Because of digital initiatives along with a strong list of titles, the 50-year-old UK publisher continues to grow its business, despite increasing competition external to traditional publishing.
Once we listen to Kogan Page’s leadership today in regards to the rights landscape within this independent house’s business and management specialty, we also have several titles the organization is presenting for rights sales. You’ll find those at the conclusion of this story.-Porter Anderson
Chinese Rights Sales Now Leading
China has become 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 company recently made industry headlines with all the timely purchase of two cyber-attack titles, announced inside the same week because global ransomware attack. These two titles are scheduled for spring 2018:
Cyberwars: The Hacks that Shook the entire world is simply by former Guardian technology editor Charles Arthur and may consider the dramatic inside stories of a number of the world’s biggest cyber-attacks like the Clinton election campaign as well as recent global events.
Cyber Risk Management, is simply by Richard Benham with the UK’s National Cyber Skills Centre and may, in accordance with promotional copy, offer “vital assistance with how to evaluate threats and communicate a cyber-security strategy to assist in preventing the trillions of dollars which can be lost globally each and every year.”
Publishing Perspectives spoke to Helen Kogan about how precisely the organization has managed to remain independent, its current rights activity, and exactly how the concept of Best Business Books publishing has been evolving.
‘Discoverable In the World’
Publishing Perspectives: As Kogan Page enters its sixth decade, bed not the culprit business?
Helen Kogan: We’re using 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 with all the Chartered Institute of Personnel Development and the Chartered Institute of Banking either way 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 web based classes. It’s been an incredibly exciting breakthrough year following four years of refocus and development of our value proposition.
PP: Exactly what is the particular focus in your rights activity?
HK: The development and further increase of Beijing Book Fair has been particularly good for us, and the sale of Chinese rights is now our most successful territory.
However, we’ve our titles translated into 50 different languages now and, interestingly, this isn’t just restricted to our more popular general business titles. We’ve had success with a few of our more specialist titles too, in logistics and recruiting.
We’ve for ages been internationally-focused and currently sell our titles into 90 countries with key territories being United states, Europe, Southeast Asia, the Middle East, Australia, India, and China.
We now have offices in the united states and India along with a wide network of agents globally. We’re fortunate to share in English-the international language of business-and that business and management is really a global subject. We’ve really rooked global supply chains lately and, with the development of digital bibliographic and marketing feeds, have the extraordinary capacity to make our titles discoverable around the globe.
‘A Very Crowded Marketplace’
PP: What are the main issues facing business and professional publishers?
HK: An important 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. Training companies, member organizations, business schools and management consultancies are a few of the intense non-traditional competition we should instead take into consideration. However, we’ve spent the past 36 months defining our value proposition and points of difference and think we have a persuasive and competitive business with significant potential for further growth.
PP: How much of a threat is open access? The ‘knowledge should be free’ camp can be very persuasive. Will it create a breeding ground where students will be more not wanting to purchase content?
HK: I think it’s very difficult to persuade students to fund content when they’ve been accustomed to ‘free’. We need the educational institutes to guide us within this and also to increase the risk for case that at the conclusion of the road is an author who has come up with book and will be compensated accordingly.
Around “free” is really a challenge I additionally believe the threat to non-linear narrative, through other media formats, is problematic. We’re looking at how we can offer an infinitely more three-dimensional and interactive experience of the longer term to tackle changing consumer reading habits.
PP: How has Kogan Page managed to stay independent?
HK: Bloody-mindedness, resilience, opportunism-all those actions and much more.
PP: What number of workers have you got and what’s your turnover?
HK: We now have 35 staff and growing. Our turnover is ?4.5 million (US$5.Six million) however in the next financial year this may grow close to ?5.5 million (US$7.2 million) through organic growth and the addition of the Chartered Institute of Personnel Development’s list. We’d to consider a hit on the top line in the last couple of years even as we refocused portion of our activity on specialist areas however year we’re seeing the fruits of these work and have 12-percent growth.
Benefitting From a Weak Pound
PP: What effect you think Brexit can have?
HK: It’s hard to say at this time. We must hope that people won’t have to deal with tariffs since this will clearly have some impact. Costs of materials are often a problem and we’ll must keep close track of this. We hold English-language world and digital rights on the majority of our list so this should mitigate having to tackle US editions in Europe (a growing concern amongst other publishers).
I hope that sanity will prevail and the threat hanging over our European colleagues’ to be in america will likely be handled swiftly rather than making use of it as being a bargaining chip.
On the plus side, we’ve certainly taken advantage of the weakness with the pound against the dollar.
PP: Where do you sell most of your books?
HK: Seventy percent of our sales still have the traditional supply chain-bookshops, trusted online stores, wholesalers, etc. However, our Site sales are increasing and that we have a 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 makes up about 25 percent of revenue with all the balance with this being delivered from digital licensing to academic library suppliers, aggregators, and company content suppliers. Our ebook business has stayed fairly stable at approximately 8 percent of overall revenue.
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