Burns to Replace Arthur at Spring Arbor

Ingram announced last week that Spring Arbor president Steve Arthur is leaving the company and will be replaced by Julie Burns, currently president of Ingram Book Company. Burns will retain that title. She will, however, give up her role as president of Ingram International, and Peter Clifton, the president of Ingram Periodicals, will add the international duties to his responsibilities.

Before she became president of Ingram Book Company, Burns worked as v-p, finance, of Ingram Book Company, where, the wholesaler said, she "worked closely with Spring Arbor customers." Arthur is leaving Spring Arbor to pursue outside entrepreneurial interests. Janet McDonald will continue to lead the Spring Arbor sales team. The changes are effective Sept. 1

The placement of Spring Arbor under Burns's direction could fuel the feeling among some in the Christian publishing community that, as part of Ingram, Spring Arbor has lost its identity. Recent senior management-level departures from Ingram, coupled with several rounds of layoffs, marked an end to a separate Spring Arbor buying group, former Spring Arbor employees maintain. But according to Ingram Book Group chief commercial officer Jim Chandler, those who resigned—other than former liturgical buyer Vickie Pittard—were involved only marginally with Spring Arbor.

"Spring Arbor operates as a very focused company serving the Christian products community under the Ingram Book Group infrastructure," Chandler told PW. "The personnel changes are the kind of changes that every company goes through periodically."

But that explanation doesn't assuage the concerns of those who have seen an erosion of Spring Arbor's former rock-solid sensitivity to the needs of the multifaceted Christian market. At a last-minute meeting at the Religious Booksellers Trade Exhibit in late May between Arthur and liturgical booksellers and publishers, publishers rallied to keep Catholic buyer Jean Nulty on board at Spring Arbor. "In niche publishing, it's important to have a buyer who understands that niche and is sensitive to it," said independent publisher representative Patty Byrns, who participated in the meeting. "Even within Catholicism there are distinctions."

The loss of a liturgical Protestant buyer underscores the division's lack of understanding of the Episcopal slice of the market, said Carol Brown, executive director of the 91-member Episcopal Booksellers Association. "Spring Arbor wants to sell programs, but the programs aren't compatible with our stores," said Brown. "Their interests vary so widely that no one program could ever supply their needs." "Ingram has never accepted the fact that CBA publishers have their own way of operating," said another CBA member.

Still, not everyone is unhappy. "If Spring Arbor didn't exist, we would have to invent it," said Ronald Ted Smith, president of CDS/BookWorld. John Tintera, sales manager at Crossroad, said he appreciates Ingram's marketing prowess, but added, "Ingram has become a behemoth with so many divisions, and from what I can tell, the distinctions are not very clear."

Those distinctions are especially critical to evangelical Christian retailers, who consider a distributor to be their "partner in mission," according to one longtime CBA retailer who asked to remain anonymous. Calling Spring Arbor an "artificial subset" of Ingram, the bookseller nevertheless plans to stay with the distributor because of its consistently high level of service. Some CBA publishers, though, have recently opted to leave Spring Arbor for the competition.

Chandler acknowledged that sales have been soft, but said, "All of our markets are reacting and responding very similarly. It's not just Christian retailers. Spending is down, and we get the same sense from book retailers of all types."