As a result of digital initiatives along with a strong list of titles, the 50-year-old UK publisher is growing its business, despite increasing competition external to traditional publishing.
Even as hear from Kogan Page’s leadership today concerning the rights landscape in this independent house’s business and management specialty, we’ve got several titles the organization is presenting for rights sales. You will discover those at the conclusion of this story.-Porter Anderson
Chinese Rights Sales Now Leading
China has grown to be Kogan Page‘s best rights territory, because 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 organization recently made industry headlines with the timely acquisition of two cyber-attack titles, announced from the same week because global ransomware attack. Both these titles are scheduled for spring 2018:
Cyberwars: The Hacks that Shook the World is actually former Guardian technology editor Charles Arthur and definately will go through 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 from the UK’s National Cyber Skills Centre and definately will, according to promotional copy, offer “vital guidance on how to evaluate threats and communicate a cyber-security process to help prevent the trillions of dollars which can be lost globally each and every year.”
Publishing Perspectives spoke to Helen Kogan regarding how the organization has was able to remain independent, its current rights activity, and the way the field of Cheap Business Books publishing is beginning to change.
‘Discoverable Any place in the World’
Publishing Perspectives: As Kogan Page enters its sixth decade, how’s business?
Helen Kogan: We’re using 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 the Chartered Institute of Personnel Development and also the Chartered Institute of Banking both 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 a very exciting breakthrough year following 4 years of refocus and continuing development of our value proposition.
PP: What is the particular focus for your rights activity?
HK: The increase and additional expansion of Beijing Book Fair has become particularly beneficial to us, and also the sale of Chinese rights has become our most successful territory.
However, we’ve our titles translated into 50 different languages now and, interestingly, this isn’t just limited to our very popular general business titles. We’ve had success with a few of our more specialist titles too, in the area of logistics and recruiting.
We’ve always been internationally-focused and currently sell our titles into 90 countries with key territories being The united states, Europe, Southeast Asia, the guts East, Australia, India, and China.
We’ve offices in the united states and India along with a wide network of agents globally. We’re fortunate to write in English-the international language of business-and that business and management is a global subject. We’ve really cheated global supply chains lately and, through the continuing development of digital bibliographic and marketing feeds, are in possession of the truly great capability to make our titles discoverable all over the world.
‘A Very Crowded Marketplace’
PP: What are main issues facing business and professional publishers?
HK: An important 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 extremely crowded marketplace. Coaches, member organizations, business schools and management consultancies are a few of the serious non-traditional competition we should instead take into consideration. However, we’ve spent the very last 3 years defining our value proposition and points of difference and think we still have a compelling and competitive business with significant chance for further growth.
PP: How much of a threat is open access? The ‘knowledge should be free’ camp can be extremely persuasive. Does it create an atmosphere in which students tend to be unwilling to spend on content?
HK: I do think it’s tough to persuade students to fund content when they’ve been used to ‘free’. We actually require educational institutes to support us in this and increase the risk for case that at the conclusion of the road can be an author that has made the book and will be compensated accordingly.
As much as “free” is a challenge Furthermore, i think that the threat to non-linear narrative, through other media formats, is problematic. We’re investigating how you will offer a much more three-dimensional and interactive expertise in the 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 things and much more.
PP: The number of staff members have you got and what’s your turnover?
HK: We’ve 35 staff and growing. Our turnover is ?4.5 million (US$5.6 000 0000) but also in the subsequent financial year this will grow to around ?5.5 million (US$7.2 million) through organic growth and also the addition of the Chartered Institute of Personnel Development’s list. We had to look at a hit on our top line during the last number of years even as we refocused portion of our activity on specialist areas but this year we’re seeing the fruits of that work and expect to have 12-percent growth.
Benefitting From a Weak Pound
PP: What effect you think Brexit may have?
HK: It’s difficult to say at this time. We have to hope that individuals won’t have to endure tariffs as this will clearly have some impact. Costs of materials can also be an issue and we’ll have to keep close track of this. We hold English-language world and digital rights to the majority of our list and this should mitigate needing 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 be in the united states will probably be handled swiftly as an alternative to making use of it as a bargaining chip.
On the plus side, we’ve certainly benefited from the weakness from the pound from the dollar.
PP: Where do you sell the majority of your books?
HK: 70 percent of our sales still go through the traditional supply chain-bookshops, online stores, wholesalers, and the like. However, our Internet site sales are increasing so we possess 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 makes up about 25 percent of revenue with the balance on this being delivered from digital licensing to academic library suppliers, aggregators, and company content suppliers. Our ebook business has stayed fairly stable around 8 percent of overall revenue.
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