Thanks to digital initiatives and a strong list of titles, the 50-year-old UK publisher continues to grow its business, despite increasing competition from outside traditional publishing.
Once we hear from Kogan Page’s leadership today about the rights landscape with this independent house’s business and management specialty, we also have several titles the business is presenting for rights sales. You can find those at the conclusion of this story.-Porter Anderson
Chinese Rights Sales Now Leading
China is becoming Kogan Page‘s most efficient rights territory, because the 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 organization recently made industry headlines with all the timely buying of two cyber-attack titles, announced from the same week because the global ransomware attack. Both these titles are scheduled for spring 2018:
Cyberwars: The Hacks that Shook the entire world is actually former Guardian technology editor Charles Arthur and definately will glance at the dramatic inside stories of a few of the world’s biggest cyber-attacks including the Clinton election campaign along with recent global events.
Cyber Risk Management, is actually Richard Benham from the UK’s National Cyber Skills Centre and definately will, according to promotional copy, offer “vital help with how to evaluate threats and communicate a cyber-security process to help alleviate problems with the trillions of dollars that are lost globally each and every year.”
Publishing Perspectives spoke to Helen Kogan about how precisely the business has was able to remain independent, its current rights activity, and how the concept of Best Business Books publishing has been evolving.
‘Discoverable In the World’
Publishing Perspectives: As Kogan Page enters its sixth decade, how’s business?
Helen Kogan: We’re creating 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 also the Chartered Institute of Banking for both academic and professional development titles.
We’re gonna launch a searchable digital platform for B2B customers and we’re also gonna launch our first web based classes. It’s been a really exciting breakthrough year following 4 years of refocus and growth and development of our value proposition.
PP: What is the particular focus for your rights activity?
HK: The growth and further growth of Beijing Book Fair may be particularly good for us, and also the sale of Chinese rights is our most successful territory.
However, we now have our titles translated into 50 different languages now and, interestingly, this isn’t just limited to our popular general business titles. We’ve had success with a few of our own more specialist titles too, in logistics and recruiting.
We’ve forever been internationally-focused and currently sell our titles into 90 countries with key territories being North America, Europe, Southeast Asia, the guts East, Australia, India, and China.
We now have offices in the US and India and 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 used global supply chains in recent times and, with the growth and development of digital bibliographic and marketing feeds, now have the truly 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: A serious issue is that we’re now flanked by content producers.
It’s merely traditional publishers that disseminate business content, and it’s a really crowded marketplace. Coaches, member organizations, business schools and management consultancies a few of the serious non-traditional competition we should instead think about. However, we’ve spent the very last 36 months defining our value proposition and points of difference and think we still have an engaging and competitive business with significant chance for further growth.
PP: The amount of a threat is open access? The ‘knowledge must be free’ camp can be extremely persuasive. Can it create a breeding ground by which students will be more reluctant to purchase content?
HK: I do believe it’s hard to persuade students to cover content when they’ve been utilized to ‘free’. We require educational institutes to support us with this and result in the case that at the conclusion of the fishing line is surely an author that has made the book and really should be compensated accordingly.
Around “free” can be a challenge I additionally believe that the threat to non-linear narrative, through other media formats, is problematic. We’re considering how you can provide an infinitely more three-dimensional and interactive experience in the near future to contend with changing consumer reading habits.
PP: How has Kogan Page was able to stay independent?
HK: Bloody-mindedness, resilience, opportunism-all those activities plus much more.
PP: How many personnel have you got and what’s your turnover?
HK: We now have 35 staff and growing. Our turnover is ?4.5 million (US$5.6 000 0000) in the following financial year this will grow to in excess of ?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 look at a winner on our top line over the last number of years once we refocused section 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 your Weak Pound
PP: What effect do you think Brexit may have?
HK: It’s tough to say at this stage. We will need to hope that individuals won’t have to endure tariffs because this will clearly have some impact. Costs of materials are often a problem and we’ll have to keep close track of this. We hold English-language world and digital rights on the majority of our list and this should mitigate the need to contend with 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’ to remain in america will probably be managed swiftly as an alternative to utilizing it being a bargaining chip.
Around the plus side, we’ve certainly took advantage of the weakness from the pound against the dollar.
PP: Where can you sell most of your books?
HK: 70 % of our own sales still have the traditional supply chain-bookshops, online retailers, wholesalers, and the like. However, our Site sales are increasing and that we use a 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 makes up about A quarter of revenue with all the balance on 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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