Ingram Creates Lightning Group

Ingram announced June 5 the formation of the Ingram Lightning Group to coordinate its businesses serving publishers, librarians, booksellers, “and other creators and consumers of printed content throughout the industry.” With Skip Prichard as president and CEO, the new endeavor combines all the Ingram Book Group units plus the Lightning Source Inc. print on demand (POD) operation. Lightning’s president/CEO of six years, J. Kirby Best, will be leaving, with David Taylor named the new Lightning Source prexy. “Consolidating our efforts now is the next logical step, and this will allow us to provide a more coordinated offering for our customers,” said company chair John Ingram. The firm insists that “the organizational change will not affect operations or staffing at any of the existing distribution centers of Ingram book nor at Lightning Source’s book manufacturing facilities.”

Lightning Source earlier was tapped by the Perseus Books Group division PublicAffairs to produce thousands of copies of Scott McClellan’s political tell-all What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington’s Culture of Deception in order to keep ahead of demand.

Additionally, Ingram is extending an offer to “transition all Microsoft Live Search Books publishers into its Ingram Search and Discover Platform at no cost.” Ingram will archive the Live Search files of accepting publishers when the Microsoft service closes. Ingram said it has worked closely with Microsoft to build a “content ingestion and digitization center capable of processing hundreds of thousands of books each year into digital forms that can be utilized for a variety of search and discovery, print-on-demand, and ebook formats.”