Because of digital initiatives and a strong list of titles, the 50-year-old UK publisher is growing its business, despite increasing competition from outside 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 business is presenting for rights sales. You will discover those at the conclusion of this story.-Porter Anderson
Chinese Rights Sales Now Leading
China is becoming Kogan Page‘s most efficient rights territory, since the UK publisher marks its 50th anniversary.
Founded by Philip Kogan in 1967, it’s got remained independent throughout its half-century, and it’s run today by Philip’s daughter Helen Kogan, who’s managing director.

The organization recently made industry headlines using the timely buying of two cyber-attack titles, announced in the same week since the global ransomware attack. These two titles are scheduled for spring 2018:

Cyberwars: The Hacks that Shook the planet is actually former Guardian technology editor Charles Arthur and may glance at the dramatic inside stories of a few of the world’s biggest cyber-attacks including 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, based on promotional copy, offer “vital help with how to evaluate threats and communicate a cyber-security technique to help prevent the trillions of dollars that are lost globally annually.”
Publishing Perspectives spoke to Helen Kogan regarding how the business has were able to remain independent, its current rights activity, and just how the field of Cheap Business Books publishing has been evolving.

‘Discoverable Any place in the World’

Publishing Perspectives: As Kogan Page enters its sixth decade, bed mattress 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 using the Chartered Institute of Personnel Development along with the Chartered Institute of Banking for both 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 web based classes. It’s been a really exciting breakthrough year following 4 years of refocus and progression of our value proposition.

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

HK: The increase and further growth of Beijing Book Fair may be particularly good for us, along with the sale of Chinese rights is now our greatest territory.

However, we’ve our titles translated into 50 different languages now and, interestingly, this isn’t just confined to our popular general business titles. We’ve had success with a few of our more specialist titles too, in neuro-scientific logistics and recruiting.

We’ve always been internationally-focused and currently sell our titles into 90 countries with key territories being America, Europe, Southeast Asia, the very 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 often a global subject. We’ve really cheated global supply chains lately and, through the progression of digital bibliographic and marketing feeds, will have the extraordinary power to make our titles discoverable anywhere in the world.

‘A Very Crowded Marketplace’

PP: What are the main issues facing business and professional publishers?
HK: A significant dilemma is that we’re now flanked by 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 a few of the intense non-traditional competition we must think about. However, we’ve spent the final three years defining our value proposition and points of difference and think we still have a persuasive and competitive business with significant potential for further growth.

PP: How much of a threat is open access? The ‘knowledge should be free’ camp can be extremely persuasive. Should it create an atmosphere in which students are more not wanting to spend on content?

HK: I do think it’s difficult to persuade students to cover content when they’ve been employed to ‘free’. We really have to have the educational institutes to guide us within this and to increase the risk for case that at the conclusion of the line is surely an author who may have came up with book and will be compensated accordingly.

As much as “free” is often a challenge I also believe the threat to non-linear narrative, through other media formats, is problematic. We’re investigating the way we may offer a much more three-dimensional and interactive experience in the longer term to take on changing consumer reading habits.

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

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

PP: The amount of employees do you have 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 will grow to around ?5.5 million (US$7.Two million) through organic growth along with the addition of the Chartered Institute of Personnel Development’s list. There was to adopt popular on the top line within the last few years even as refocused portion of our activity on specialist areas however this year we’re seeing the fruits of that work and have a 12-percent growth.

Benefitting From a Weak Pound

PP: What effect do you consider Brexit can have?
HK: It’s tough to say at this point. We need to hope that individuals won’t have to endure tariffs since this will clearly incorporate some impact. Costs of materials are often an issue and we’ll need to keep an eye on 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 along with the threat hanging over our European colleagues’ right to remain in the united states will be handled swiftly rather than making use of it being a bargaining chip.

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

PP: Where do you sell much of your books?

HK: Seventy percent of our sales still have the traditional supply chain-bookshops, trusted online retailers, wholesalers, and so forth. However, our Web site sales are increasing and that we possess a 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 is the reason for A quarter of revenue using the balance of this 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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