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

As we listen to Kogan Page’s leadership today in regards to the rights landscape in this independent house’s business and management specialty, we also have several titles the company is presenting for rights sales. You will discover those at the end of this story.-Porter Anderson
Chinese Rights Sales Now Leading
China is now Kogan Page‘s most productive rights territory, since 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 md.

The business recently made industry headlines with all the timely acquisition of two cyber-attack titles, announced from the same week since the global ransomware attack. Those two titles are scheduled for spring 2018:

Cyberwars: The Hacks that Shook the globe is simply by former Guardian technology editor Charles Arthur and definately will glance at the dramatic inside stories of some 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 from the UK’s National Cyber Skills Centre and definately will, as outlined by promotional copy, offer “vital guidance on the best way to evaluate threats and communicate a cyber-security process to aid the prevention of the trillions of dollars that are lost globally each year.”
Publishing Perspectives spoke to Helen Kogan regarding how the company has was able to remain independent, its current rights activity, and how the world of Cheap Business Books publishing is evolving.

‘Discoverable Around the World’

Publishing Perspectives: As Kogan Page enters its sixth decade, bed mattress business?
Helen Kogan: We’re using a great year. We’re almost at the end of our financial year and we’re seeing double-digit growth across all revenue streams. We’ve also won two transformational publishing contracts with all the Chartered Institute of Personnel Development and the Chartered Institute of Banking either way 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 an incredibly exciting breakthrough year following 4 years of refocus and progression of our value proposition.

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

HK: The growth and further development of Beijing Book Fair has been particularly best for us, and the sale of Chinese rights is our best territory.

However, we’ve got our titles translated into 50 different languages now and, interestingly, this isn’t just confined to our widely used general business titles. We’ve had success with a few individuals more specialist titles too, in the area of logistics and recruiting.

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

We’ve 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 cheated global supply chains in recent times and, from the progression of digital bibliographic and marketing feeds, will have the truly great power to make our titles discoverable around the globe.

‘A Very Crowded Marketplace’

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

It’s specifically traditional publishers that disseminate business content, and it’s a very crowded marketplace. Coaches, member organizations, business schools and management consultancies are a few of the serious non-traditional competition we have to consider. However, we’ve spent the final 36 months defining our value proposition and points of difference and think we still need a compelling and competitive business with significant chance for further growth.

PP: How much of a threat is open access? The ‘knowledge ought to be free’ camp can be extremely persuasive. Will it create a breeding ground in which students tend to be not wanting to buy content?

HK: I do think it’s difficult to persuade students to purchase content when they’ve been used to ‘free’. Really require educational institutes to compliment us in this and increase the risk for case that at the end of the fishing line is definitely an author who may have created the book and should be compensated accordingly.

Up to “free” can be a challenge Furthermore, i think that the threat to non-linear narrative, through other media formats, is problematic. We’re investigating the way you may offer a more three-dimensional and interactive experience in the longer term 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: The number of staff members have you got and what’s your turnover?

HK: We’ve 35 staff and growing. Our turnover is ?4.5 million (US$5.6 000 0000) but also in another financial year this may grow to around ?5.5 million (US$7.2 million) through organic growth and the addition of the Chartered Institute of Personnel Development’s list. We had to look at popular on the top line during the last couple of years even as we refocused portion of our activity on specialist areas however, this year we’re seeing the fruits of that work and have a much 12-percent growth.

Benefitting From the Weak Pound

PP: What effect do you think Brexit can have?
HK: It’s challenging to say at this time. We must hope that individuals won’t have to endure tariffs since this will clearly have some impact. Costs of materials are often a worry and we’ll have to keep an eye on this. We hold English-language world and digital rights for the vast majority of our list so this should mitigate being forced to compete with US editions in Europe (an expanding concern amongst other publishers).

Hopefully sanity will prevail and the threat hanging over our European colleagues’ to live in the united states is going to be handled swiftly instead of making use of it like a bargaining chip.

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

PP: Where would 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 that 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 is the reason 25 percent of revenue with all the balance of the being delivered from digital licensing to academic library suppliers, aggregators, and company content suppliers. Our ebook business has stayed fairly stable at about 8 percent of overall revenue.
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