Due to digital initiatives and a strong set of titles, the 50-year-old UK publisher is increasing its business, despite increasing competition from the outside traditional publishing.

Once we listen to Kogan Page’s leadership today in regards to 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 find those after this story.-Porter Anderson
Chinese Rights Sales Now Leading
China is becoming Kogan Page‘s most efficient rights territory, because 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 corporation recently made industry headlines using the timely purchase of two cyber-attack titles, announced within the same week because global ransomware attack. Both of these titles are scheduled for spring 2018:

Cyberwars: The Hacks that Shook the planet is actually former Guardian technology editor Charles Arthur and can go through the dramatic inside stories of a number of the world’s biggest cyber-attacks such as Clinton election campaign as well as recent global events.
Cyber Risk Management, is actually Richard Benham with the UK’s National Cyber Skills Centre and can, based on promotional copy, offer “vital guidance on the best way to evaluate threats and communicate a cyber-security tactic to help alleviate problems with the trillions of dollars which are lost globally every year.”
Publishing Perspectives spoke to Helen Kogan about how exactly the business has were able to remain independent, its current rights activity, and how the joy of Business Books publishing has been evolving.

‘Discoverable In 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 after 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 as well as 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 four years of refocus and development of our value proposition.

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

HK: The growth and further expansion of Beijing Book Fair has become particularly good for us, as well as the sale of Chinese rights is currently our best 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 by incorporating in our more specialist titles too, in the area of logistics and hr.

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

We have offices in the usa and India and a wide network of agents globally. We’re fortunate to publish in English-the international language of business-and that business and management is a global subject. We’ve really rooked global supply chains in recent times and, through the development of digital bibliographic and marketing feeds, have the truly great power to make our titles discoverable from any location.

‘A Very Crowded Marketplace’

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

It’s no longer just traditional publishers that disseminate business content, and it’s an extremely crowded marketplace. Training companies, member organizations, business schools and management consultancies are just some of the intense non-traditional competition we must think of. However, we’ve spent the last 36 months defining our value proposition and points of difference and think we continue to have a powerful and competitive business with significant chance for further growth.

PP: The amount of a threat is open access? The ‘knowledge ought to be free’ camp can be be extremely persuasive. Will it create a breeding ground through which students tend to be more hesitant to buy content?

HK: I do believe it’s very difficult to persuade students to fund content when they’ve been used to ‘free’. We actually have to have the educational institutes to aid us within this and result in the case that after the queue can be an author that has made the book and really should be compensated accordingly.

As much as “free” is a challenge I additionally think that the threat to non-linear narrative, through other media formats, is problematic. We’re considering how you can offer an infinitely more three-dimensional and interactive experience of the long run to compete with changing consumer reading habits.

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

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

PP: The number of employees are you experiencing and what’s your turnover?

HK: We have 35 staff and growing. Our turnover is ?4.5 million (US$5.6 million) in another financial year this will grow to over ?5.5 million (US$7.2 million) through organic growth as well as the addition of the Chartered Institute of Personnel Development’s list. There were to take a success on the top line during the last couple of years once we refocused part of our activity on specialist areas however year we’re seeing the fruits of that work and have 12-percent growth.

Benefitting From a Weak Pound

PP: What effect think Brexit will have?
HK: It’s tough to say at this point. We need to hope we won’t suffer from tariffs because this will clearly involve some impact. Costs of materials can be a worry and we’ll need to monitor this. We hold English-language world and digital rights towards the vast majority of our list which means this should mitigate having to compete with US editions in Europe (an evergrowing concern amongst other publishers).

I hope that sanity will prevail as well as the threat hanging over our European colleagues’ directly to stay in america will probably be dealt with swiftly instead of utilizing it like a bargaining chip.

On the plus side, we’ve certainly benefited from the weakness with the pound from the dollar.

PP: Where do you sell most of your books?

HK: 70 % in our sales still feel the traditional supply chain-bookshops, online retailers, wholesalers, etc. However, our Site sales are increasing so 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 about 8 percent of overall revenue.
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