How do you tell if a publisher uses Ingram for distribution?

Never considered this. Perhaps try googling Ingram and the publisher together.

The best way to know is to ask them. Also see if their books are listed in the Ingrams Catalog

Not sure if you have to have an account with Ingram, but apparently you can also use their catalog to check for your own book, using the ISBN.

And no, I didn't know this. Thanks to Artemis for mentioning the catalog.

http://www.ingrambook.com/retailers/publicationsi.aspx

No problem, L.C.

My information may be outdated, but as far as I know, Ingram and Baker & Taylor are the only two conventional book distributors in the US of any size. B&T mostly specialize in textbooks and libraries.

They operated by buying books from the publisher at 55% discount and reselling to bookstores at 40% discount.

(I haven't kept up with the book distribution industry in the past few years, so I don't know what the rise of vertically integrated operations like Amazon and B&N has done to them.)

Ingram and Baker and Taylor are book wholesalers who provide fulfillment and distribution services. They're both still in business and doing their thing.

The potential red flag is when a small publisher says that Ingram (or Baker and Taylor) are their "distributors". If small publishers want to get books into stores, they need to work with a distributor--book distributors do the same work for smaller publishers that a larger publisher's sales force does, i.e. by generating orders, not just fulfilling orders.

Ingram and Baker and Taylor don't send people around to bookstores to generate orders. That's not what they do; their business focus is on fulfilling orders.

Does this answer your question, MysteryRiter?

In any case, the best way to see if a publisher can get books into bookstores is to go to local bookstores and see if there are any books there from that publisher.