Thanks to digital initiatives plus 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 with this independent house’s business and management specialty, we also have several titles the organization is presenting for rights sales. You can find those after this story.-Porter Anderson
Chinese Rights Sales Now Leading
China has become Kogan Page‘s best rights territory, as the 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 business recently made industry headlines with all the timely buying of two cyber-attack titles, announced from the same week as the global ransomware attack. Both these titles are scheduled for spring 2018:
Cyberwars: The Hacks that Shook the globe is as simple as former Guardian technology editor Charles Arthur and can glance at the dramatic inside stories of a number of the world’s biggest cyber-attacks like the Clinton election campaign along with recent global events.
Cyber Risk Management, is as simple as Richard Benham of the UK’s National Cyber Skills Centre and can, according to promotional copy, offer “vital assistance with the 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 regarding how the organization has been able to remain independent, its current rights activity, and the way the joy of Buy Business Books publishing is beginning to change.
‘Discoverable Any place in the World’
Publishing Perspectives: As Kogan Page enters its sixth decade, how is business?
Helen Kogan: We’re developing a great year. We’re almost after 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 along with the Chartered Institute of Banking for 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 extremely exciting breakthrough year following four years of refocus and growth and development of our value proposition.
PP: Exactly what is the particular focus in your rights activity?
HK: The increase and further development of Beijing Book Fair may be particularly good for us, along with the sale of Chinese rights is now our best territory.
However, we have our titles translated into 50 different languages now and, interestingly, this isn’t just confined to our widely used general business titles. We’ve had success with many of our own more specialist titles too, in logistics and hr.
We’ve forever been internationally-focused and currently sell our titles into 90 countries with key territories being America, Europe, Southeast Asia, the guts East, Australia, India, and China.
We’ve got offices in the US and India plus a wide network of agents globally. We’re fortunate to create in English-the international language of business-and that business and management is a global subject. We’ve really cheated global supply chains in recent times and, through the growth and development of digital bibliographic and marketing feeds, have the truly great capability to make our titles discoverable anywhere in the world.
‘A Very Crowded Marketplace’
PP: Do you know the main issues facing business and professional publishers?
HK: An important dilemma is that we’re now encompassed by content producers.
It’s specifically traditional publishers that disseminate business content, and it’s a very crowded marketplace. Training companies, member organizations, business schools and management consultancies a few of the intense non-traditional competition we need to consider. However, we’ve spent the very last several years defining our value proposition and points of difference and think we have an engaging and competitive business with significant chance for further growth.
PP: How much of a threat is open access? The ‘knowledge ought to be free’ camp can be be extremely persuasive. Can it create a place through which students tend to be unwilling to pay for content?
HK: I think it’s tough to persuade students to fund content when they’ve been used to ‘free’. We really require educational institutes to aid us with this also to result in the case that after the fishing line is surely an author who’s come up with book and may be compensated accordingly.
Just as much as “free” is a challenge I additionally feel that the threat to non-linear narrative, through other media formats, is problematic. We’re investigating the way you will offer an infinitely more three-dimensional and interactive expertise in the longer term to tackle changing consumer reading habits.
PP: How has Kogan Page been able to stay independent?
HK: Bloody-mindedness, resilience, opportunism-all those activities plus more.
PP: The amount of employees are you experiencing and what’s your turnover?
HK: We’ve got 35 staff and growing. Our turnover is ?4.5 million (US$5.6 million) however in the subsequent financial year this may grow to over ?5.5 million (US$7.Two million) through organic growth along with the inclusion of the Chartered Institute of Personnel Development’s list. There was to take popular on the top line over the last few years even as refocused section of our activity on specialist areas however, this year we’re seeing the fruits of these work and expect to have 12-percent growth.
Benefitting From your Weak Pound
PP: What effect do you think Brexit may have?
HK: It’s hard to say at this point. We must hope that individuals won’t have to endure tariffs because this will clearly involve some impact. Costs of materials can be a worry and we’ll have to watch this. We hold English-language world and digital rights for 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 along with the threat hanging over our European colleagues’ right to live in this country is going to be managed swiftly instead of using it as being a bargaining chip.
On the plus side, we’ve certainly benefited from the weakness of the pound against the dollar.
PP: Where would you sell your main books?
HK: 70 percent of our own sales still glance at the traditional supply chain-bookshops, trusted online stores, wholesalers, and so forth. However, our Web site sales are growing and 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 25 percent of revenue with all the balance of 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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