Because of digital initiatives along with a strong report on titles, the 50-year-old UK publisher keeps growing its business, despite increasing competition externally traditional publishing.
Once we hear from Kogan Page’s leadership today regarding 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 will find those following this story.-Porter Anderson
Chinese Rights Sales Now Leading
China has grown to be Kogan Page‘s most productive rights territory, because the 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 organization recently made industry headlines with all the timely acquiring two cyber-attack titles, announced inside the same week because the global ransomware attack. These two titles are scheduled for spring 2018:
Cyberwars: The Hacks that Shook the World is actually former Guardian technology editor Charles Arthur and may glance at the dramatic inside stories of a number of the world’s biggest cyber-attacks like the Clinton election campaign along with recent global events.
Cyber Risk Management, is actually Richard Benham of the UK’s National Cyber Skills Centre and may, as outlined by promotional copy, offer “vital guidance on the way to evaluate threats and communicate a cyber-security strategy to assist in preventing the trillions of dollars that are lost globally annually.”
Publishing Perspectives spoke to Helen Kogan about how the corporation has was able to remain independent, its current rights activity, and the way the world of Cheap Business Books publishing is beginning to change.
‘Discoverable Around the World’
Publishing Perspectives: As Kogan Page enters its sixth decade, bed not the culprit business?
Helen Kogan: We’re having a great year. We’re almost following 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 also the Chartered Institute of Banking both for academic and professional development titles.
We’re about to launch a searchable digital platform for B2B customers and we’re also about to 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: Exactly what is the particular focus in your rights activity?
HK: The development and additional expansion of Beijing Book Fair may be particularly best for us, and also the sale of Chinese rights has become our greatest territory.
However, we have our titles translated into 50 different languages now and, interestingly, this isn’t just restricted to our popular general business titles. We’ve had success with some individuals more specialist titles too, in logistics and recruiting.
We’ve forever 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’ve got offices in the usa and India along with a wide network of agents globally. We’re fortunate to write in English-the international language of business-and that business and management is often a global subject. We’ve really rooked global supply chains in recent years and, with the progression of digital bibliographic and marketing feeds, have the great ability to make our titles discoverable around the globe.
‘A Very Crowded Marketplace’
PP: What are main issues facing business and professional publishers?
HK: An important problem is that we’re now surrounded 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 just some of the intense non-traditional competition we need to think about. However, we’ve spent the very last three years defining our value proposition and points of difference and think we have a powerful and competitive business with significant chance of further growth.
PP: The amount of a threat is open access? The ‘knowledge ought to be free’ camp can be extremely persuasive. Will it create an environment by which students will be more not wanting to pay for content?
HK: I believe it’s hard to persuade students to purchase content when they’ve been accustomed to ‘free’. We actually have to have the educational institutes to support us on this and to make the case that following the line is an author who’s made the book and may be compensated accordingly.
As much as “free” is often a challenge Furthermore, i feel that the threat to non-linear narrative, through other media formats, is problematic. We’re taking a look at the way we may offer a more three-dimensional and interactive experience of the near future to tackle changing consumer reading habits.
PP: How has Kogan Page was able to stay independent?
HK: Bloody-mindedness, resilience, opportunism-all those actions and even more.
PP: The amount of employees are you experiencing and what’s your turnover?
HK: We’ve got 35 staff and growing. Our turnover is ?4.5 million (US$5.Six million) in the next financial year this will likely grow to over ?5.5 million (US$7.Two million) through organic growth and also the inclusion of the Chartered Institute of Personnel Development’s list. There was to look at a hit on our top line over the last several years even as we refocused part of our activity on specialist areas however, this year we’re seeing the fruits of this work and have a 12-percent growth.
Benefitting From your Weak Pound
PP: What effect do you consider Brexit could have?
HK: It’s tough to say now. We have to hope we won’t experience tariffs as this will clearly have some impact. Costs of materials may also be a problem and we’ll should keep close track of this. We hold English-language world and digital rights towards the vast majority of our list this should mitigate needing to tackle US editions in Europe (a growing concern amongst other publishers).
Hopefully sanity will prevail and also the threat hanging over our European colleagues’ to certainly live in this country will likely be addressed swiftly rather than using it as being a bargaining chip.
For the plus side, we’ve certainly taken advantage of the weakness of the pound from the dollar.
PP: Where would you sell much of your books?
HK: 70 percent individuals sales still glance at the traditional supply chain-bookshops, online stores, wholesalers, and so on. However, our Website sales are increasing and now we have a thriving B2B sales activity for member organizations, author networks, and corporates.
PP: What’s the split between digital and print within your business?
HK: Digital is the reason 25 % of revenue with all the balance on this being delivered from digital licensing to academic library suppliers, aggregators, and corporate content suppliers. Our ebook business has stayed fairly stable at about 8 percent of overall revenue.
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