As a result of digital initiatives and a strong listing of titles, the 50-year-old UK publisher continues to grow its business, despite increasing competition externally traditional publishing.
Even as we hear from Kogan Page’s leadership today in regards to the rights landscape in this independent house’s business and management specialty, the ways to access several titles the business is presenting for rights sales. You will find those following this story.-Porter Anderson
Chinese Rights Sales Now Leading
China is now Kogan Page‘s best rights territory, because the UK publisher marks its 50th anniversary.
Founded by Philip Kogan in 1967, they have remained independent throughout its half-century, and it’s run today by Philip’s daughter Helen Kogan, who’s managing director.
The business recently made industry headlines with all the timely acquiring two cyber-attack titles, announced inside the same week because the global ransomware attack. Those two titles are scheduled for spring 2018:
Cyberwars: The Hacks that Shook the globe is actually former Guardian technology editor Charles Arthur and will glance at the dramatic inside stories of a few of the world’s biggest cyber-attacks such as Clinton election campaign as well as recent global events.
Cyber Risk Management, is actually Richard Benham with the UK’s National Cyber Skills Centre and will, based on promotional copy, offer “vital tips on the way to evaluate threats and communicate a cyber-security strategy to aid the prevention of the trillions of dollars that are lost globally annually.”
Publishing Perspectives spoke to Helen Kogan about how precisely the business has was able to remain independent, its current rights activity, and the way the joy of Business Books publishing is changing.
‘Discoverable Around the World’
Publishing Perspectives: As Kogan Page enters its sixth decade, bed mattress business?
Helen Kogan: We’re developing 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 also the Chartered Institute of Banking for both 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 an incredibly exciting breakthrough year following four years of refocus and development of our value proposition.
PP: What is the particular focus in your rights activity?
HK: The increase and additional development of Beijing Book Fair has been particularly beneficial to us, and also the sale of Chinese rights is currently our most successful territory.
However, we’ve 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 some in our more specialist titles too, in neuro-scientific logistics and human resources.
We’ve been internationally-focused and currently sell our titles into 90 countries with key territories being America, Europe, Southeast Asia, the Middle East, Australia, India, and China.
We’ve got offices in the united states and India and a wide network of agents globally. We’re fortunate to publish in English-the international language of business-and that business and management is often a global subject. We’ve really rooked global supply chains recently and, with the development of digital bibliographic and marketing feeds, have the truly great power to make our titles discoverable from any location.
‘A Very Crowded Marketplace’
PP: Do you know the main issues facing business and professional publishers?
HK: An important concern is that we’re now flanked 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 are a few of the serious non-traditional competition we must think of. However, we’ve spent the last 36 months defining our value proposition and points of difference and think we continue to have a persuasive and competitive business with significant chance for further growth.
PP: The amount of a threat is open access? The ‘knowledge needs to be free’ camp can be very persuasive. Does it create a breeding ground where students tend to be not wanting to purchase content?
HK: I believe it’s difficult to persuade students to cover content when they’ve been used to ‘free’. We really need the educational institutes to compliment us in this and make the case that following the queue is surely an author that has came up with book and may be compensated accordingly.
Around “free” is often a challenge Also i believe that the threat to non-linear narrative, through other media formats, is problematic. We’re taking a look at the way you may offer a more three-dimensional and interactive experience of the longer term to tackle changing consumer reading habits.
PP: How has Kogan Page was able to stay independent?
HK: Bloody-mindedness, resilience, opportunism-all those ideas and even more.
PP: The number 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$5.6 000 0000) but also in the subsequent financial year this will likely grow to in excess of ?5.5 million (US$7.2 million) through organic growth and also the addition of the Chartered Institute of Personnel Development’s list. There was to adopt a hit on our top line in the last couple of years once we refocused portion of our activity on specialist areas however this year we’re seeing the fruits of this work and expect to have 12-percent growth.
Benefitting Coming from a Weak Pound
PP: What effect you think Brexit will have?
HK: It’s tough to say at this point. We have to hope we won’t experience tariffs as this will clearly incorporate some impact. Costs of materials can also be a concern and we’ll must watch this. We hold English-language world and digital rights on the vast majority of our list which means this should mitigate having to tackle US editions in Europe (an evergrowing concern amongst other publishers).
Hopefully sanity will prevail and also the threat hanging over our European colleagues’ to remain in this country will be addressed swiftly rather than utilizing it being a bargaining chip.
Around the plus side, we’ve certainly took advantage of the weakness with the pound against the dollar.
PP: Where can you sell much of your books?
HK: 70 % in our sales still feel the traditional supply chain-bookshops, online retailers, wholesalers, etc. However, our Site sales are increasing so we have a 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 accounts for A quarter of revenue with all the balance of the being delivered from digital licensing to academic library suppliers, aggregators, and corporate content suppliers. Our ebook business has stayed fairly stable around 8 percent of overall revenue.
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