Thanks to digital initiatives plus 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 listen to Kogan Page’s leadership today concerning the rights landscape on this independent house’s business and management specialty, the ways to access several titles the company is presenting for rights sales. You will 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 got 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 together with the timely acquiring two cyber-attack titles, announced in the same week because global ransomware attack. These two titles are scheduled for spring 2018:
Cyberwars: The Hacks that Shook the World is by former Guardian technology editor Charles Arthur and definately will look at the dramatic inside stories of a number of the world’s biggest cyber-attacks like the Clinton election campaign in addition to recent global events.
Cyber Risk Management, is by Richard Benham with the UK’s National Cyber Skills Centre and definately will, as outlined by promotional copy, offer “vital help with the best way to evaluate threats and communicate a cyber-security process to aid the prevention of the trillions of dollars which are lost globally every year.”
Publishing Perspectives spoke to Helen Kogan about how exactly the company has were able to remain independent, its current rights activity, and just how the world of Cheap Business Books publishing has been evolving.
‘Discoverable Around the World’
Publishing Perspectives: As Kogan Page enters its sixth decade, how’s business?
Helen Kogan: We’re developing 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 together with the Chartered Institute of Personnel Development and also the Chartered Institute of Banking either way 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 online courses. It’s been an incredibly exciting breakthrough year following 4 years of refocus and progression of our value proposition.
PP: It is possible to particular focus on your rights activity?
HK: The growth and additional development of Beijing Book Fair may be particularly good for us, and also the sale of Chinese rights is currently our most successful territory.
However, we have 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 in our more specialist titles too, in neuro-scientific logistics and recruiting.
We’ve been internationally-focused and currently sell our titles into 90 countries with key territories being The united states, Europe, Southeast Asia, the very center East, Australia, India, and China.
We’ve offices in the usa and India plus a wide network of agents globally. We’re fortunate to publish in English-the international language of business-and that business and management is a global subject. We’ve really taken advantage of global supply chains lately and, through the progression of digital bibliographic and marketing feeds, now have the fantastic capacity 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 serious problem 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. Training companies, member organizations, business schools and management consultancies some of the intense non-traditional competition we must consider. However, we’ve spent the final several years defining our value proposition and points of difference and think we still have a powerful 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 be extremely persuasive. Can it create a breeding ground through which students tend to be not wanting to pay for content?
HK: I believe it’s difficult to persuade students to purchase content when they’ve been used to ‘free’. We actually require educational institutes to compliment us on this and to make the case that at the conclusion of the fishing line is definitely an author who may have came up with book and should be compensated accordingly.
Up to “free” is a challenge I also believe the threat to non-linear narrative, through other media formats, is problematic. We’re taking a look at the way we can offer a much more three-dimensional and interactive experience of the longer term to take on changing consumer reading habits.
PP: How has Kogan Page were able to stay independent?
HK: Bloody-mindedness, resilience, opportunism-all those activities and even more.
PP: The number of personnel do you have and what’s your turnover?
HK: We’ve 35 staff and growing. Our turnover is ?4.5 million (US$5.6 million) in another financial year this will grow to over ?5.5 million (US$7.Two million) through organic growth and also the inclusion of the Chartered Institute of Personnel Development’s list. There were to consider popular on our top line within the last couple of years even as refocused a part of our activity on specialist areas however this year we’re seeing the fruits of these work and have 12-percent growth.
Benefitting From the Weak Pound
PP: What effect do you think Brexit may have?
HK: It’s hard to say at this time. We need to hope that people won’t have to deal with tariffs simply because this will clearly have some impact. Costs of materials may also be a worry and we’ll must keep close track of this. We hold English-language world and digital rights for the majority of our list and this should mitigate having to take on US editions in Europe (an increasing concern amongst other publishers).
I hope that sanity will prevail and also the threat hanging over our European colleagues’ directly to remain in america is going to be managed swiftly as an alternative to using it being a bargaining chip.
About the plus side, we’ve certainly took advantage of the weakness with the pound up against the dollar.
PP: Where would you sell much of your books?
HK: 70 percent in our sales still glance at the traditional supply chain-bookshops, online retailers, wholesalers, etc. However, our Site sales are growing 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 is the reason for 25 % of revenue together with 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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