ingram book

In his recently published book, “The Family Business: How Ingram Transformed the World of Books,” local writer Keel Hunt sketches out the history and evolution of what is today Ingram Content Group, a holding company for publishing services ventures that employs more than 4,000 people around the world. In this excerpt from the book, Hunt details the aftermath of the company’s attempted sale to Barnes & Noble, which was torpedoed by the Federal Trade Commission in the spring of 1999. It was time to reset and reinvent parts of the business, especially when it came to equipping itself for the digital age.

Reflecting on the collapse of the B&N deal, John Ingram says: “My way of dealing with the disappointment was to figure out, ‘Okay, what do we do next?’ I am much happier and more settled when I have a North Star and I’m working hard to aim myself and the organization in that general direction. I think part of our success has been that I have a bit of an innate sense about that, and then I combine it with a strong organization to help filter through the stuff I come up with that is wrong or bad. I’ve told people that I think our success has been based on the fact that I’m an entrepreneur inside the organization and I have a sense about things — and I think I’m usually directionally correct about it. Of course, I’m not always right. But hopefully I’m right more often than not.”