Because of digital initiatives along with a strong list of titles, the 50-year-old UK publisher continues to grow its business, despite increasing competition from the outside traditional publishing.
Even as we listen to Kogan Page’s leadership today about the rights landscape on this independent house’s business and management specialty, we have several titles the business is presenting for rights sales. You’ll find those at the conclusion of this story.-Porter Anderson
Chinese Rights Sales Now Leading
China is becoming 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 corporation recently made industry headlines with all the timely buying of two cyber-attack titles, announced from the same week because the global ransomware attack. Those two titles are scheduled for spring 2018:
Cyberwars: The Hacks that Shook the planet is actually former Guardian technology editor Charles Arthur and can look at the dramatic inside stories of some of the world’s biggest cyber-attacks such as Clinton election campaign in addition to recent global events.
Cyber Risk Management, is actually Richard Benham with the UK’s National Cyber Skills Centre and can, according to promotional copy, offer “vital assistance with the best way to evaluate threats and communicate a cyber-security process to help alleviate problems with the trillions of dollars that are lost globally annually.”
Publishing Perspectives spoke to Helen Kogan about how exactly the business has managed to remain independent, its current rights activity, and just how the field of Cheap Business Books publishing has been evolving.
‘Discoverable Anywhere in the World’
Publishing Perspectives: As Kogan Page enters its sixth decade, bed mattress 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 all the Chartered Institute of Personnel Development as well as the Chartered Institute of Banking either way 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 courses. It’s been a very exciting breakthrough year following four years of refocus and growth and development of our value proposition.
PP: What is the particular focus to your rights activity?
HK: The development and additional increase of Beijing Book Fair has become particularly great for us, as well as the sale of Chinese rights is now our best territory.
However, we’ve got our titles translated into 50 different languages now and, interestingly, this isn’t just limited to our more popular general business titles. We’ve had success by incorporating individuals 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 North America, Europe, Southeast Asia, the very center East, Australia, India, and China.
We have offices in the usa and India along with a wide network of agents globally. We’re fortunate to create in English-the international language of business-and that business and management can be a global subject. We’ve really rooked global supply chains in recent times and, from the growth and development of digital bibliographic and marketing feeds, will have the great ability 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 dilemma is that we’re now flanked 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 intense non-traditional competition we have to think about. However, we’ve spent the last several years defining our value proposition and points of difference and think we have an engaging and competitive business with significant opportunity for further growth.
PP: How much of a threat is open access? The ‘knowledge ought to be free’ camp can be extremely persuasive. Can it create a place where students will be more reluctant to spend on content?
HK: I do think it’s hard to persuade students to fund content when they’ve been used to ‘free’. We really need the educational institutes to support us on this and to make the case that at the conclusion of the queue can be an author who has created the book and will be compensated accordingly.
Up to “free” can be a challenge I additionally believe that the threat to non-linear narrative, through other media formats, is problematic. We’re taking a look at the way we can offer an infinitely more three-dimensional and interactive expertise in the future to contend with changing consumer reading habits.
PP: How has Kogan Page managed to stay independent?
HK: Bloody-mindedness, resilience, opportunism-all those ideas and much more.
PP: The number of employees are you experiencing and what’s your turnover?
HK: We have 35 staff and growing. Our turnover is ?4.5 million (US$5.6 000 0000) but in the next financial year this will likely grow to around ?5.5 million (US$7.2 million) through organic growth as well as the inclusion of the Chartered Institute of Personnel Development’s list. We’d to adopt a success on our top line over the last few years even as refocused a part of our activity on specialist areas however, this year we’re seeing the fruits of these 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 hard to say at this time. We have to hope we won’t suffer from tariffs simply because this will clearly possess some impact. Costs of materials may also be a problem and we’ll should watch this. We hold English-language world and digital rights towards the vast majority of our list so this should mitigate the need to contend with US editions in Europe (an expanding concern amongst other publishers).
I hope that sanity will prevail as well as the threat hanging over our European colleagues’ to be in america will be addressed swiftly as an alternative to utilizing it as a bargaining chip.
Around the plus side, we’ve certainly benefited from the weakness with the pound up against the dollar.
PP: Where does one sell your main books?
HK: Seventy percent individuals sales still have the traditional supply chain-bookshops, trusted online stores, wholesalers, and so forth. However, our Internet site sales are increasing and we have a very 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 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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