Due to digital initiatives as well as a strong report on titles, the 50-year-old UK publisher continues to grow its business, despite increasing competition externally traditional publishing.

As we listen to Kogan Page’s leadership today in regards to the rights landscape in this independent house’s business and management specialty, we have several titles the company is presenting for rights sales. You’ll find those at the conclusion of this story.-Porter Anderson
Chinese Rights Sales Now Leading
China is becoming Kogan Page‘s best rights territory, because 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 md.

The company recently made industry headlines together with the timely purchase of two cyber-attack titles, announced within the same week because global ransomware attack. Those two titles are scheduled for spring 2018:

Cyberwars: The Hacks that Shook the World is actually former Guardian technology editor Charles Arthur and can consider the dramatic inside stories of a number of the world’s biggest cyber-attacks including the Clinton election campaign and also recent global events.
Cyber Risk Management, is actually Richard Benham of the UK’s National Cyber Skills Centre and can, based on promotional copy, offer “vital guidance on the best way to evaluate threats and communicate a cyber-security process to help alleviate problems with the trillions of dollars that are lost globally each year.”
Publishing Perspectives spoke to Helen Kogan about how exactly the company has was able to remain independent, its current rights activity, and the way the concept of Busines Books Online publishing is beginning to change.

‘Discoverable Anywhere in the World’

Publishing Perspectives: As Kogan Page enters its sixth decade, how’s business?
Helen Kogan: We’re using 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 together with the Chartered Institute of Personnel Development as well as the Chartered Institute of Banking both for academic and professional development titles.

We’re going to launch a searchable digital platform for B2B customers and we’re also going to launch our first online courses. It’s been a really exciting breakthrough year following 4 years of refocus and growth and development of our value proposition.

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

HK: The increase and further growth of Beijing Book Fair may be particularly good for us, as well as the sale of Chinese rights has become our best territory.

However, we have our titles translated into 50 different languages now and, interestingly, this isn’t just restricted to our more popular general business titles. We’ve had success with many of our own more specialist titles too, in the area of logistics and hours.

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

We’ve offices in the united states and India as well as a wide network of agents globally. We’re fortunate to write in English-the international language of business-and that business and management is often a global subject. We’ve really rooked global supply chains in recent times and, through the growth and development of digital bibliographic and marketing feeds, now have the truly great capacity to make our titles discoverable all over the world.

‘A Very Crowded Marketplace’

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

It’s merely traditional publishers that disseminate business content, and it’s an incredibly crowded marketplace. Training companies, member organizations, business schools and management consultancies some of the serious non-traditional competition we should instead consider. However, we’ve spent the last 36 months defining our value proposition and points of difference and think we still need a persuasive and competitive business with significant potential for further growth.

PP: The amount of a threat is open access? The ‘knowledge needs to be free’ camp can be be extremely persuasive. Should it create an environment by which students will be more unwilling to purchase content?

HK: I do think it’s very difficult to persuade students to pay for content when they’ve been utilized to ‘free’. We really require educational institutes to support us in this and make the case that at the conclusion of the line is surely an author who may have created the book and really should be compensated accordingly.

Just as much as “free” is often a challenge Furthermore, i feel that the threat to non-linear narrative, through other media formats, is problematic. We’re taking a look at the way we may offer a more three-dimensional and interactive expertise in the long run to tackle changing consumer reading habits.

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

HK: Bloody-mindedness, resilience, opportunism-all those things and even more.

PP: The amount of employees are you experiencing and what’s your turnover?

HK: We’ve 35 staff and growing. Our turnover is ?4.5 million (US$5.6 million) in the subsequent financial year this will grow to over ?5.5 million (US$7.2 million) through organic growth as well as the inclusion of the Chartered Institute of Personnel Development’s list. We had to take a winner on our top line within the last couple of years even as refocused a part of our activity on specialist areas however this year we’re seeing the fruits of that work and have a much 12-percent growth.

Benefitting From a Weak Pound

PP: What effect do you think Brexit may have?
HK: It’s tough to say at this point. We must hope that individuals won’t have to endure tariffs as this will clearly involve some impact. Costs of materials can also be a concern and we’ll must watch this. We hold English-language world and digital rights to the vast majority of our list this should mitigate being forced to tackle US editions in Europe (an evergrowing concern amongst other publishers).

Hopefully sanity will prevail as well as the threat hanging over our European colleagues’ right to live in the united states is going to be managed swiftly instead of using it like a bargaining chip.

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

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

HK: Seventy percent of our own sales still feel the traditional supply chain-bookshops, trusted online stores, wholesalers, and so on. However, our Internet site sales are growing so we use a thriving B2B sales activity for member organizations, author networks, and corporates.

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

HK: Digital makes up about 25 % of revenue together 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 approximately 8 percent of overall revenue.
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