At this point, it’s obvious to everyone. Artificial intelligence is reshaping nearly every industry, including publishing. To help guide that evolution, Ingram recently appointed Rajen Bhatt as its first director of AI. In this conversation, Bhatt shares how Ingram is approaching AI with a focus on practical tools, publisher needs, and safeguarding creativity and intellectual property, especially for small and independent publishers.
You’ve stepped into a brand-new role at Ingram as director of AI. What does that role entail, and what have been your top priorities for this year?
As director of AI, my role is to lead how Ingram leverages artificial intelligence to support publishers, retailers, libraries, and authors. This includes building intelligent and secure tools and services that enhance how we work and serve our customers.
The role involves analyzing customer journeys, identifying industry trends and needs, and applying effective AI techniques to improve outcomes. We focus on uncovering opportunities for innovation and solving real challenges across the publishing ecosystem.
AI is a strategic initiative for Ingram. Starting this year, our customers and partners will begin experiencing a new portfolio of products and enhancements to existing services. We’re continuously engaging with them to gather feedback and refine offerings based on real-world use. This is an ongoing journey of evolution and improvement.
AI can be a buzzword, but it’s also a very real—and rapidly evolving—tool. How are you helping Ingram identify meaningful, publisher-centric applications of AI versus trendy or overhyped ones?
We focus on solving real problems, not chasing trends. That means listening to publishers and our customers to understand their needs and quickly testing for viable opportunities. We also prioritize projects that save time, reduce costs, improve discoverability, and integrate seamlessly into the existing workflows of our customers.
Ingram has a deep knowledge of the publishing world and strong relationships with the entire ecosystem of the publishing industry. With our mission to improve every aspect of publishing—from printing and distribution to marketing and fulfillment—we’re applying AI in ways that are both meaningful and measurable.
For small and independent publishers, resource efficiency is everything. What are some ways Ingram is exploring AI to make publishing and distribution processes more efficient or accessible for this audience?
We’re building tools that are easy to use and make a big impact, especially for smaller teams. Things like automatically improving book metadata to boost discoverability, forecasting demand to help avoid overprinting, generating precise and effective ad campaigns for multiple platforms, and improving the metadata ingestion and distribution. Our tools are designed to help indie publishers do more with less.
As Ingram continues to push the envelope with AI technologies, we’re also exploring new business and service models tailored specifically to the needs of small and independent publishers—alongside those of larger houses.
One concern we hear often from indie publishers is whether AI-powered tools disintermediate human creativity or editorial judgment. How do you view the role of AI in a creative industry like publishing?
AI should support creativity, not replace it. Human creativity is still at the heart of publishing. AI is a way to give publishers and authors more time to focus on storytelling and strategy.
Our focus is on developing tools that enhance creativity and productivity—such as metadata recommendations, cover design suggestions, accelerated title setup, optimized publishing workflows, and smarter marketing campaigns. These services are built with a human-in-the-loop approach to ensure editorial judgment and creative vision remain central.
Can you share examples of AI tools or workflows Ingram is currently piloting or developing, particularly those that might affect catalog management, metadata enrichment, discoverability, or demand forecasting?
- Smarter demand forecasting using sales and social data
- Improved search tools to help books get discovered more easily
- Metadata enhancements
- Book catalog creation and intelligent curation
- Cover design recommendations
What safeguards is Ingram putting in place to ensure AI innovations respect author and publisher intellectual property? How do you build trust around data privacy and content protection?
We take book content protection seriously. Ingram does not use book content to train AI without permission. We also follow strict privacy standards and are transparent about how AI is used.
Ingram has established robust security and privacy practices for all services using AI. These security and privacy practices are clearly communicated to customers and partners for services that deal with author and publisher intellectual property. All software products are hosted on Ingram’s secure and private computing infrastructure, and we maintain a high security scorecard across the board.
You’ve worked on AI initiatives that have scaled to hundreds of millions of users. What lessons from those broader tech experiences are most applicable to the unique needs of the publishing world?
Yes, in the past, I have worked on AI initiatives in consumer electronics, security and surveillance, internet of things, and video conferencing industries, reaching millions of users. One core theme behind the successful penetration of these AI initiatives was the focus on user experience.
User-centric viewpoints, a deep understanding of customer journeys, and thoughtful integration of AI into existing workflows were key to adoption and scale. At Ingram, we’re applying those same principles to help get more books into the hands of readers everywhere. Scalability of the solutions, customer focus, and solving challenging real-world problems with thoughtful, transparent, and human-led AI are most applicable to the unique needs of the publishing world and will remain Ingram’s focus.