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

Even as listen to Kogan Page’s leadership today concerning the rights landscape in this independent house’s business and management specialty, the ways to access several titles the corporation is presenting for rights sales. You will find those at the conclusion of this story.-Porter Anderson
Chinese Rights Sales Now Leading
China has grown to be Kogan Page‘s most efficient rights territory, because 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 md.

The company recently made industry headlines with the timely purchase of two cyber-attack titles, announced from the same week because 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 go through the dramatic inside stories of a number 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 in the UK’s National Cyber Skills Centre and may, in accordance with promotional copy, offer “vital assistance with how to evaluate threats and communicate a cyber-security tactic to help prevent the trillions of dollars which might be lost globally every year.”
Publishing Perspectives spoke to Helen Kogan regarding how the corporation has was able to remain independent, its current rights activity, and how the field of Busines Books Online publishing is changing.

‘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 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 with the Chartered Institute of Personnel Development as well as the Chartered Institute of Banking for both academic and professional development titles.

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

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

HK: The development and further increase of Beijing Book Fair has been particularly great 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 confined to our popular general business titles. We’ve had success by incorporating individuals more specialist titles too, in neuro-scientific logistics and hr.

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

We’ve got offices in the united states and India as well as a wide network of agents globally. We’re fortunate to publish in English-the international language of business-and that business and management is often a global subject. We’ve really taken advantage of global supply chains recently and, with the continuing development of digital bibliographic and marketing feeds, have the truly great capability to make our titles discoverable all over the world.

‘A Very Crowded Marketplace’

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

It’s specifically traditional publishers that disseminate business content, and it’s an incredibly crowded marketplace. Training companies, member organizations, business schools and management consultancies are a few of the intense non-traditional competition we must think of. However, we’ve spent the final three years defining our value proposition and points of difference and think we still need a persuasive and competitive business with significant chance of further growth.

PP: The amount of a threat is open access? The ‘knowledge must be free’ camp can be very persuasive. Will it create a breeding ground in which students will be more hesitant to spend on content?

HK: I do think it’s tough to persuade students to cover content when they’ve been employed to ‘free’. We require the educational institutes to aid us in this also to make the case that at the conclusion of the road can be an author who may have come up with book and will be compensated accordingly.

Up to “free” is often a challenge I also believe that the threat to non-linear narrative, through other media formats, is problematic. We’re looking at how you may offer a more three-dimensional and interactive expertise in the long run to compete 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: What number of employees are there and what’s your turnover?

HK: We’ve got 35 staff and growing. Our turnover is ?4.5 million (US$5.Six million) in the subsequent financial year this will grow to in excess of ?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 hit on our top line during the last several years as we refocused part of our activity on specialist areas however year we’re seeing the fruits of these work and have a much 12-percent growth.

Benefitting Coming from a Weak Pound

PP: What effect you think Brexit may have?
HK: It’s tough to say at this point. We need to hope we won’t suffer from tariffs simply because this will clearly incorporate some impact. Costs of materials may also be a worry and we’ll need to keep close track of this. We hold English-language world and digital rights for the majority of our list and this should mitigate the need to compete with US editions in Europe (a growing concern amongst other publishers).

Hopefully sanity will prevail as well as the threat hanging over our European colleagues’ right to live in america will be dealt with swiftly as an alternative to making use of it like a bargaining chip.

For the plus side, we’ve certainly took advantage of the weakness in the pound from the dollar.

PP: Where do you sell most of your books?

HK: 70 percent individuals sales still go through the traditional supply chain-bookshops, online retailers, wholesalers, etc. However, our Website sales are increasing and now we have 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 accounts for 25 % of revenue with the balance on this being delivered from digital licensing to academic library suppliers, aggregators, and corporate content suppliers. Our ebook business has stayed fairly stable around 8 percent of overall revenue.
For more details about Busines Books Online go this popular site: look at here