As a result of digital initiatives as well as a strong list of titles, the 50-year-old UK publisher keeps growing its business, despite increasing competition from the outside traditional publishing.

Even as listen to Kogan Page’s leadership today concerning the rights landscape in this independent house’s business and management specialty, we’ve got several titles the corporation is presenting for rights sales. You’ll find those following this story.-Porter Anderson
Chinese Rights Sales Now Leading
China has become Kogan Page‘s most productive rights territory, as 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 business recently made industry headlines with the timely purchase of two cyber-attack titles, announced inside the same week as the 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 like the Clinton election campaign in addition to recent global events.
Cyber Risk Management, is simply by Richard Benham of the UK’s National Cyber Skills Centre and may, according to promotional copy, offer “vital help with the way to evaluate threats and communicate a cyber-security technique to help alleviate problems with the trillions of dollars that are lost globally annually.”
Publishing Perspectives spoke to Helen Kogan regarding how the corporation has been able to remain independent, its current rights activity, and just how the world of Cheap Business Books publishing is evolving.

‘Discoverable Anywhere in the World’

Publishing Perspectives: As Kogan Page enters its sixth decade, bed not the culprit 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 with the Chartered Institute of Personnel Development as well as the Chartered Institute of Banking for academic and professional development titles.

We’re gonna launch a searchable digital platform for B2B customers and we’re also gonna launch our first online courses. 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 to your rights activity?

HK: The development and further increase of Beijing Book Fair continues to be particularly great for us, as well as the sale of Chinese rights is our greatest territory.

However, we’ve 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 the field of logistics and human resources.

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

We now have offices in the US and India as well as a wide network of agents globally. We’re fortunate to create in English-the international language of business-and that business and management can be a global subject. We’ve really rooked global supply chains recently and, with the growth and development of digital bibliographic and marketing feeds, will have the extraordinary ability to make our titles discoverable all over the world.

‘A Very Crowded Marketplace’

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

It’s no longer just traditional publishers that disseminate business content, and it’s an incredibly crowded marketplace. Coaches, member organizations, business schools and management consultancies a few of the intense non-traditional competition we have to think about. However, we’ve spent the final three years defining our value proposition and points of difference and think we still have a powerful and competitive business with significant chance of further growth.

PP: How much of a threat is open access? The ‘knowledge should be free’ camp can be extremely persuasive. Will it create an environment where students are more reluctant to pay for content?

HK: I believe it’s tough to persuade students to fund content when they’ve been used to ‘free’. We require educational institutes to guide us in this also to result in the case that following the road can be an author who’s created the book and may be compensated accordingly.

As much as “free” can be a challenge I additionally believe that the threat to non-linear narrative, through other media formats, is problematic. We’re taking a look at the way we can provide a lot more three-dimensional and interactive experience with the near future to compete with changing consumer reading habits.

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

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

PP: The amount of staff members are there and what’s your turnover?

HK: We now have 35 staff and growing. Our turnover is ?4.5 million (US$5.Six million) however in the subsequent financial year this will likely grow close to ?5.5 million (US$7.Two million) through organic growth as well as the addition of the Chartered Institute of Personnel Development’s list. We had to consider a success on the top line within the last number of years even as we refocused portion of our activity on specialist areas however year we’re seeing the fruits of this work and expect to have 12-percent growth.

Benefitting From the 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 suffer from tariffs simply because this will clearly incorporate some impact. Costs of materials can be an issue and we’ll must watch this. We hold English-language world and digital rights for the majority of our list this should mitigate the need to compete with US editions in Europe (an increasing concern amongst other publishers).

Hopefully sanity will prevail as well as the threat hanging over our European colleagues’ to stay in america will be dealt with swiftly rather than making use of it as being a bargaining chip.

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

PP: Where would you sell much of your books?

HK: 70 percent individuals sales still feel the traditional supply chain-bookshops, trusted online retailers, wholesalers, and the like. However, our Internet site sales are growing and now we possess a thriving B2B sales activity for member organizations, author networks, and corporates.

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

HK: Digital is the reason A quarter of revenue with the balance with 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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