Because of digital initiatives plus a strong set of titles, the 50-year-old UK publisher is increasing its business, despite increasing competition externally traditional publishing.

Even as listen to Kogan Page’s leadership today about 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 at the conclusion of 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, it’s remained independent throughout its half-century, and it’s run today by Philip’s daughter Helen Kogan, who’s managing director.

The business recently made industry headlines with all the timely acquisition of two cyber-attack titles, announced in the same week as the global ransomware attack. These two titles are scheduled for spring 2018:

Cyberwars: The Hacks that Shook the planet is by former Guardian technology editor Charles Arthur and may consider the dramatic inside stories of some of the world’s biggest cyber-attacks including the Clinton election campaign as well as recent global events.
Cyber Risk Management, is by Richard Benham from the UK’s National Cyber Skills Centre and may, according to promotional copy, offer “vital assistance with the best way to evaluate threats and communicate a cyber-security strategy to assist in preventing the trillions of dollars which might be lost globally every year.”
Publishing Perspectives spoke to Helen Kogan about how the corporation has managed to remain independent, its current rights activity, and exactly 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 having a great year. We’re almost at the conclusion of our financial year and we’re seeing double-digit growth across all revenue streams. We’ve also won two transformational publishing contracts with all the Chartered Institute of Personnel Development and also the Chartered Institute of Banking 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 classes. It’s been a really exciting breakthrough year following 4 years of refocus and development of our value proposition.

PP: What is the particular focus to your rights activity?

HK: The development and further increase of Beijing Book Fair continues to be particularly best for us, and also the sale of Chinese rights is now our most successful 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 with many individuals more specialist titles too, in logistics and recruiting.

We’ve always been internationally-focused and currently sell our titles into 90 countries with key territories being North America, Europe, Southeast Asia, the center East, Australia, India, and China.

We now have offices in the united states 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 rooked global supply chains recently and, from the development of digital bibliographic and marketing feeds, are in possession of the truly great capacity to make our titles discoverable anywhere in the world.

‘A Very Crowded Marketplace’

PP: What are main issues facing business and professional publishers?
HK: A serious dilemma is that we’re now flanked by content producers.

It’s merely traditional publishers that disseminate business content, and it’s a very crowded marketplace. Training companies, member organizations, business schools and management consultancies are a few of the serious non-traditional competition we should instead consider. However, we’ve spent the very last three years defining our value proposition and points of difference and think we have a persuasive 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 extremely persuasive. Does it create a breeding ground by which students tend to be hesitant to pay for content?

HK: I believe it’s difficult to persuade students to purchase content when they’ve been used to ‘free’. We really have to have the educational institutes to compliment us within this and also to make the case that at the conclusion of the fishing line is an author who may have come up with book and really should be compensated accordingly.

Up to “free” is really a challenge Also i think that the threat to non-linear narrative, through other media formats, is problematic. We’re investigating the way you can provide a much more three-dimensional and interactive expertise in the future to take on changing consumer reading habits.

PP: How has Kogan Page managed to stay independent?

HK: Bloody-mindedness, resilience, opportunism-all those actions plus much more.

PP: What number of staff members are you experiencing and what’s your turnover?

HK: We now have 35 staff and growing. Our turnover is ?4.5 million (US$5.6 million) in the next financial year this will likely grow to in excess of ?5.5 million (US$7.2 million) through organic growth and also the addition of the Chartered Institute of Personnel Development’s list. There were to look at a hit on the top line within the last several years even as we refocused portion of our activity on specialist areas however year we’re seeing the fruits of the work and have 12-percent growth.

Benefitting From a Weak Pound

PP: What effect think Brexit may have?
HK: It’s challenging to say at this time. We have to hope that people won’t have to deal with tariffs since this will clearly incorporate some impact. Costs of materials may also be an issue and we’ll must keep an eye on this. We hold English-language world and digital rights for the majority of our list so this should mitigate the need to take on US editions in Europe (an evergrowing concern amongst other publishers).

Hopefully sanity will prevail and also the threat hanging over our European colleagues’ to certainly stay in this country will be dealt with swiftly as an alternative to making use of it as a bargaining chip.

Around the plus side, we’ve certainly benefited from the weakness from the pound from the dollar.

PP: Where does one sell much of your books?

HK: 70 % individuals sales still glance at the traditional supply chain-bookshops, online stores, wholesalers, and so forth. However, our Site 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 in your business?

HK: Digital is the reason A quarter of revenue with all the balance with 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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