As a result of digital initiatives and a strong set 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 in regards to the rights landscape within this independent house’s business and management specialty, we’ve got several titles the corporation is presenting for rights sales. You will find those following this story.-Porter Anderson
Chinese Rights Sales Now Leading
China is becoming Kogan Page‘s most productive 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 business recently made industry headlines together with the timely purchase of two cyber-attack titles, announced in the same week because global ransomware attack. Both of these titles are scheduled for spring 2018:

Cyberwars: The Hacks that Shook the World is simply by former Guardian technology editor Charles Arthur and may consider the dramatic inside stories of a few of the world’s biggest cyber-attacks such as Clinton election campaign along with recent global events.
Cyber Risk Management, is simply by Richard Benham in the UK’s National Cyber Skills Centre and may, as outlined by promotional copy, offer “vital help with the way to evaluate threats and communicate a cyber-security technique to aid the prevention of the trillions of dollars that are lost globally each and every year.”
Publishing Perspectives spoke to Helen Kogan about how exactly the corporation has managed to remain independent, its current rights activity, and the way the concept of Best Business Books publishing has been evolving.

‘Discoverable Around the World’

Publishing Perspectives: As Kogan Page enters its sixth decade, how’s business?
Helen Kogan: We’re developing a great year. We’re almost following 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 for both 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 classes. It’s been a really exciting breakthrough year following 4 years of refocus and growth and development of our value proposition.

PP: Is there a particular focus in your rights activity?

HK: The expansion and further growth of Beijing Book Fair may be particularly best for us, as well as the sale of Chinese rights is currently our best territory.

However, we now have our titles translated into 50 different languages now and, interestingly, this isn’t just restricted to our widely used general business titles. We’ve had success with a few individuals more specialist titles too, in neuro-scientific logistics and hours.

We’ve 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 and a wide network of agents globally. We’re fortunate to write in English-the international language of business-and that business and management is a global subject. We’ve really cheated global supply chains in recent years and, from the growth and development of digital bibliographic and marketing feeds, are in possession of the truly great capacity to make our titles discoverable from any location.

‘A Very Crowded Marketplace’

PP: Which are the main issues facing business and professional publishers?
HK: A serious issue is that we’re now surrounded 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 must think about. However, we’ve spent the last three years defining our value proposition and points of difference and think we still have a persuasive and competitive business with significant chance for further growth.

PP: How much of a threat is open access? The ‘knowledge must be free’ camp can be very persuasive. Will it create an atmosphere in which students tend to be unwilling to spend on content?

HK: I do believe it’s tough to persuade students to cover content when they’ve been employed to ‘free’. We need the educational institutes to compliment us within this and increase the risk for case that following the line is an author who may have created the book and really should be compensated accordingly.

Around “free” is a challenge I additionally feel that the threat to non-linear narrative, through other media formats, is problematic. We’re looking at the way you can offer an infinitely more three-dimensional and interactive experience in the longer term to take on changing consumer reading habits.

PP: How has Kogan Page managed to stay independent?

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

PP: The amount of workers have you got and what’s your turnover?

HK: We have 35 staff and growing. Our turnover is ?4.5 million (US$5.Six million) however in another financial year this will likely grow to over ?5.5 million (US$7.Two million) through organic growth as well as the inclusion of the Chartered Institute of Personnel Development’s list. We had to look at a success on the top line in the last few years once we refocused part of our activity on specialist areas however, this year we’re seeing the fruits of that work and have 12-percent growth.

Benefitting From the Weak Pound

PP: What effect think Brexit will have?
HK: It’s challenging to say at this point. We have to hope that we won’t suffer from tariffs because this will clearly involve some impact. Costs of materials can be a concern and we’ll need to monitor this. We hold English-language world and digital rights to the majority of our list so this should mitigate the need to take on US editions in Europe (a growing concern amongst other publishers).

Hopefully sanity will prevail as well as the threat hanging over our European colleagues’ to certainly live in america is going to be managed swiftly as opposed to using it as a bargaining chip.

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

PP: Where does one sell most of your books?

HK: 70 % individuals sales still go through the traditional supply chain-bookshops, trusted online stores, wholesalers, and so on. However, our Internet site sales are growing and now we have a very thriving B2B sales activity for member organizations, author networks, and corporates.

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

HK: Digital makes up about 25 % of revenue together with the balance of the being delivered from digital licensing to academic library suppliers, aggregators, and corporate content suppliers. Our ebook business has stayed fairly stable at approximately 8 percent of overall revenue.
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