Three books are prominent on a display spinner in the Kogan Page reception area. They are Dealing with the Boss from Hell, and matching volumes on coping with equally difficult employees and customers.

The world being the way it is, the book on bosses has almost run out. The others are in plentiful supply. One is tempted to ask Philip Kogan, the 77-year-old chairman of Kogan Page, whether he is a Boss from Hell, but he would probably answer yes. Mr Kogan, known during his 40 years in business publishing for his contrarian streak, has the habit of jokily peppering his conversation with statements that are palpably untrue.

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.

Mr Kogan 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 catalogue 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.

Others are unexpected best-sellers. Great Answers to Tough Interview Questions, sourced from the US and aimed at job-seekers, has sold five million copies worldwide – not all of them, Kogan admits, under his imprint – and is still selling 30,000 copies a year. There is the prospect of Family Wars, about various dynastic board-room battles, but Mr Kogan admits: “We haven’t cleared it yet with the lawyers. We’re slightly worried.”

He enthuses over Mastering Automotive Challenges, whose dry title obscures an account of how the German car industry became a world beater. This leads to a diatribe about the state of British scientific education and the closure of university science departments. “We’re going to pay for it,” he says. “We publish a lot of science books, but I noticed that there wasn’t much coming from here.” Instead they were sourced from countries such as Canada or South Korea: “It’s tragic.”

Mr Kogan’s interest in science education is understandable. The start of his apparently haphazard career, after a childhood at a West Ham school that was “lovely but not academic”, was a degree in physics and ten years researching dielectrics, or electrical insulators.

The turning point came at the age of 32, when he was marched in for his regular assessment by his boss. “ ‘Good paper, Philip, have a double increment,’ he said. Then he got out this graph. ‘In eight years’ time, this is where you are going to be.’ I thought, I’ll be 40 then, 40!”

The next weekend he saw an ad for chief editor of Understanding Science, a partwork for schools. The company was part of an odd outfit run by an eccentric who is also credited with the creation of the Noddy figure. As well as textbooks for schools, it published Enid Blyton and Jane’s Fighting Ships.

After a couple more “off the wall” jobs, Mr Kogan set up his own firm, backed by a £2,000 loan from his older brother Ben, with his former partner, the journalist Terry Page. Mr Page quit in a matter of months.

The company started out with a book on industrial training and grew on the back of legislation such as the Industrial Relations Act, which employers needed to read up on quickly, moving into subjects such as human resources and transport management.

Today the internet is crucial. Online purchasing is ideal for small, specialist publishing houses that achieve small sales but need to carry a wide range of titles – the so-called “long tail”. “The opportunities are there because all publishers are equal online,” he says.

“The act of publishing hasn’t really changed. The fundamentals are the same. The publisher acquires IP (intellectual property), makes it publishable and gets it to market.” He generally, but not entirely, eschews the typical “management book” that claims to impart the secrets of success. “We tend not to go in for management buzzword publications. Buzzwords are ephemeral. Most of them come from America. They must sell, but you have to catch them pretty quickly before the concept dies.”

Kogan Page is based at a curious agglomerate of buildings on an insalubrious stretch of Pentonville Road near King’s Cross, London. The managing director today is his daughter Helen. Mr Kogan still walks to and from his home in Camden and plays tennis once a week – “my game isn’t getting any better” – but admits to working shorter hours.

Why not sell? “Lots of my good friends have sold out. I do think there’s a certain emptiness . . . I started this with a loan of £2,000, worked all hours. You get a certain attachment to that way of life.” He has his hobbies, gardening, music, the tennis. “I don’t think I could do that all day long.” He brightens. “Although I could indulge in one of my favourite hobbies, which is grumbling.”

The past few years have not been easy for the tiddlers of the book world. “There are three or four hundred independent publishers. Many of them are small and daft. Many are top class.” But the rapid disappearance of the independent bookseller has shrunk the shelf space available for niche subjects.

Time was when the library trade could provide the initial support a slow seller might need, ordering 1,000 or 1,200 copies, but no longer as librarians are laid off. He starts up again. “Thatcher had the first crack at it, and this lot have perpetuated it.”

So has anything at all improved over the past four decades, I have to ask? Kogan thinks for a while. “People around me seem to have got younger.”

Philip Kogan

Born 1930 in London

Educated at Stratford Grammar School, University of Reading; postgraduate degree from London

Career ten years as physicist in industrial research. Kogan Page launched in 1967. Past chairman of Independent Publishers Guild, European Business Publishing Network and treasurer of British Publishers Association

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