As a result of digital initiatives and a strong report on titles, the 50-year-old UK publisher is growing its business, despite increasing competition from outside traditional publishing.

Even as hear from Kogan Page’s leadership today concerning the rights landscape with this independent house’s business and management specialty, we also have several titles the company is presenting for rights sales. You will find those following this story.-Porter Anderson
Chinese Rights Sales Now Leading
China is now Kogan Page‘s best 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 using the timely purchase of two cyber-attack titles, announced in the same week because global ransomware attack. Both of these titles are scheduled for spring 2018:

Cyberwars: The Hacks that Shook the World is actually former Guardian technology editor Charles Arthur and may look at the dramatic inside stories of a few of the world’s biggest cyber-attacks including the Clinton election campaign and also recent global events.
Cyber Risk Management, is actually Richard Benham in the UK’s National Cyber Skills Centre and may, according to promotional copy, offer “vital help with the best way to evaluate threats and communicate a cyber-security tactic to assist in preventing the trillions of dollars that are lost globally each and every year.”
Publishing Perspectives spoke to Helen Kogan about how precisely the company has was able to remain independent, its current rights activity, and exactly how the concept of Business Books publishing is beginning to change.

‘Discoverable Anywhere in the World’

Publishing Perspectives: As Kogan Page enters its sixth decade, bed mattress 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 using the Chartered Institute of Personnel Development as well as the Chartered Institute of Banking both for 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 web based classes. It’s been a very exciting breakthrough year following 4 years of refocus and progression of our value proposition.

PP: Is there a particular focus on your rights activity?

HK: The growth and further development of Beijing Book Fair may be particularly best for us, as well as the sale of Chinese rights has become our greatest territory.

However, we’ve our titles translated into 50 different languages now and, interestingly, this isn’t just confined to our more popular general business titles. We’ve had success with many of our own 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 America, Europe, Southeast Asia, the guts East, Australia, India, and China.

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

‘A Very Crowded Marketplace’

PP: Do you know the main issues facing business and professional publishers?
HK: An important dilemma is that we’re now encompassed by content producers.

It’s specifically traditional publishers that disseminate business content, and it’s an extremely crowded marketplace. Training companies, member organizations, business schools and management consultancies a few of the serious non-traditional competition we need to think about. However, we’ve spent the last 3 years defining our value proposition and points of difference and think we still need an engaging and competitive business with significant opportunity for further growth.

PP: How much of a threat is open access? The ‘knowledge ought to be free’ camp can be quite persuasive. Should it create a place where students will be more reluctant to spend on content?

HK: I think it’s difficult to persuade students to cover content when they’ve been employed to ‘free’. We require educational institutes to compliment us with this and make case that following the queue is definitely an author that has came up with book and will be compensated accordingly.

Just as much as “free” is a challenge Furthermore, i believe the threat to non-linear narrative, through other media formats, is problematic. We’re considering the way you can provide an infinitely more three-dimensional and interactive experience of 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 activities plus more.

PP: What number of personnel have you got and what’s your turnover?

HK: We now have 35 staff and growing. Our turnover is ?4.5 million (US$5.6 million) but also in the next financial year this may grow to around ?5.5 million (US$7.Two million) through organic growth as well as the inclusion of the Chartered Institute of Personnel Development’s list. There were to adopt popular on the top line within the last couple of years once we refocused section of our activity on specialist areas but this year we’re seeing the fruits of the work and have a 12-percent growth.

Benefitting From the Weak Pound

PP: What effect you think Brexit will have?
HK: It’s tough to say at this point. We have to hope we won’t suffer from tariffs since this will clearly involve some impact. Costs of materials can also be a problem and we’ll should monitor this. We hold English-language world and digital rights towards the vast majority of our list and this should mitigate having 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 certainly stay in this country will be handled swiftly as an alternative to using it as being a bargaining chip.

On the plus side, we’ve certainly took advantage of the weakness in the pound up against the dollar.

PP: Where do you sell your main books?

HK: Seventy percent of our own sales still feel the traditional supply chain-bookshops, trusted online stores, wholesalers, and so forth. However, our Internet site sales are increasing and now we use a thriving B2B sales activity for member organizations, author networks, and corporates.

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

HK: Digital accounts for 25 percent of revenue using the balance of the 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.
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