Working with Hunt, publishing veteran Bruce Harris, and editor Karl Weber has been a voyage of rediscovery of my own time in the business. He lived just long enough to be included in the outreach two years ago. The Ingram of today reaches every corner of the global book business. It is more accuracy than hyperbole to say that every publisher, every bookseller, and every library in the world does business with Ingram. As a wholesaler, they carry the books of all publishers and are the primary distributor the originating source for those published by hundreds of them.
Their CoreSource digital asset repository, which dispatches the digital files for books to deliver ebooks or print books all over the globe, is the single biggest. Since Ingram is among the top three accounts for most publishers in the world beyond those for which it is the primary distributor , it is likely that many readers of these posts will want to read this book. My personal experience with Ingram began when I called on them selling books for the brand-spanking-new Two Continents Publishing Group in January, Ingram was in the earliest stages of their first great growth spurt which started when Harry Hoffman took over from Stambaugh and started figuring out ways to grow the business.
They had introduced their first great technology boost to the book business, weekly distribution of their inventory via the new medium of microfiche, the prior year.
In the nearly 40 years since then, wearing many different hats, I have met dozens of people from Ingram. I have consulted with them for years as well and introduced them to projects they have taken on board.
I have never met one who was in any way difficult to work with. As a year chart of its revenue shows, ICG did not have steady annual growth. Indeed, the company has had its ups and downs, reflecting trends in the entire trade book business.
Ingram enjoyed sustained growth from about —, fueled in part by the expansion of bookstore chains. The company rode the financial roller-coaster through , through the digital evolution of the book business. However, ICG has had very strong gains since , as the various initiatives begun by John Ingram took hold. Lightning Source began life in as Lightning Print under the direction of Y.
Chi and Larry Brewster with the goal of printing as few as one copy at a time in contrast to the runs of tens of thousands of copies done by offset presses. Lightning Print produced its first book in January and at the end of that year had only 1, titles in its library. By , Lightning Source had more than 18 million titles in its inventory and had developed the Guaranteed Availability Program GAP , which helps publishers when they have trouble meeting demand because of problems with offset printing.
According to The Family Business , that was the case in , due to pandemic-induced supply chain disruptions. Launched in , a key attribute of IngramSpark is its easy access to Lightning Source, which allows indie authors to quickly print as many, or as few, copies of their books as they want.
An attempt at online bookselling. Although expansion into a range of digital services, including the creation of the digital asset management system CoreSource, helped to increase ICG revenues, not all innovations succeeded. Services Authors.
About Ingram Content Group. Platforms Aerio. Ingram iQ.
0コメント