The pandemic produced numerous challenges for book distributors, not the least of which was how to get much-needed books and supplies to students who, during lockdowns, had no access to school libraries. This challenge was particularly acute for students who learn in Spanish.

One solution was to provide digital-learning resources. Lectorum, the Spanish-language book distributor based in New Jersey, reacted quickly to the demand.

“We had met with Makemake, a young company from Colombia, during the previous Guadalajara Book Fair [FIL] in November 2019,” says Alex Correa, president and CEO of Lectorum. “The founder was a very young and enthusiastic entrepreneur, Catalina Holguin, who had previously developed an e-book platform for Colombia’s national library system. When customers started asking for e-books in spring 2020, this proved very fortuitous.”

Correa moved quickly to finalize a distribution agreement to market the Makemake platform in the U.S., and in 2020 started reaching out to libraries and other customers.

Read more here: Publishers Weekly