienced Harper & Row’s acquisition of Zondervan in 1988 as well as the 2012 purchase of Thomas Nelson, says there has been “all kinds of change” in Christian publishing in recent years. He cites the demise of CBA, the decline of bricks-and-mortar stores including Family Christian and LifeWay, and more books being sold online as major challenges to the business. But perhaps the biggest driver of change of all has been the rise of digital technology. Early on, Zondervan Academic embraced e-books and Bible study software, and now the publisher offers online learning courses based on textbooks. Further, audio sales continue to rise across the Christian publishing industry.

Nevertheless, “Audiobooks aren’t replacing print books, and it remains to be seen if and to what extent e-books will replace print books—they haven’t yet,” says Gundry.

Referring to himself as both an idealist and a realist as a result of his career, 82-year-old Gundry remains optimistic about the future of the books business. “My philosophy is that well-researched, quality content that is well-edited and attractively designed in both physical and digital formats will be successful,” he says. “Quality wins out in the end.”

Correction: A previous version of this article misstated that Zondervan Reflective was housed within Zondervan Academic. It is a standalone imprint of HarperCollins Christian Publishing.