Thanks to digital initiatives along with a strong listing of titles, the 50-year-old UK publisher keeps growing its business, despite increasing competition from outside traditional publishing.
Even as listen to Kogan Page’s leadership today in regards to the rights landscape on this independent house’s business and management specialty, we also have several titles the business is presenting for rights sales. You will find those at the end of this story.-Porter Anderson
Chinese Rights Sales Now Leading
China has become Kogan Page‘s most productive rights territory, because 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 corporation recently made industry headlines with all the timely purchase of two cyber-attack titles, announced in the same week because the global ransomware attack. Those two titles are scheduled for spring 2018:
Cyberwars: The Hacks that Shook the entire world is as simple as former Guardian technology editor Charles Arthur and will glance at the dramatic inside stories of some of the world’s biggest cyber-attacks including the Clinton election campaign as well as recent global events.
Cyber Risk Management, is as simple as Richard Benham in the UK’s National Cyber Skills Centre and will, as outlined by promotional copy, offer “vital guidance on how to evaluate threats and communicate a cyber-security strategy to help prevent the trillions of dollars which are lost globally every year.”
Publishing Perspectives spoke to Helen Kogan about how exactly the business has managed to remain independent, its current rights activity, and just how the field of Business Books publishing is beginning to change.
‘Discoverable Around the World’
Publishing Perspectives: As Kogan Page enters its sixth decade, bed not the culprit business?
Helen Kogan: We’re having a great year. We’re almost at the end 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 also the Chartered Institute of Banking for academic and professional development titles.
We’re going to launch a searchable digital platform for B2B customers and we’re also going to launch our first web based classes. It’s been a very exciting breakthrough year following 4 years of refocus and continuing development of our value proposition.
PP: Is there a particular focus in your rights activity?
HK: The increase and additional growth of Beijing Book Fair has become particularly great for us, and also the sale of Chinese rights is currently our best territory.
However, we have our titles translated into 50 different languages now and, interestingly, this isn’t just restricted to our popular general business titles. We’ve had success with some of our more specialist titles too, in neuro-scientific logistics and human resources.
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 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 can be a global subject. We’ve really taken advantage of global supply chains lately and, from the continuing development of digital bibliographic and marketing feeds, will have the extraordinary capacity to make our titles discoverable around the globe.
‘A Very Crowded Marketplace’
PP: Do you know the main issues facing business and professional publishers?
HK: A significant concern is that we’re now surrounded by content producers.
It’s specifically traditional publishers that disseminate business content, and it’s a really crowded marketplace. Training companies, member organizations, business schools and management consultancies some of the serious non-traditional competition we need to think about. However, we’ve spent the very last 36 months defining our value proposition and points of difference and think we continue to have a powerful and competitive business with significant opportunity for further growth.
PP: The amount of a threat is open access? The ‘knowledge must be free’ camp can be very persuasive. Will it create a place in which students tend to be not wanting to spend on content?
HK: I believe it’s difficult to persuade students to fund content when they’ve been accustomed to ‘free’. We require the educational institutes to guide us on this and make case that at the end of the queue is definitely an author who has made the book and really should be compensated accordingly.
Just as much as “free” can be a challenge Furthermore, i believe that the threat to non-linear narrative, through other media formats, is problematic. We’re taking a look at the way you can offer a much more three-dimensional and interactive experience of the near future to contend with changing consumer reading habits.
PP: How has Kogan Page managed to stay independent?
HK: Bloody-mindedness, resilience, opportunism-all those ideas plus more.
PP: The amount of workers have you got and what’s your turnover?
HK: We have 35 staff and growing. Our turnover is ?4.5 million (US$5.6 million) but in the subsequent financial year this may grow to in excess of ?5.5 million (US$7.Two million) through organic growth and also the addition of the Chartered Institute of Personnel Development’s list. There were to consider a winner on the top line within the last number of years even as we refocused part of our activity on specialist areas however this year we’re seeing the fruits of that work and have a 12-percent growth.
Benefitting From your Weak Pound
PP: What effect do you consider Brexit can have?
HK: It’s hard to say now. We must hope that individuals won’t have to endure tariffs simply because this will clearly possess some impact. Costs of materials can also be a concern and we’ll must monitor this. We hold English-language world and digital rights to the majority of our list and this should mitigate being forced to contend with US editions in Europe (an expanding concern amongst other publishers).
I hope that sanity will prevail and also the threat hanging over our European colleagues’ directly to live in the united states will likely be dealt with swiftly as opposed to making use of it being a bargaining chip.
On the plus side, we’ve certainly taken advantage of the weakness in the pound up against the dollar.
PP: Where does one sell much of your books?
HK: Seventy percent of our sales still glance at the traditional supply chain-bookshops, online retailers, wholesalers, etc. However, our Website sales are growing so 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 the being delivered from digital licensing to academic library suppliers, aggregators, and company content suppliers. Our ebook business has stayed fairly stable at about 8 percent of overall revenue.
For more info about Business Books go to our new website: here