Due to digital initiatives along with a strong report on titles, the 50-year-old UK publisher continues to grow its business, despite increasing competition from outside traditional publishing.

Even as listen to Kogan Page’s leadership today regarding the rights landscape on this independent house’s business and management specialty, we have several titles the business is presenting for rights sales. You will discover those following 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 company recently made industry headlines using the timely acquisition of two cyber-attack titles, announced in the same week because the global ransomware attack. Both of these titles are scheduled for spring 2018:

Cyberwars: The Hacks that Shook the globe is by former Guardian technology editor Charles Arthur and will look at the dramatic inside stories of a few of the world’s biggest cyber-attacks including the Clinton election campaign as well as recent global events.
Cyber Risk Management, is by Richard Benham of the UK’s National Cyber Skills Centre and will, according to promotional copy, offer “vital assistance with the way to evaluate threats and communicate a cyber-security technique to help alleviate problems with the trillions of dollars that are lost globally each and every year.”
Publishing Perspectives spoke to Helen Kogan regarding how the business has been able to remain independent, its current rights activity, and just how the joy of Cheap Business Books publishing has been evolving.

‘Discoverable Around the World’

Publishing Perspectives: As Kogan Page enters its sixth decade, bed mattress business?
Helen Kogan: We’re creating 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 and the Chartered Institute of Banking for academic and professional development titles.

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

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

HK: The increase and further increase of Beijing Book Fair may be particularly great for us, and the sale of Chinese rights is currently 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 more specialist titles too, in the area of logistics and recruiting.

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

We’ve got offices in america and India along with a wide network of agents globally. We’re fortunate to publish in English-the international language of business-and that business and management is often a global subject. We’ve really used global supply chains lately and, with the growth and development of digital bibliographic and marketing feeds, are in possession of the great power to make our titles discoverable around the globe.

‘A Very Crowded Marketplace’

PP: What are the main issues facing business and professional publishers?
HK: A major problem 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. 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 last 3 years defining our value proposition and points of difference and think we still have a powerful and competitive business with significant opportunity for further growth.

PP: The amount of a threat is open access? The ‘knowledge needs to be free’ camp can be extremely persuasive. Should it create an environment in which students tend to be hesitant to pay for content?

HK: I think it’s difficult to persuade students to purchase content when they’ve been accustomed to ‘free’. We need the educational institutes to support us on this and make the case that following the line is an author who’s made the book and should be compensated accordingly.

Up to “free” is often a challenge I also feel that the threat to non-linear narrative, through other media formats, is problematic. We’re investigating how you may offer a much more three-dimensional and interactive experience with the near future to contend with changing consumer reading habits.

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

HK: Bloody-mindedness, resilience, opportunism-all those ideas and even more.

PP: What number of workers are there and what’s your turnover?

HK: We’ve got 35 staff and growing. Our turnover is ?4.5 million (US$5.Six million) but also in the next financial year this will likely grow to over ?5.5 million (US$7.Two million) through organic growth and the addition of the Chartered Institute of Personnel Development’s list. We’d to take a success on our top line over the last couple of years once we refocused part of our activity on specialist areas however this year we’re seeing the fruits of that work and have 12-percent growth.

Benefitting From the Weak Pound

PP: What effect do you think Brexit can have?
HK: It’s tough to say at this point. We have to hope that we won’t have to deal with tariffs since this will clearly have some impact. Costs of materials can be a worry and we’ll need to keep close track of this. We hold English-language world and digital rights towards the majority of our list and this should mitigate having to contend with US editions in Europe (a growing concern amongst other publishers).

I hope that sanity will prevail and the threat hanging over our European colleagues’ directly to remain in the united states will likely be handled swiftly as opposed to making use of it as being a bargaining chip.

About the plus side, we’ve certainly benefited from the weakness of the pound up against the dollar.

PP: Where does one sell much of your books?

HK: 70 percent of our sales still have the traditional supply chain-bookshops, trusted online retailers, wholesalers, and so on. However, our Internet site sales are increasing and we use 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 accounts for 25 % of revenue using the balance with 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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