John Ingram on Publishers and Rearranging the Deck Chairs on the Titanic

By Jeremy Greenfield, Editorial Director, Digital Book World, @JDGsaid

John Ingram has business in his blood.
In 1946, his grandfather, Orrin Henry Ingram, founded Ingram Barge Company, the beginnings of the business empire of Nashville-based Ingram Industries. As business conditions changed and opportunities presented themselves, the Ingram family – Orrin Henry until his death in 1963 and then his sons Frederic Ingram and Erskine Bronson Ingram – nimbly managed and grew the business, making acquisitions, adopting new technologies and expanding into new areas, including content distribution.
Ingram Book Group was founded in 1964 and since then the name Ingram has been associated with content distribution. Today, the Ingram Content Group stands where the book group once stood, spanning eleven companies that do everything from printing and shipping large print runs to processing and distributing digital content to print on demand.
As e-books and other forms of digital content have become a larger part of the publishing business, Ingram has evolved. For instance, Vital Source Technologies, an Ingram company born of the digital age, delivers digital textbooks to nearly two million users across 6,000 campuses in 180 countries.
John Ingram, 50, grandson to Orrin Henry, has been at the forefront of that evolution. He is currently chairman of the board of both Ingram Industries and Ingram Content Group and has been with the company since 1986, when he received his MBA from the Owen Graduate School of Management at Vanderbilt University in Nashville. He also holds a bachelor of arts degree from Princeton University.
He has held various executive positions at Ingram since 1986, including president of Ingram Book Co.
We spoke with Ingram about the company’s growing digital revenues, hiring for the new digital landscape and why publishers should do more than “rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic.”

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