By Enrique Parrilla, Lantia Founder & CEO, shares his insight on the lasting impact of the pandemic is having on the innovative Spanish publisher
Everything stopped when the crisis started. Then something wonderful happened. People adapted.
For us, the first thing it affected was the way we worked. It changed the way we all collaborated. Before we relied on working closely with each other in an open office that encouraged creative ideas. That went out of the window immediately and the first challenge was the isolation.

Video conferencing works well for some things – especially remote communication – but it is not always the best way for how we work. We also began relying more on cloud storage and moved from high end equipment in the office to cloud based services.
Our production software had always been designed to do what was needed but what we changed was the way we use it. We have sharpened our focus. We are now using a common repository for information. It was always there but we didn’t rely on it. Now we are leaving more comments. Also challenging has been the human care aspect in moving from the standard setup of the office environment to the home environment.
A lot of people say the virus will permanently change the way people work. I dispute that. The consultant Coronavirus has evolved us. It has speeded things up. Things that would have taken a decade to change have taken five months. I think a lot of what we did will have to come back but it will have evolved. And the biggest evolution will be in the way we work collaboratively with people and technology. We will keep every tool we have improved on.
The wider impact has been that people’s confidence in buying online has grown. And not just in the usual place. Instead of just going to Amazon they began contacting the publishers or local bookshops.
Traditionally big companies dominated the market though their access to shops. They bought the space and it was hard to compete with them. There wasn’t the need to move towards the book of one model. Suddenly that was taken away. Book selling became a level playing field. It set a new commercial landscape. If forced an evolution and I was surprised how quickly everyone adapted.
That has driven a lot more focus on shorter runs and variety of content. Digital printing, which was considered a speciality, and not taken seriously, is now all of a sudden preventing companies going belly up. Orders for runs of ones for us have gone up over 400%. December was our highest month.
We had a meeting to plan 2021. The challenge for us is to find a way to produce books of one, fast. We are connected with local book stores and the online marketplace. We can receive and produce orders on the fly but we need to shave off hours. Runs of 1,000 will probably remain but that is not our growth. Our growth is book of one, delivered directly to the home. To address that we need to change and realign our processes.
We have the ability to produce 3,000 books a day - 300 of which were books of one. But if we produce 2,000 a day, and they are all books of one, we have reshaped the business to adapt to demand and created a profitable model.
Before, the focus was on speed and cost. Now it is on versatility. We would rather run a comparatively slower press but be able to connect to finishing equipment in a fully automated way that enables unattended production.
I believe in 30 to 40 years’ time everything will be digital. There is a place for that special edition museum book that digital printing cannot manage right now but I also believe there is such a thing as good enough. Our use of many different screens in everyday life has removed the expectation of strict colour matching. People are more accepting of differences in colour because of the way they consume them.
I am not seeing a change in the types of books consumers are choosing or publishers are publishing and that is one of the best things. I came from the tech industry to publishing because of my love of reading. I strongly believe human beings are hard wired to consume concepts from storytelling. It is digital print that supports that, not the impact of the virus.
We published a book by a woman who had lost a child. She wrote it as part of her therapy, but in a way, it was a guide for other parents. Of course, it is hoped that parents never find themselves in that situation but, if they do, there is this book. Before digital print, it would not have been produced – orders of 3,000 or 4,000 would have been needed to break even.
We have several publishing inprints and we have been able to produce the stories people want to read about, learn about. We are not concerned if they are a mass phenomenon. We can break even after a few dozen books. Today, people can easily find the stories they want to read in a more relaxed way.
Digital print enables that.
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