As a result of digital initiatives as well as a strong list of titles, the 50-year-old UK publisher continues to grow its business, despite increasing competition externally traditional publishing.

Even as hear from Kogan Page’s leadership today regarding the rights landscape in this independent house’s business and management specialty, we have several titles the organization is presenting for rights sales. You’ll find those at the end of this story.-Porter Anderson
Chinese Rights Sales Now Leading
China is now Kogan Page‘s most efficient rights territory, since 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 managing director.

The organization recently made industry headlines with all the timely purchase of two cyber-attack titles, announced in the same week since the global ransomware attack. These two titles are scheduled for spring 2018:

Cyberwars: The Hacks that Shook the planet is simply by former Guardian technology editor Charles Arthur and will consider the dramatic inside stories of some of the world’s biggest cyber-attacks including the 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 will, as outlined by promotional copy, offer “vital help with the best way to evaluate threats and communicate a cyber-security strategy to help prevent the trillions of dollars which are lost globally annually.”
Publishing Perspectives spoke to Helen Kogan about how the organization has was able to remain independent, its current rights activity, and the way the world of Busines Books Online publishing has been evolving.

‘Discoverable Anywhere in the World’

Publishing Perspectives: As Kogan Page enters its sixth decade, bed not the culprit business?
Helen Kogan: We’re developing 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 for academic and professional development titles.

We’re gonna launch a searchable digital platform for B2B customers and we’re also gonna launch our first web based classes. It’s been a really exciting breakthrough year following four years of refocus and progression of our value proposition.

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

HK: The development and additional increase of Beijing Book Fair continues to be particularly good for us, and 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 limited to our very popular general business titles. We’ve had success with some of our own more specialist titles too, in the area of logistics and human resources.

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

We have offices in america and India as well as 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 rooked global supply chains lately and, from the progression of digital bibliographic and marketing feeds, are in possession of the truly great power to make our titles discoverable from any location.

‘A Very Crowded Marketplace’

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

It’s no longer just traditional publishers that disseminate business content, and it’s a very crowded marketplace. Coaches, member organizations, business schools and management consultancies are just some of the serious non-traditional competition we have to consider. 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 chance of further growth.

PP: How much of a threat is open access? The ‘knowledge ought to be free’ camp can be extremely persuasive. Does it create a place by which students tend to be more unwilling to purchase content?

HK: I do think it’s tough to persuade students to purchase content when they’ve been used to ‘free’. We actually have to have the educational institutes to aid us in this and to make case that at the end of the line is surely an author that has made the book and really should be compensated accordingly.

Around “free” can be a challenge I additionally think that the threat to non-linear narrative, through other media formats, is problematic. We’re investigating the way we will offer a much more three-dimensional and interactive experience with the longer term to contend with changing consumer reading habits.

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

HK: Bloody-mindedness, resilience, opportunism-all those things and much more.

PP: How many personnel are there and what’s your turnover?

HK: We have 35 staff and growing. Our turnover is ?4.5 million (US$5.6 million) in the following financial year this will likely grow to over ?5.5 million (US$7.2 million) through organic growth and the inclusion of the Chartered Institute of Personnel Development’s list. There was to take a winner on our top line in the last few years even as refocused section 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 a Weak Pound

PP: What effect do you think Brexit could have?
HK: It’s difficult to say at this time. We will need to hope we won’t have to deal with tariffs because this will clearly involve some impact. Costs of materials can be a worry and we’ll need to watch this. We hold English-language world and digital rights on the vast majority of our list and this should mitigate being forced to contend with US editions in Europe (an increasing concern amongst other publishers).

Hopefully sanity will prevail and the threat hanging over our European colleagues’ directly to live in america is going to be dealt with swiftly rather than using it like a bargaining chip.

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

PP: Where can you sell most of your books?

HK: 70 percent of our own sales still go through the traditional supply chain-bookshops, online stores, wholesalers, and so on. However, our Website sales are growing so we have a very 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 25 percent of revenue with all 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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