Thanks to digital initiatives as well as a strong set of titles, the 50-year-old UK publisher is growing its business, despite increasing competition externally traditional publishing.
Once we hear from Kogan Page’s leadership today about 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 can find those following this story.-Porter Anderson
Chinese Rights Sales Now Leading
China has grown to be Kogan Page‘s most productive 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 company recently made industry headlines with all the timely buying of two cyber-attack titles, announced within the same week because the global ransomware attack. Both of these titles are scheduled for spring 2018:
Cyberwars: The Hacks that Shook the globe is actually former Guardian technology editor Charles Arthur and definately will look at the dramatic inside stories of a number of the world’s biggest cyber-attacks such as the Clinton election campaign and also recent global events.
Cyber Risk Management, is actually Richard Benham with the UK’s National Cyber Skills Centre and definately will, based on promotional copy, offer “vital help with how you can evaluate threats and communicate a cyber-security process to help prevent the trillions of dollars that are lost globally each year.”
Publishing Perspectives spoke to Helen Kogan about how precisely the organization has were able to remain independent, its current rights activity, and how the field of Best Business Books publishing is changing.
‘Discoverable Any place in the World’
Publishing Perspectives: As Kogan Page enters its sixth decade, how is business?
Helen Kogan: We’re having a great year. We’re almost following 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 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 online courses. It’s been a really exciting breakthrough year following four years of refocus and development of our value proposition.
PP: It is possible to particular focus for your rights activity?
HK: The development and further expansion of Beijing Book Fair continues to be particularly beneficial to us, and the sale of Chinese rights is our best territory.
However, we’ve our titles translated into 50 different languages now and, interestingly, this isn’t just confined to our very popular general business titles. We’ve had success with a few of our more specialist titles too, in the field of logistics and human resources.
We’ve been internationally-focused and currently sell our titles into 90 countries with key territories being The united states, Europe, Southeast Asia, the very center East, Australia, India, and China.
We now have offices in the usa and India as well as 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 recently and, from the development of digital bibliographic and marketing feeds, have the great power to make our titles discoverable all over the world.
‘A Very Crowded Marketplace’
PP: Which are the main issues facing business and professional publishers?
HK: A significant concern is that we’re now encompassed by content producers.
It’s no longer just traditional publishers that disseminate business content, and it’s an incredibly crowded marketplace. Coaches, member organizations, business schools and management consultancies are a few of the intense non-traditional competition we need to think about. However, we’ve spent the past three years defining our value proposition and points of difference and think we have a persuasive and competitive business with significant potential for further growth.
PP: The amount of a threat is open access? The ‘knowledge should be free’ camp can be be extremely persuasive. Will it create an environment where students are more not wanting to purchase content?
HK: I do think it’s very difficult to persuade students to fund content when they’ve been used to ‘free’. We really require the educational institutes to aid us within this and make the case that following the queue can be an author who has created the book and should be compensated accordingly.
Around “free” is really a challenge I additionally feel that the threat to non-linear narrative, through other media formats, is problematic. We’re considering how you can provide a lot more three-dimensional and interactive experience with the longer term to take on changing consumer reading habits.
PP: How has Kogan Page were able to stay independent?
HK: Bloody-mindedness, resilience, opportunism-all those activities plus more.
PP: What number of personnel are you experiencing and what’s your turnover?
HK: We now have 35 staff and growing. Our turnover is ?4.5 million (US$5.Six million) but in the next financial year this will likely grow close to ?5.5 million (US$7.2 million) through organic growth and the inclusion of the Chartered Institute of Personnel Development’s list. We had to look at popular on the top line during the last number of years even as we refocused section of our activity on specialist areas but this year we’re seeing the fruits of these work and have a 12-percent growth.
Benefitting Coming from a Weak Pound
PP: What effect you think Brexit can have?
HK: It’s tough to say at this point. We have to hope that we won’t experience tariffs as this will clearly possess some impact. Costs of materials are often a concern and we’ll need to keep close track of this. We hold English-language world and digital rights on the vast majority of our list and this should mitigate the need to take on US editions in Europe (an expanding concern amongst other publishers).
I hope that sanity will prevail and the threat hanging over our European colleagues’ right to be in america is going to be addressed swiftly as an alternative to using it being a bargaining chip.
On the plus side, we’ve certainly took advantage of the weakness with the pound against the dollar.
PP: Where can you sell your main books?
HK: 70 % of our sales still glance at the traditional supply chain-bookshops, trusted online stores, wholesalers, etc. However, our Website sales are growing and now 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 accounts for A quarter 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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