Customer Case
A vision of the
publishing future
Lantia Publishing
Ricoh has worked closely with Lantia Publishing, a visionary company with an innovative
spirit, to bring its vision to life. Together, they have developed a totally automated
manufacturing platform for fast and cost-effective production of books on demand.
Combined with Lantia’s revolutionary crowdfunding platform for authors, its production
platform of four Ricoh PRO™ C7110X digital colour presses in Seville is set to tear up the
publishing rule book.
Objectives
Pioneering a book publishing revolution
• Create the publishing house of
the future with the tools of the
future.
“Our aim is to be the publishing house of the future with the tools of the future.” These words
from Chema García, Director of Lantia Publishing, perfectly reflect the innovative spirit of the
company and the path it aims to follow. And it seems to be getting it right. The pioneer in print on
demand, self-publishing, digital distribution, book shop marketing and crowdfunding for writers, is
revolutionising the publishing market with the support of Ricoh who, according to Garcia, “is the
company that best understands our needs.”
• Revolutionise the publishing
market with an offer based on
quality, service and the capacity
to produce cost effectively any
number of copies.
Ricoh R&D pays off
• Establish a crowdfunding site to
help finance publishing projects.
Garcia explains, “Ricoh invests heavily in R&D, putting it to work for their customers. This is vital
and gives us an obvious competitive edge. Innovation and constant striving for improvement are
part of our DNA, making Ricoh the best choice for us. Their support has been crucial to our ability
to come so far in a mere two years. We are very happy with the value for money Ricoh gives us in
printing, and also with the technical and after-sales services provided by the whole team. Over this
time, we have changed and extended our fleet of machines twice, and they have always been there
to support us.”
Global expansion
In addition to offices in Seville and Houston, Texas, Lantia has an eye on the UK market and is also
considering establishing manufacturing centres in those markets or seeking local print on demand
suppliers. García says, “this will all depend on whether we can find the right suppliers. Otherwise,
we will be setting up our own centres. In either case, we will be working with Ricoh.”
1 - A vision of the publishing future
Results
• Built solid production platform
to support a growing business,
with four digital colour presses
installed over its first two years
in business.
• Explored a global production
platform, either through
outsourcing to other Ricoh
users in specific locations or
establishing its own Ricoh-based
manufacturing plant.
• Worked with Ricoh specialists
to develop a unique and highly
functional crowdfunding
platform integrated with its
automated book printing
system.
Revolutionary business model that delivers
Lantia is convinced that its business model is what the market needs. “The primary difference
between what we offer and what was available on the market up to now is that our system is a
complete, totally automatic solution. It’s not just about printing a book or a hundred copies of a
work; it’s about delivering a customer’s order anywhere in the world, using the files and information
stored in a database. There are very few companies in the world today that really have everything in
place to do this properly. We are very proud to be one of them,” García says.
Self-publishing is the future
Lantia believes that self-publishing is the future of the business and can back this up with figures.
The number of self-published books produced annually in the U.S. has grown by a factor of 10 over
the past five years, and more than one million titles are expected to come out in 2015 under this
model. The figures for the Spanish-speaking market are more subdued, but follow a similar trend. To
drive this expansion, Lantia is also developing a software solution for all of the publishing industry’s
needs, with more than 100 businesses already signed up.
“Ricoh have shown that they
appreciate what we do and
our talent for innovation. I am
convinced that we will soon
be working together on really
innovative projects that will
truly transform the industry.
That’s our motivation and
Ricoh’s mission, too. It’s
in their tagline: Imagine,
Change.”
Chema García
Director of Lantia Publishing
Solution
• Optimised print on demand
capabilities.
• Versatile colour and mono
production capabilities.
• Tailored training to hit the
ground running.
Benefits
To top this off, it has also created a crowdfunding platform, Pentian.com, allowing anybody around
the world to begin selling a book within 30 days. As García says, “there were a lot of across-theboard micropatronage or crowdfunding platforms, where anybody could raise money for a project,
but no publisher was using crowdfunding to finance projects. That’s what makes this new: patrons
are now actually partners in the book. This way, when a book is published, the writer, publisher and
patron all share in the profits, in proportion to their contribution.”
• High quality short run samples.
Working together to build a winning platform
• Closer relationships with
publishers.
• 6% of Spanish self-publishing
market share captured.
• Cost effective production.
• Expanded in-house capabilities.
Getting the tool to work has not been easy, but Lantia has had vital support from Ricoh. “We
set out our business requirements and Ricoh, the specialists, delivered the best solutions. We are
happy to have them keeping us up to date and suggesting ways to improve. Their support was
particularly valuable with regard to automation, which reduces costs, eliminates human error and,
most importantly, offers sustained scalability. We weren’t looking at how to double production; we
were looking at how to multiply it by ten,” García explains.
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2 - A vision of the publishing future