As a result of digital initiatives along with a strong listing of titles, the 50-year-old UK publisher continues to grow its business, despite increasing competition external to traditional publishing.

Even as we hear from Kogan Page’s leadership today about the rights landscape in this independent house’s business and management specialty, the ways to access several titles the organization is presenting for rights sales. You will find those at the end of this story.-Porter Anderson
Chinese Rights Sales Now Leading
China is now Kogan Page‘s most efficient rights territory, since the UK publisher marks its 50th anniversary.
Founded by Philip Kogan in 1967, it has remained independent throughout its half-century, and it’s run today by Philip’s daughter Helen Kogan, who’s managing director.

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

Cyberwars: The Hacks that Shook the globe is actually former Guardian technology editor Charles Arthur and may go through the dramatic inside stories of many of the world’s biggest cyber-attacks like the Clinton election campaign along with recent global events.
Cyber Risk Management, is actually Richard Benham with the UK’s National Cyber Skills Centre and may, as outlined by promotional copy, offer “vital assistance with how to evaluate threats and communicate a cyber-security process to help prevent the trillions of dollars which can be lost globally each year.”
Publishing Perspectives spoke to Helen Kogan regarding how the organization has was able to remain independent, its current rights activity, and the way the concept of Best Business Books publishing has been evolving.

‘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 end 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 either way academic and professional development titles.

We’re gonna launch a searchable digital platform for B2B customers and we’re also gonna launch our first web based courses. It’s been an incredibly exciting breakthrough year following 4 years of refocus and progression of our value proposition.

PP: Exactly what is the particular focus on your rights activity?

HK: The increase and additional increase of Beijing Book Fair has been particularly good for us, and also the sale of Chinese rights is currently our best territory.

However, we have our titles translated into 50 different languages now and, interestingly, this isn’t just limited to our more popular general business titles. We’ve had success with some 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 North America, Europe, Southeast Asia, the center East, Australia, India, and China.

We have offices in the usa and India along with a wide network of agents globally. We’re fortunate to write in English-the international language of business-and that business and management can be a global subject. We’ve really taken advantage of global supply chains in recent years and, over the progression of digital bibliographic and marketing feeds, are in possession of the extraordinary capacity to make our titles discoverable from any location.

‘A Very Crowded Marketplace’

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

It’s specifically traditional publishers that disseminate business content, and it’s a very crowded marketplace. Coaches, member organizations, business schools and management consultancies a few of the serious non-traditional competition we have to consider. However, we’ve spent the last 36 months defining our value proposition and points of difference and think we continue to have an engaging and competitive business with significant chance for further growth.

PP: How much of a threat is open access? The ‘knowledge should be free’ camp can be be extremely persuasive. Should it create an environment through which students will be more hesitant to spend on content?

HK: I believe it’s tough to persuade students to purchase content when they’ve been utilized to ‘free’. We really require educational institutes to aid us in this and increase the risk for case that at the end of the line is definitely an author who may have came up with book and really should be compensated accordingly.

Around “free” can be a challenge I additionally believe that the threat to non-linear narrative, through other media formats, is problematic. We’re investigating how you will offer a more three-dimensional and interactive expertise in the near future to take on changing consumer reading habits.

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

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

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

HK: We have 35 staff and growing. Our turnover is ?4.5 million (US$5.6 000 0000) but in the following financial year this may grow to around ?5.5 million (US$7.2 million) through organic growth and also the inclusion of the Chartered Institute of Personnel Development’s list. There were to look at a hit on the top line over the last few years as we refocused section of our activity on specialist areas but this year we’re seeing the fruits of these work and have a much 12-percent growth.

Benefitting From your Weak Pound

PP: What effect do you consider Brexit may have?
HK: It’s tough to say now. We need to hope that we won’t have to deal with tariffs since this will clearly involve some impact. Costs of materials may also be an issue and we’ll have to keep close track of this. We hold English-language world and digital rights for the vast majority of our list this should mitigate having to take on US editions in Europe (a growing concern amongst other publishers).

Hopefully sanity will prevail and also the threat hanging over our European colleagues’ to certainly stay in america will probably be managed swiftly as an alternative to utilizing it as being a bargaining chip.

About the plus side, we’ve certainly taken advantage of the weakness with the pound against the dollar.

PP: Where can you sell your main books?

HK: Seventy percent of our sales still have the traditional supply chain-bookshops, online stores, wholesalers, and so forth. However, our Web site sales are growing and that 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 is the reason 25 % 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 approximately 8 percent of overall revenue.
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