Due to digital initiatives plus a strong report on titles, the 50-year-old UK publisher keeps growing its business, despite increasing competition externally traditional publishing.
Even as hear from Kogan Page’s leadership today regarding the rights landscape within this independent house’s business and management specialty, we’ve got several titles the business is presenting for rights sales. You will find those after this story.-Porter Anderson
Chinese Rights Sales Now Leading
China has become Kogan Page‘s best rights territory, because UK publisher marks its 50th anniversary.
Founded by Philip Kogan in 1967, it’s 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 using the timely acquisition of two cyber-attack titles, announced in the same week because global ransomware attack. Both of these titles are scheduled for spring 2018:
Cyberwars: The Hacks that Shook the entire world is as simple as former Guardian technology editor Charles Arthur and can look at the dramatic inside stories of a few of the world’s biggest cyber-attacks including the Clinton election campaign and also recent global events.
Cyber Risk Management, is as simple as Richard Benham from 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 strategy to help prevent the trillions of dollars that are lost globally every year.”
Publishing Perspectives spoke to Helen Kogan about how precisely the business has been able to remain independent, its current rights activity, and how the world of Business Books publishing is changing.
‘Discoverable Any place in the World’
Publishing Perspectives: As Kogan Page enters its sixth decade, bed mattress business?
Helen Kogan: We’re creating a great year. We’re almost after our financial year and we’re seeing double-digit growth across all revenue streams. We’ve also won two transformational publishing contracts using the Chartered Institute of Personnel Development and also the Chartered Institute of Banking for both academic and professional development titles.
We’re gonna launch a searchable digital platform for B2B customers and we’re also gonna launch our first online courses. It’s been a really exciting breakthrough year following 4 years of refocus and progression of our value proposition.
PP: It is possible to particular focus on your rights activity?
HK: The expansion and additional development of Beijing Book Fair continues to be particularly beneficial to us, and also 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 limited to our very popular general business titles. We’ve had success with a few of our more specialist titles too, in logistics and hours.
We’ve forever been internationally-focused and currently sell our titles into 90 countries with key territories being America, Europe, Southeast Asia, the very center East, Australia, India, and China.
We have offices in the US 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 rooked global supply chains in recent times and, from the progression of digital bibliographic and marketing feeds, will have the fantastic power to make our titles discoverable from any location.
‘A Very Crowded Marketplace’
PP: Do you know the main issues facing business and professional publishers?
HK: A serious problem is that we’re now encompassed by content producers.
It’s merely traditional publishers that disseminate business content, and it’s a really crowded marketplace. Training companies, member organizations, business schools and management consultancies a few of the serious non-traditional competition we have to consider. However, we’ve spent the final 36 months defining our value proposition and points of difference and think we still need a powerful and competitive business with significant chance for further growth.
PP: The amount of a threat is open access? The ‘knowledge ought to be free’ camp can be extremely persuasive. Does it create a breeding ground by which students tend to be more unwilling to buy content?
HK: I do think it’s difficult to persuade students to purchase content when they’ve been used to ‘free’. Really have to have the educational institutes to compliment us within this also to increase the risk for case that after the line is surely an author who has made the book and may be compensated accordingly.
Around “free” is a challenge Furthermore, i believe that the threat to non-linear narrative, through other media formats, is problematic. We’re considering the way we may offer a more three-dimensional and interactive experience in the long run to compete with changing consumer reading habits.
PP: How has Kogan Page been able to stay independent?
HK: Bloody-mindedness, resilience, opportunism-all those activities plus more.
PP: How many workers are you experiencing and what’s your turnover?
HK: We have 35 staff and growing. Our turnover is ?4.5 million (US$5.6 million) but also in the following financial year this will grow close to ?5.5 million (US$7.Two million) through organic growth and also the inclusion of the Chartered Institute of Personnel Development’s list. We’d to consider a hit on the top line within the last several years even as we refocused a part of our activity on specialist areas however year we’re seeing the fruits of this work and have a 12-percent growth.
Benefitting Coming from a Weak Pound
PP: What effect do you think Brexit could have?
HK: It’s difficult to say at this stage. We have to hope that people won’t have to endure tariffs simply because this will clearly possess some impact. Costs of materials are often a concern and we’ll should monitor this. We hold English-language world and digital rights towards the vast majority of our list and this should mitigate having to compete with US editions in Europe (a growing concern amongst other publishers).
Hopefully sanity will prevail and also the threat hanging over our European colleagues’ right to live in america is going to be dealt with swiftly as opposed to deploying it like a bargaining chip.
For the plus side, we’ve certainly benefited from the weakness from the pound contrary to the dollar.
PP: Where would you sell the majority of your books?
HK: Seventy percent of our sales still feel the traditional supply chain-bookshops, online stores, wholesalers, and so on. However, our Internet site sales are growing so we have a very 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 for 25 percent of revenue using the balance with this being delivered from digital licensing to academic library suppliers, aggregators, and company content suppliers. Our ebook business has stayed fairly stable at about 8 percent of overall revenue.
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