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

Even as listen to Kogan Page’s leadership today concerning the rights landscape within this independent house’s business and management specialty, the ways to access several titles the corporation is presenting for rights sales. You can find those after this story.-Porter Anderson
Chinese Rights Sales Now Leading
China is now Kogan Page‘s most efficient rights territory, because the UK publisher marks its 50th anniversary.
Founded by Philip Kogan in 1967, they have 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 using the timely purchase of two cyber-attack titles, announced in the same week because the global ransomware attack. These two titles are scheduled for spring 2018:

Cyberwars: The Hacks that Shook the globe is actually former Guardian technology editor Charles Arthur and definately will go through the dramatic inside stories of many of the world’s biggest cyber-attacks like the Clinton election campaign as well as recent global events.
Cyber Risk Management, is actually Richard Benham in the UK’s National Cyber Skills Centre and definately will, according to promotional copy, offer “vital guidance on the best way to evaluate threats and communicate a cyber-security tactic to aid the prevention of the trillions of dollars which are lost globally every year.”
Publishing Perspectives spoke to Helen Kogan about how the corporation has were able to remain independent, its current rights activity, and how the field of Best Business Books publishing is evolving.

‘Discoverable In the World’

Publishing Perspectives: As Kogan Page enters its sixth decade, bed not the culprit business?
Helen Kogan: We’re creating 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 along with the Chartered Institute of Banking both for academic and professional development titles.

We’re planning to launch a searchable digital platform for B2B customers and we’re also planning to launch our first online courses. It’s been an extremely exciting breakthrough year following 4 years of refocus and growth and development of our value proposition.

PP: What is the particular focus for your rights activity?

HK: The development and additional growth of Beijing Book Fair has become particularly good for us, along with the sale of Chinese rights is currently our most successful territory.

However, we’ve got 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 logistics and hours.

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

We have offices in the united states and India plus a wide network of agents globally. We’re fortunate to write in English-the international language of business-and that business and management is really a global subject. We’ve really cheated global supply chains in recent times and, through the growth and development of digital bibliographic and marketing feeds, now have the truly great power to make our titles discoverable around the globe.

‘A Very Crowded Marketplace’

PP: Which are the main issues facing business and professional publishers?
HK: An important concern is that we’re now encompassed by content producers.

It’s merely traditional publishers that disseminate business content, and it’s a really crowded marketplace. Training companies, member organizations, business schools and management consultancies some of the serious non-traditional competition we have to think about. However, we’ve spent the past 36 months defining our value proposition and points of difference and think we continue to have a persuasive and competitive business with significant opportunity for further growth.

PP: How much of a threat is open access? The ‘knowledge must be free’ camp can be very persuasive. Should it create an environment through which students tend to be more not wanting to buy content?

HK: I think it’s difficult to persuade students to pay for content when they’ve been employed to ‘free’. We really have to have the educational institutes to aid us within this and result in the case that after the road is an author who may have created the book and really should be compensated accordingly.

Up to “free” is really a challenge Also i believe the threat to non-linear narrative, through other media formats, is problematic. We’re taking a look at how you can offer a much more three-dimensional and interactive experience with the near future to take on changing consumer reading habits.

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

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

PP: How many employees do you have and what’s your turnover?

HK: We have 35 staff and growing. Our turnover is ?4.5 million (US$5.Six million) but also in the following financial year this may grow close to ?5.5 million (US$7.2 million) through organic growth along with the addition of the Chartered Institute of Personnel Development’s list. There was to adopt a hit on the top line over the last number of years as we refocused section of our activity on specialist areas however, this year we’re seeing the fruits of the 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 hard to say at this time. We must hope that individuals won’t suffer from tariffs because this will clearly possess some impact. Costs of materials can be an issue and we’ll need to watch this. We hold English-language world and digital rights towards the majority of our list so this should mitigate needing to take on US editions in Europe (an evergrowing concern amongst other publishers).

Hopefully sanity will prevail along with the threat hanging over our European colleagues’ to stay in the united states will likely be handled swiftly rather than utilizing it like a bargaining chip.

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

PP: Where does one sell much of your books?

HK: 70 percent individuals sales still have the traditional supply chain-bookshops, online stores, wholesalers, and so forth. However, our Site sales are growing and now we have 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 % of revenue using 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 around 8 percent of overall revenue.
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