Due to digital initiatives plus a strong report on titles, the 50-year-old UK publisher is increasing its business, despite increasing competition externally traditional publishing.
Once we listen to Kogan Page’s leadership today about 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 at the conclusion of this story.-Porter Anderson
Chinese Rights Sales Now Leading
China has grown to be Kogan Page‘s best rights territory, since the UK publisher marks its 50th anniversary.
Founded by Philip Kogan in 1967, it has remained independent throughout its half-century, and it’s run today by Philip’s daughter Helen Kogan, who’s md.
The business recently made industry headlines with the timely acquiring 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 by former Guardian technology editor Charles Arthur and can consider the dramatic inside stories of a few of the world’s biggest cyber-attacks such as the Clinton election campaign and also recent global events.
Cyber Risk Management, is by Richard Benham from the UK’s National Cyber Skills Centre and can, based on promotional copy, offer “vital help with how to evaluate threats and communicate a cyber-security technique to help prevent the trillions of dollars which can be lost globally annually.”
Publishing Perspectives spoke to Helen Kogan about how the business has managed to remain independent, its current rights activity, and the way the joy of Buy Business Books publishing is changing.
‘Discoverable Any place in the World’
Publishing Perspectives: As Kogan Page enters its sixth decade, bed mattress 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 the Chartered Institute of Personnel Development and the Chartered Institute of Banking for 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 four years of refocus and development of our value proposition.
PP: It is possible to particular focus in your rights activity?
HK: The development and further growth of Beijing Book Fair has become particularly great for us, and the sale of Chinese rights is currently our greatest territory.
However, we have our titles translated into 50 different languages now and, interestingly, this isn’t just confined to our popular general business titles. We’ve had success with a few in our more specialist titles too, in the area of logistics and hours.
We’ve been internationally-focused and currently sell our titles into 90 countries with key territories being The united states, Europe, Southeast Asia, the guts East, Australia, India, and China.
We now have offices in the usa and India plus a wide network of agents globally. We’re fortunate to share in English-the international language of business-and that business and management is often a global subject. We’ve really taken advantage of global supply chains in recent times and, with the development of digital bibliographic and marketing feeds, now have the great ability to make our titles discoverable from any location.
‘A Very Crowded Marketplace’
PP: What are the main issues facing business and professional publishers?
HK: An important problem is that we’re now surrounded by content producers.
It’s specifically traditional publishers that disseminate business content, and it’s an extremely crowded marketplace. Training companies, member organizations, business schools and management consultancies a few of the serious non-traditional competition we need to think about. However, we’ve spent the last 3 years defining our value proposition and points of difference and think we have a persuasive and competitive business with significant opportunity for further growth.
PP: How much of a threat is open access? The ‘knowledge must be free’ camp can be quite persuasive. Can it create a place through which students are more unwilling to purchase content?
HK: I do believe it’s difficult to persuade students to pay for content when they’ve been accustomed to ‘free’. We require educational institutes to support us on this also to make the case that at the conclusion of the queue is surely an author who’s come up with book and may be compensated accordingly.
As much as “free” is often a challenge I additionally think that the threat to non-linear narrative, through other media formats, is problematic. We’re looking at the way we can provide an infinitely more three-dimensional and interactive experience of the long run to compete with 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: The number of staff members are you experiencing and what’s your turnover?
HK: We now have 35 staff and growing. Our turnover is ?4.5 million (US$5.6 million) but in the following financial year this will grow to around ?5.5 million (US$7.2 million) through organic growth and the inclusion of the Chartered Institute of Personnel Development’s list. We’d to look at popular on the top line in the last several years once we refocused a part of our activity on specialist areas however this year we’re seeing the fruits of that work and expect to have 12-percent growth.
Benefitting From a Weak Pound
PP: What effect do you consider Brexit will have?
HK: It’s difficult to say at this stage. We will need to hope that we won’t have to endure tariffs because this will clearly possess some impact. Costs of materials are often a concern and we’ll must keep close track of this. We hold English-language world and digital rights on the vast majority of our list this should mitigate being forced to compete 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 be in this country will likely be handled swiftly as opposed to deploying it as a bargaining chip.
For the plus side, we’ve certainly took advantage of the weakness from the pound contrary to the dollar.
PP: Where does one sell your main books?
HK: 70 percent in our sales still go through the traditional supply chain-bookshops, trusted online retailers, wholesalers, and so forth. However, our Website sales are increasing and that we have a very thriving B2B sales activity for member organizations, author networks, and corporates.
PP: What’s the split between digital and print within your business?
HK: Digital is the reason A quarter of revenue with 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 about 8 percent of overall revenue.
For more info about Buy Business Books take a look at the best webpage: this