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

Even as we hear from Kogan Page’s leadership today in regards to the rights landscape within this independent house’s business and management specialty, we’ve got several titles the business is presenting for rights sales. You’ll find those at the conclusion of this story.-Porter Anderson
Chinese Rights Sales Now Leading
China has grown to be 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 md.

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

Cyberwars: The Hacks that Shook the globe is actually former Guardian technology editor Charles Arthur and will look at the dramatic inside stories of some of the world’s biggest cyber-attacks such as 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 will, as outlined by promotional copy, offer “vital help with how to evaluate threats and communicate a cyber-security tactic to help prevent the trillions of dollars which might be lost globally each year.”
Publishing Perspectives spoke to Helen Kogan about how precisely the business has been able to remain independent, its current rights activity, and how the field of Cheap 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 creating a great year. We’re almost at the conclusion of 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 gonna launch a searchable digital platform for B2B customers and we’re also gonna launch our first online courses. It’s been an incredibly exciting breakthrough year following 4 years of refocus and development of our value proposition.

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

HK: The development and additional growth of Beijing Book Fair has become particularly good for us, and the sale of Chinese rights is now 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 very popular general business titles. We’ve had success with a few of our more specialist titles too, in logistics and human resources.

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

We’ve 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 can be a global subject. We’ve really cheated global supply chains in recent times and, from the development of digital bibliographic and marketing feeds, are in possession of the truly great ability to make our titles discoverable anywhere in the world.

‘A Very Crowded Marketplace’

PP: Which are the main issues facing business and professional publishers?
HK: A major issue is that we’re now surrounded by content producers.

It’s no longer just traditional publishers that disseminate business content, and it’s an extremely crowded marketplace. Coaches, member organizations, business schools and management consultancies are just some of the serious non-traditional competition we need to think of. However, we’ve spent the last three years defining our value proposition and points of difference and think we have a persuasive and competitive business with significant chance of further growth.

PP: How much of a threat is open access? The ‘knowledge needs to be free’ camp can be quite persuasive. Will it create an atmosphere in which students will be more unwilling to buy content?

HK: I do think it’s very difficult to persuade students to purchase content when they’ve been used to ‘free’. We require educational institutes to support us within this and to make the case that at the conclusion of the road is surely an author who may have come up with book and will be compensated accordingly.

As much as “free” can be a challenge I additionally believe that the threat to non-linear narrative, through other media formats, is problematic. We’re taking a look at how we can provide an infinitely more three-dimensional and interactive experience with the future to take on changing consumer reading habits.

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

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

PP: The amount of workers are there and what’s your turnover?

HK: We’ve 35 staff and growing. Our turnover is ?4.5 million (US$5.6 000 0000) however in the following financial year this may grow to in excess of ?5.5 million (US$7.2 million) through organic growth and the inclusion of the Chartered Institute of Personnel Development’s list. There were to look at a winner on the top line during the last few years as we refocused part of our activity on specialist areas but this year we’re seeing the fruits of these work and have 12-percent growth.

Benefitting Coming from a Weak Pound

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

Hopefully sanity will prevail and the threat hanging over our European colleagues’ to certainly be in the united states will probably be handled swiftly as opposed to making use of it as being a bargaining chip.

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

PP: Where can you sell much of your books?

HK: 70 % of our sales still glance at the traditional supply chain-bookshops, online stores, wholesalers, and the like. However, our Website sales are increasing and now we have a very 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 is the reason for A quarter 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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