As a result of digital initiatives plus a strong report on titles, the 50-year-old UK publisher is growing its business, despite increasing competition external to traditional publishing.
Even as we listen to Kogan Page’s leadership today about the rights landscape with this independent house’s business and management specialty, we’ve got 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 business recently made industry headlines together with the timely acquisition of two cyber-attack titles, announced in the same week because the global ransomware attack. Both of these titles are scheduled for spring 2018:
Cyberwars: The Hacks that Shook the globe is simply by former Guardian technology editor Charles Arthur and can glance at the dramatic inside stories of some of the world’s biggest cyber-attacks such as the Clinton election campaign along with recent global events.
Cyber Risk Management, is simply by Richard Benham from the UK’s National Cyber Skills Centre and can, in accordance with promotional copy, offer “vital help with how you can evaluate threats and communicate a cyber-security technique to help alleviate problems with the trillions of dollars which can be lost globally annually.”
Publishing Perspectives spoke to Helen Kogan about how exactly the business has managed to remain independent, its current rights activity, and exactly how the field of 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 developing 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 together with the Chartered Institute of Personnel Development as well as the Chartered Institute of Banking either way 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 really exciting breakthrough year following four years of refocus and progression of our value proposition.
PP: It is possible to particular focus in your rights activity?
HK: The growth and additional development of Beijing Book Fair has become particularly beneficial to us, as well as the sale of Chinese rights is our best territory.
However, we have our titles translated into 50 different languages now and, interestingly, this isn’t just confined to our very popular general business titles. We’ve had success with a few of our more specialist titles too, in the field of logistics and hours.
We’ve been internationally-focused and currently sell our titles into 90 countries with key territories being United states, Europe, Southeast Asia, the guts East, Australia, India, and China.
We have offices in the united states 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 a global subject. We’ve really taken advantage of global supply chains recently and, from the progression of digital bibliographic and marketing feeds, now have the 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 issue 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 some of the serious non-traditional competition we need to think about. However, we’ve spent the past three years 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: How much of a threat is open access? The ‘knowledge needs to be free’ camp can be extremely persuasive. Should it create an environment where students will be more unwilling to spend on content?
HK: I do think it’s tough to persuade students to pay for content when they’ve been accustomed to ‘free’. We have to have the educational institutes to aid us with this and also to result in the case that at the conclusion of the line can be an author that has made the book and really should be compensated accordingly.
Just as much as “free” is a challenge Furthermore, i believe the threat to non-linear narrative, through other media formats, is problematic. We’re investigating the way you may offer an infinitely more three-dimensional and interactive experience of 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 actions 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) however in the subsequent financial year this will likely grow close to ?5.5 million (US$7.Two million) through organic growth as well as the inclusion of the Chartered Institute of Personnel Development’s list. We’d to take a success on our top line during the last couple of years even as we refocused portion of our activity on specialist areas however year we’re seeing the fruits of that work and have a 12-percent growth.
Benefitting From the Weak Pound
PP: What effect you think Brexit may have?
HK: It’s hard to say now. We have to hope that individuals won’t experience tariffs since this will clearly possess some impact. Costs of materials are often a concern and we’ll must keep close track of this. We hold English-language world and digital rights for the majority of our list which means this should mitigate being forced to contend with US editions in Europe (a growing concern amongst other publishers).
Hopefully sanity will prevail as well as the threat hanging over our European colleagues’ right to remain in this country will be addressed swiftly instead of using it as a bargaining chip.
For the plus side, we’ve certainly taken advantage of the weakness from the pound from the dollar.
PP: Where would you sell the majority of your books?
HK: 70 % of our sales still go through the traditional supply chain-bookshops, online retailers, wholesalers, and so on. However, our Website sales are increasing and that we have a 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 makes up about A quarter of revenue together with the balance of the 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.
For more details about Business Books go to the best webpage: click