Tony Wales, who had a possibly unrivalled knowledge of global publishing, has died.
He was born in the Belgian Congo (now DRC) to missionary parents. His family returned to the UK when he was ten. His father was to lead Scripture Gift Mission (SGM).
Tony set out on a career in publishing, moving in 1966 to Inter-Varsity Press (IVP). Here editors David and Pat Alexander shared with him a new and fresh idea of setting up Lion, a Christian publishing house to serve the general market. Tony became a co-founder.
At an IVF (UCCF) student conference in 1969, Tony met Sue Lightfoot, a teacher in training, later an archaeologist. They married in 1972. His career as Lion International Director began in 1973.
Lion would speak into the culture through publishing good quality books from a Christian perspective – cookery, fiction, children’s books, as well as landmark history and Bible reference books. Lion’s spiritual genius was to harness full-colour printing, and enable text in other languages to be dropped into the page design.Titles reached into some 200 languages.
The Lion Handbook to the Bible (1973) sold more than 3 million copies, in 30 languages. The Lion Children’s Bible went into 40 languages, including Mongolian (1997) for a church planted barely six years earlier. Within weeks it was the best-selling book in the country.
Lion joined the Publishers’ Association, and Tony served on its International Committee, participating in trade delegations to China and India with the chairs of Penguin and Macmillan. He visited the Leipzig and Warsaw bookfairs ten years before the collapse of Communism.
Tony retired in 2008. He continued to help emerging publishers in retirement through Media Associates International, teaching means of financial stability. His easy manner, ready humour, and modest demeanour won him friends, and trust, and his accrued knowledge of worldwide publishing was perhaps unrivalled.
