Due to digital initiatives as well as a strong listing of titles, the 50-year-old UK publisher continues to grow its business, despite increasing competition external to traditional publishing.
Even as we hear from Kogan Page’s leadership today concerning the rights landscape on this independent house’s business and management specialty, we also have several titles the corporation is presenting for rights sales. You’ll find those at the end of this story.-Porter Anderson
Chinese Rights Sales Now Leading
China has grown to be Kogan Page‘s best rights territory, as 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 the timely acquisition of two cyber-attack titles, announced inside the same week as the global ransomware attack. These two titles are scheduled for spring 2018:
Cyberwars: The Hacks that Shook the globe is actually former Guardian technology editor Charles Arthur and may go through the dramatic inside stories of many of the world’s biggest cyber-attacks such as Clinton election campaign along with recent global events.
Cyber Risk Management, is actually Richard Benham in the UK’s National Cyber Skills Centre and may, according to promotional copy, offer “vital assistance with the best way to evaluate threats and communicate a cyber-security tactic to assist in preventing the trillions of dollars which can be lost globally annually.”
Publishing Perspectives spoke to Helen Kogan about how precisely the corporation has was able to remain independent, its current rights activity, and just how the joy of Buy Business Books publishing has been evolving.
‘Discoverable Any place in the World’
Publishing Perspectives: As Kogan Page enters its sixth decade, how’s business?
Helen Kogan: We’re developing 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 the Chartered Institute of Personnel Development along with 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 an extremely exciting breakthrough year following 4 years of refocus and progression of our value proposition.
PP: What is the particular focus on your rights activity?
HK: The increase and additional development of Beijing Book Fair has been particularly great for us, along with the sale of Chinese rights is currently our greatest territory.
However, we’ve our titles translated into 50 different languages now and, interestingly, this isn’t just restricted to our widely used general business titles. We’ve had success with a few individuals more specialist titles too, in neuro-scientific logistics and hr.
We’ve always 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’ve got offices in america and India as well as 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 taken advantage of global supply chains lately and, with the progression of digital bibliographic and marketing feeds, have the truly great capability to make our titles discoverable anywhere in the world.
‘A Very Crowded Marketplace’
PP: What are the main issues facing business and professional publishers?
HK: A significant problem is that we’re now encompassed by content producers.
It’s specifically 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 must think of. However, we’ve spent the final 36 months defining our value proposition and points of difference and think we still have a persuasive and competitive business with significant chance of further growth.
PP: The amount of a threat is open access? The ‘knowledge must be free’ camp can be extremely persuasive. Should it create an atmosphere by which students tend to be hesitant to pay for content?
HK: I think it’s difficult to persuade students to purchase content when they’ve been employed to ‘free’. Really require the educational institutes to aid us on this and to make case that at the end of the line is definitely an author who has created the book and should be compensated accordingly.
Just as much as “free” is often a challenge Also i think that the threat to non-linear narrative, through other media formats, is problematic. We’re investigating how we may offer a lot more three-dimensional and interactive experience of the near future to compete 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: What number of personnel have you got and what’s your turnover?
HK: We’ve got 35 staff and growing. Our turnover is ?4.5 million (US$5.6 000 0000) in the subsequent financial year this may grow to over ?5.5 million (US$7.2 million) through organic growth along with the inclusion of the Chartered Institute of Personnel Development’s list. There was to take a success on our top line during the last few years even as refocused part of our activity on specialist areas however, this year we’re seeing the fruits of that work and have 12-percent growth.
Benefitting From your Weak Pound
PP: What effect you think Brexit can have?
HK: It’s hard to say at this time. We will need to hope that we won’t suffer from tariffs simply because this will clearly possess some impact. Costs of materials can be a concern and we’ll must keep close track of this. We hold English-language world and digital rights to the majority of our list so this should mitigate needing to compete with US editions in Europe (an evergrowing concern amongst other publishers).
Hopefully sanity will prevail along with the threat hanging over our European colleagues’ right to be in this country will be addressed swiftly as opposed to deploying it like a bargaining chip.
About the plus side, we’ve certainly taken advantage of the weakness in the pound up against the dollar.
PP: Where can you sell most of your books?
HK: 70 % individuals sales still feel the traditional supply chain-bookshops, trusted online retailers, wholesalers, etc. However, our Site 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 with your business?
HK: Digital is the reason 25 percent of revenue with the balance of 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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