Thanks to digital initiatives along with a strong listing of titles, the 50-year-old UK publisher is growing its business, despite increasing competition external to traditional publishing.

Even as we hear from Kogan Page’s leadership today concerning the rights landscape in this independent house’s business and management specialty, we also have several titles the business is presenting for rights sales. You will discover those following this story.-Porter Anderson
Chinese Rights Sales Now Leading
China has grown to be Kogan Page‘s best rights territory, as 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 business recently made industry headlines with the timely acquisition of two cyber-attack titles, announced from the same week as the global ransomware attack. Both these titles are scheduled for spring 2018:

Cyberwars: The Hacks that Shook the World is by former Guardian technology editor Charles Arthur and may consider the dramatic inside stories of some of the world’s biggest cyber-attacks such as the Clinton election campaign along with recent global events.
Cyber Risk Management, is by Richard Benham of the UK’s National Cyber Skills Centre and may, as outlined by promotional copy, offer “vital tips on how you can evaluate threats and communicate a cyber-security tactic to help prevent the trillions of dollars which can be lost globally each and every year.”
Publishing Perspectives spoke to Helen Kogan regarding how the business has was able to remain independent, its current rights activity, and how the joy 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 creating 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 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 an incredibly exciting breakthrough year following 4 years of refocus and development of our value proposition.

PP: It is possible to particular focus in your rights activity?

HK: The increase and additional growth of Beijing Book Fair continues to be particularly good for us, as well as the sale of Chinese rights is our best territory.

However, we 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 by incorporating individuals more specialist titles too, in logistics and hr.

We’ve 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 US and India along with a wide network of agents globally. We’re fortunate to share 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 development of digital bibliographic and marketing feeds, have the great ability to make our titles discoverable from any location.

‘A Very Crowded Marketplace’

PP: Do you know 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 really crowded marketplace. Coaches, member organizations, business schools and management consultancies are just some of the intense non-traditional competition we need to think of. However, we’ve spent the last 3 years defining our value proposition and points of difference and think we continue to have a persuasive and competitive business with significant potential for further growth.

PP: How much of a threat is open access? The ‘knowledge needs to be free’ camp can be be extremely persuasive. Can it create a place through which students tend to be not wanting to spend on content?

HK: I do believe it’s very difficult to persuade students to fund content when they’ve been utilized to ‘free’. We actually require educational institutes to guide us in this also to increase the risk for case that following the fishing line can be an author who’s come up with book and may be compensated accordingly.

Around “free” can be a challenge I also think that the threat to non-linear narrative, through other media formats, is problematic. We’re looking at how you can offer a lot more three-dimensional and interactive experience of the near future to contend with changing consumer reading habits.

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

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

PP: How many personnel are you experiencing and what’s your turnover?

HK: We have 35 staff and growing. Our turnover is ?4.5 million (US$5.Six million) in the next financial year this can grow to over ?5.5 million (US$7.Two million) through organic growth as well as the addition of the Chartered Institute of Personnel Development’s list. There was to adopt a success on the top line in the last several years even as we refocused a part of our activity on specialist areas however year we’re seeing the fruits of these work and have 12-percent growth.

Benefitting From a Weak Pound

PP: What effect you think Brexit may have?
HK: It’s difficult to say now. We have to hope that individuals won’t have to deal with tariffs as this will clearly possess some impact. Costs of materials can also be a problem and we’ll need to keep close track of this. We hold English-language world and digital rights to the majority of our list so this should mitigate the need to contend with 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 this country is going to be managed swiftly as opposed to using it as being a bargaining chip.

Around the plus side, we’ve certainly taken advantage of the weakness of the pound from the dollar.

PP: Where would you sell most of your books?

HK: Seventy percent individuals sales still go through the traditional supply chain-bookshops, trusted online stores, wholesalers, and so forth. However, our Website sales are increasing and 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 25 % of revenue 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 about 8 percent of overall revenue.
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