As a result of digital initiatives plus a strong report on titles, the 50-year-old UK publisher continues to grow its business, despite increasing competition externally traditional publishing.
Once we listen to Kogan Page’s leadership today concerning the rights landscape on this independent house’s business and management specialty, we’ve got several titles the company 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, since 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 business recently made industry headlines with all the timely acquiring two cyber-attack titles, announced from the same week since the global ransomware attack. Both these titles are scheduled for spring 2018:
Cyberwars: The Hacks that Shook the planet is as simple as former Guardian technology editor Charles Arthur and can glance at the dramatic inside stories of some of the world’s biggest cyber-attacks including the Clinton election campaign in addition to recent global events.
Cyber Risk Management, is as simple as Richard Benham in the UK’s National Cyber Skills Centre and can, according to promotional copy, offer “vital guidance on how to evaluate threats and communicate a cyber-security tactic to aid the prevention of the trillions of dollars which might be lost globally every year.”
Publishing Perspectives spoke to Helen Kogan about how exactly the company has been able to remain independent, its current rights activity, and just how the world of Best Business Books publishing is evolving.
‘Discoverable Anywhere 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 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 all the Chartered Institute of Personnel Development and 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 online courses. It’s been a really exciting breakthrough year following four years of refocus and growth and development of our value proposition.
PP: Exactly what is the particular focus for your rights activity?
HK: The expansion and additional growth of Beijing Book Fair may be particularly great for us, and the sale of Chinese rights is now our most successful territory.
However, we now have our titles translated into 50 different languages now and, interestingly, this isn’t just restricted to our more popular general business titles. We’ve had success with many of our more specialist titles too, in neuro-scientific logistics and hr.
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’ve offices in america and India plus a wide network of agents globally. We’re fortunate to create in English-the international language of business-and that business and management is often a global subject. We’ve really used global supply chains in recent years and, through the growth and development of digital bibliographic and marketing feeds, will have the fantastic capacity to make our titles discoverable from any location.
‘A Very Crowded Marketplace’
PP: What are main issues facing business and professional publishers?
HK: A serious dilemma 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 a few of the serious non-traditional competition we have to think about. However, we’ve spent the very last several years defining our value proposition and points of difference and think we still have an engaging and competitive business with significant opportunity for further growth.
PP: How much of a threat is open access? The ‘knowledge should be free’ camp can be be extremely persuasive. Does it create an environment through which students are more reluctant to pay for content?
HK: I think it’s hard to persuade students to purchase content when they’ve been utilized to ‘free’. We really have to have the educational institutes to support us on this also to make the case that at the end of the queue is an author who has created the book and should be compensated accordingly.
As much as “free” is often a challenge I additionally believe the threat to non-linear narrative, through other media formats, is problematic. We’re investigating the way you can offer an infinitely more three-dimensional and interactive experience with the near future to contend with changing consumer reading habits.
PP: How has Kogan Page been able to stay independent?
HK: Bloody-mindedness, resilience, opportunism-all those things and even more.
PP: The number of personnel 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 likely grow to around ?5.5 million (US$7.Two million) through organic growth and the inclusion of the Chartered Institute of Personnel Development’s list. There were to adopt a success on our top line over the last couple of years even as we 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 Coming from a Weak Pound
PP: What effect you think Brexit could have?
HK: It’s difficult to say at this point. We need to hope we won’t experience tariffs since this will clearly incorporate some impact. Costs of materials can also be a concern and we’ll have to keep close track of this. We hold English-language world and digital rights for the vast majority of our list and this should mitigate the need to contend with US editions in Europe (an increasing concern amongst other publishers).
I hope that sanity will prevail and the threat hanging over our European colleagues’ to remain in the united states will likely be dealt with swiftly instead of using it as a bargaining chip.
On the plus side, we’ve certainly took advantage of the weakness in the pound from the dollar.
PP: Where does one sell much of your books?
HK: 70 % of our sales still feel the traditional supply chain-bookshops, trusted online retailers, wholesalers, etc. However, our Site sales are increasing and now we have a very thriving B2B sales activity for member organizations, author networks, and corporates.
PP: What’s the split between digital and print in 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 around 8 percent of overall revenue.
For more details about Best Business Books take a look at our site: learn here