The Times’ Martin Waller profiles Philip Kogan, the founder of business publisher Kogan Page and a bit of an oddity in today’s publishing world. Few publishers would willingly describe some of their output as “tedious.” Few would turn down repeated substantial offers for his company, easily the biggest independent publisher of books on business in this country, because he cannot imagine what he would do with his time in retirement. But Kogan, now 77, has forgotten how many offers he has had for the business, although he hints at a recent significant sum from a well-known publishing conglomerate. Kogan Page this week celebrates its 40th anniversary, something of an achievement for an independent in a world now dominated by huge publishing monoliths.
He publishes about 140 titles a year and has a back catalog of another 1,500. Many are guides to obscure branches of business, often tied in with diplomas or professional qualifications – typical example, “a complete review and assessment of the legal and regulatory frameworks within which insurance distribution schemes can operate”. These may well fall into the tedious camp. But others are unexpected bestsellers like GREAT ANSWERS TO TOUGH INTERVIEW QUESTIONS, which has sold five million copies worldwide – not all of them, Kogan admits, under his imprint – and is still selling 30,000 copies a year.
But he also admits that publishing has become even more of a gamble over the 40+ years he’s been in the business what with the rise of the internet, the fall of libraries and conglomerates galore. So has anything at all improved over the past four decades, Waller asks? Kogan thinks for a while. “People around me seem to have got younger.”