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

Even as we listen to Kogan Page’s leadership today about the rights landscape with this independent house’s business and management specialty, we have several titles the business is presenting for rights sales. You can find those following this story.-Porter Anderson
Chinese Rights Sales Now Leading
China is now Kogan Page‘s most productive rights territory, because UK publisher marks its 50th anniversary.
Founded by Philip Kogan in 1967, it’s remained independent throughout its half-century, and it’s run today by Philip’s daughter Helen Kogan, who’s managing director.

The organization recently made industry headlines with the timely acquiring two cyber-attack titles, announced inside the same week because global ransomware attack. Those two titles are scheduled for spring 2018:

Cyberwars: The Hacks that Shook the planet is actually 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 in addition to recent global events.
Cyber Risk Management, is actually Richard Benham from 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 aid the prevention of the trillions of dollars which might be lost globally each and every year.”
Publishing Perspectives spoke to Helen Kogan about how the business has managed to remain independent, its current rights activity, and just how the concept of Buy Business Books publishing is beginning to change.

‘Discoverable Anywhere in the World’

Publishing Perspectives: As Kogan Page enters its sixth decade, bed not the culprit business?
Helen Kogan: We’re using 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 and also the Chartered Institute of Banking either way 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 continuing development of our value proposition.

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

HK: The development and additional growth of Beijing Book Fair may be particularly best for us, and also 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 with many individuals more specialist titles too, in neuro-scientific logistics and hours.

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

We now have offices in the US and India and 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 in recent times and, through 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: Do you know the main issues facing business and professional publishers?
HK: An important concern 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 must take into consideration. However, we’ve spent the past 36 months defining our value proposition and points of difference and think we have a persuasive and competitive business with significant chance of further growth.

PP: The amount of a threat is open access? The ‘knowledge needs to be free’ camp can be be extremely persuasive. Should it create an environment through which students will be more reluctant to buy content?

HK: I do think it’s hard to persuade students to fund content when they’ve been utilized to ‘free’. Really require educational institutes to compliment us with this and also to make case that following the fishing line is an author that has came up with book and really should be compensated accordingly.

Just as much as “free” can be a challenge I also feel 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 experience in the future to tackle changing consumer reading habits.

PP: How has Kogan Page managed to stay independent?

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

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

HK: We now have 35 staff and growing. Our turnover is ?4.5 million (US$5.6 million) however in another financial year this can grow to in excess of ?5.5 million (US$7.2 million) through organic growth and also the inclusion of the Chartered Institute of Personnel Development’s list. We had to consider a hit on the top line over the last couple of years even as refocused section of our activity on specialist areas however, this year we’re seeing the fruits of that work and expect to have 12-percent growth.

Benefitting From the Weak Pound

PP: What effect think Brexit could have?
HK: It’s tough to say at this stage. We will need to hope that we won’t have to deal with tariffs simply because this will clearly possess some impact. Costs of materials are often an issue and we’ll must monitor this. We hold English-language world and digital rights on the majority of our list this should mitigate needing to tackle US editions in Europe (an increasing concern amongst other publishers).

Hopefully sanity will prevail and also the threat hanging over our European colleagues’ to stay in this country will be dealt with swiftly rather than deploying it as a bargaining chip.

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

PP: Where do you sell your main books?

HK: Seventy percent individuals sales still glance at the traditional supply chain-bookshops, trusted online stores, wholesalers, and the like. However, our Internet site sales are increasing and we have 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 makes up about 25 percent of revenue with 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 approximately 8 percent of overall revenue.
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