Thanks to digital initiatives plus a strong report on titles, the 50-year-old UK publisher keeps growing its business, despite increasing competition externally traditional publishing.

Even as hear from Kogan Page’s leadership today concerning the rights landscape within this independent house’s business and management specialty, we also have several titles the corporation is presenting for rights sales. You will discover those after this story.-Porter Anderson
Chinese Rights Sales Now Leading
China has grown to be Kogan Page‘s most productive rights territory, as the UK publisher marks its 50th anniversary.
Founded by Philip Kogan in 1967, they have remained independent throughout its half-century, and it’s run today by Philip’s daughter Helen Kogan, who’s md.

The business recently made industry headlines with the timely purchase of two cyber-attack titles, announced from the same week as the global ransomware attack. Both of these titles are scheduled for spring 2018:

Cyberwars: The Hacks that Shook the entire world is simply by former Guardian technology editor Charles Arthur and definately will glance at the dramatic inside stories of a few of the world’s biggest cyber-attacks such as the Clinton election campaign along with recent global events.
Cyber Risk Management, is simply by Richard Benham from the UK’s National Cyber Skills Centre and definately will, as outlined by promotional copy, offer “vital guidance on the way to evaluate threats and communicate a cyber-security tactic to help alleviate problems with the trillions of dollars that are lost globally each and every year.”
Publishing Perspectives spoke to Helen Kogan regarding how the corporation has been able to remain independent, its current rights activity, and just how the world of Best Business Books publishing is beginning to change.

‘Discoverable In the World’

Publishing Perspectives: As Kogan Page enters its sixth decade, how is business?
Helen Kogan: We’re creating a great year. We’re almost after our financial year and we’re seeing double-digit growth across all revenue streams. We’ve also won two transformational publishing contracts with the Chartered Institute of Personnel Development and also the Chartered Institute of Banking both for academic and professional development titles.

We’re about to launch a searchable digital platform for B2B customers and we’re also about to launch our first web based courses. It’s been an incredibly exciting breakthrough year following four years of refocus and continuing development of our value proposition.

PP: It is possible to particular focus in your rights activity?

HK: The increase and additional growth of Beijing Book Fair may be particularly beneficial to us, and also the sale of Chinese rights is now our greatest territory.

However, we now have our titles translated into 50 different languages now and, interestingly, this isn’t just restricted to our very popular general business titles. We’ve had success by incorporating of our more specialist titles too, in neuro-scientific logistics and human resources.

We’ve forever been internationally-focused and currently sell our titles into 90 countries with key territories being United states, Europe, Southeast Asia, the guts East, Australia, India, and China.

We now have offices in the US and India plus a wide network of agents globally. We’re fortunate to share in English-the international language of business-and that business and management is really a global subject. We’ve really used global supply chains in recent times and, from the continuing development of digital bibliographic and marketing feeds, are in possession of the truly great capacity to make our titles discoverable around the globe.

‘A Very Crowded Marketplace’

PP: Do you know the main issues facing business and professional publishers?
HK: A major dilemma is that we’re now in the middle of content producers.

It’s no longer just traditional publishers that disseminate business content, and it’s a really crowded marketplace. Training companies, member organizations, business schools and management consultancies are just some of the intense non-traditional competition we need to take into consideration. However, we’ve spent the last three years defining our value proposition and points of difference and think we still have a powerful and competitive business with significant chance of further growth.

PP: How much of a threat is open access? The ‘knowledge ought to be free’ camp can be very persuasive. Will it create an environment in which students tend to be more not wanting to buy content?

HK: I do think it’s very difficult to persuade students to purchase content when they’ve been employed to ‘free’. We require the educational institutes to compliment us within this and also to result in the case that after the line can be an author who may have made the book and should be compensated accordingly.

Just as much as “free” is really a challenge Also i feel that the threat to non-linear narrative, through other media formats, is problematic. We’re investigating the way you may offer a much more three-dimensional and interactive experience with the future to contend with changing consumer reading habits.

PP: How has Kogan Page been able to stay independent?

HK: Bloody-mindedness, resilience, opportunism-all those ideas and much more.

PP: What number of employees have you got and what’s your turnover?

HK: We now have 35 staff and growing. Our turnover is ?4.5 million (US$5.Six million) however in the subsequent financial year this can grow to over ?5.5 million (US$7.2 million) through organic growth and also the addition of the Chartered Institute of Personnel Development’s list. We’d to consider a success on the top line over the last number of years even as we refocused portion of our activity on specialist areas however, this year we’re seeing the fruits of the work and have a much 12-percent growth.

Benefitting From the Weak Pound

PP: What effect do you think Brexit could have?
HK: It’s difficult to say at this point. We need to hope that individuals won’t suffer from tariffs as this will clearly incorporate some impact. Costs of materials can be a problem and we’ll have to monitor this. We hold English-language world and digital rights on the vast majority of our list this should mitigate the need to contend with US editions in Europe (an increasing concern amongst other publishers).

I hope that sanity will prevail and also the threat hanging over our European colleagues’ to certainly be in america will probably be handled swiftly as opposed to deploying it as a bargaining chip.

Around the plus side, we’ve certainly took advantage of the weakness from the pound from the dollar.

PP: Where can you sell the majority of your books?

HK: 70 percent of our sales still have the traditional supply chain-bookshops, trusted online stores, wholesalers, etc. However, our Website sales are growing and now we use a thriving B2B sales activity for member organizations, author networks, and corporates.

PP: What’s the split between digital and print within your business?

HK: Digital accounts for 25 percent of revenue with the balance on this being delivered from digital licensing to academic library suppliers, aggregators, and company content suppliers. Our ebook business has stayed fairly stable at about 8 percent of overall revenue.
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