Publisher: The Quarto Group
Job Title: Production Controller, permanent, full time
Job Location: London, UK
We’re looking for an enthusiastic person looking to take the next step in their publishing career by joining our busy Adults team based in our Islington office. This Production Controller role is a full time role working on a wide range of 4-colour non-fiction titles.
SPCK/IVP, winner of the IPG Specialist Consumer Publisher of the year for 2018 and 2017 and shortlisted for the recent Bookseller Independent Publisher of the Year is looking for a highly motivated and enthusiastic Ecommerce Executive to join our busy Publicity and Marketing Department and help us increase our audience share and consumer reach.
Publisher: The Quarto Group
Job Location: London, UK
We are looking to appoint an Online Marketing and Social Media Executive in our Adult Title Marketing, UK team. Reporting to the Senior Marketing Manager, this role will work primarily with The Quarto Group Adult imprints and drive www.quartoknows.com social media growth. You will also be involved in select campaigns for The Quarto Group Children’s imprints and activity on their social media channels.
This role at The Quarto Group is a full time, 9-12 months fixed term contract to cover part of the Group Director of Corporate Marketing & Communications’ remit while she is on maternity leave. It reports to the Chief Executive Officer.
This is a really exciting opportunity for an organised and meticulous Production Editor to join emc design, one of the top UK design agencies dedicated to the publishing industry.
£32,900 to £40,000 dependant on experience (full-time)
Closing date: 9th June 2017
Out of House Publishing Solutions is a fast-growing publishing services company based in Gloucestershire. We offer a comprehensive project management service for every kind of publishing project, and we are currently looking for a senior project manager to come and work on our expanding list of educational titles. This exciting and varied role will be vital to the education team in continuing to ensure the timely delivery of high-quality print and digital projects for our clients.
This is a permanent full-time position, based in our attractive Stroud offices. It would suit a candidate with at least five years’ publishing experience in the education sector, who is looking for a senior editorial role with key account and line management responsibilities.
Applications close: 18th April 2017
To apply, please send your register via the Website.
Sam Humphreys is Associate Publisher at Mantle, an imprint of Pan Macmillan. She has previously worked at Picador, Profile Books and Penguin, and before that, was a primary school teacher. Norah Myers interviews her here.
I’m not sure I did, actually. I suppose for many people, it’s about feeling ready for new challenges – but for me, it’s never been completely clear cut. Jobs don’t always come up when or where you want them, and I certainly wasn’t looking to move when I was offered my current job. However, I knew I would want a different, more challenging role at some point in the future, and figured I could – hopefully – grow into the role over time. Being an Associate Publisher is very good in that respect, because there’s room for negotiation and flexibility: you’re not the Publisher, so you don’t have overall responsibility, and you have time to learn the ropes as you go along. (That’s my theory, anyway.) Sometimes, I think it’s about just taking the plunge.
I think people who aren’t afraid to speak up/out generally do well. (Obviously it helps if what you’re saying is sensible and rooted in reality, experience or observation, however.) I also think decision-makers – even if they don’t always make what you think are the ‘right’ decisions – tend to do better than people who endlessly prevaricate. I suspect the two are linked – and that both in turn are connected to a combination of confidence and knowledge: if you have one or other, that’s great; if you have both, then so much the better.
People who are interested – not just in what they’re doing, but what others (and that might be other editors, other agents, other authors, other publishing houses, other lists, other books) are up to – also, I feel, tend to fare well. Publishing is a small and sometimes gossipy world – and to succeed, I suspect you need to know (or at least want to know) about more than your own little corner of it.
Finally, I’d like to say that people skills are also important, but I’m not always sure that’s true. (I’ve certainly had some great bosses – and some less so – and I imagine that’s true for most people and, indeed, most industries.)
For me, the most obvious challenge has been getting my head around the financial aspect. Like many editors, I see myself as a words rather than a numbers person – and interpreting a sheet of numbers doesn’t come easily or automatically to me. Print margins, advance write-offs, P&Ls: these terrify me slightly, and I’ve had to work hard to overcome my instinctive fear of such things. Linked to this, though, I think it’s also been quite a challenge/revelation to realise that I can – and should – ask if I’m not sure. Even if people think you’re stupid for asking (and in my experience, they never actually do), that’s better than pretending you understand something when you’ve got no idea.
I do think it gets harder to start a new job the higher up you go. Like most editors, my first job was editorial assistant, and there’s something about starting at that level that makes it relatively easy to get the hang of things. For a start, there are likely to be other assistants who can show you what you need to do and where you need to be at any given time. As you move up through the ranks, though, you don’t necessarily have many peers – and quite often you’re expected to make decisions (especially when you’re managing people and/or budgets) from day one. That can be extremely daunting, and I also think it takes longer to really feel you’ve got to grips with things. As a general rule of thumb, I’d say at least a year – so you’ve done everything once – but probably two to start to feel properly comfortable. I’m not sure you ever want to feel too comfortable though – and perhaps if you do, that’s the point you should think about moving…
In all honesty, where I am now. I was in my first job (at Pan Macmillan) for nearly ten years, but then moved three times in relatively quick succession. I still feel as though I’ve a lot to learn in my current role – particularly regarding the financial side of things, as I’ve mentioned – and I’d like to feel I’d really mastered that before moving on.
Oh, that’s tricky! Don’t be afraid to ask if you don’t understand or to speak up if you have an opinion. (But, equally, be happy to shut up if you don’t: there’s no point in speaking just to make a noise.) And, finally, listen to and learn from others but trust your instinct.
James Carey is Director of Publishing Operations, UK for The Quarto Group. Having worked in Production, Sales and Operations roles at Dorling Kindersley, Penguin and Bonnier, he is currently responsible for the Quarto Group’s production, freight, distribution and inventory as well as sales reporting, eBooks and various other aspects of operations within a global illustrated publisher.
06h30*– Alarm sounds. Alarm silenced. Groggily check newsfeeds and personal emails, and generally avoid thinking about too much for 45 minutes or so.
07h15 – Shower, breakfast (if I’m awake enough, otherwise I’ll get something on the way to work), get dressed – which means deciding which of my exclusively navy or grey shirts or jumpers to wear with one of my pairs of Levi 511s.**
08h00 – This is when I begin working. I sit at my desk at home and clear my inbox before I leave the house. I started doing this a few months ago and it has really improved the way I work. It means I can get to the office knowing what I actually have to do, rather than noodling around in my inbox, making coffee, and generally procrastinating. If you’re interested, all emails are parsed into tasks and added to GQueues.com in a bastardised form of GTD that I’ve developed over the last couple of years. It’s important to do this properly, in front of a computer I find, rather than on the iPhone.
I then leave the house feeling clear of mind, ready for the descent to the Northern Line, chest puffed, copy of The Economist in hand.
08h45-09h45 – Depending on the state of aforementioned inbox, I will arrive at work sometimes before eight and sometimes pushing ten. I avoid scheduling meetings before 10h00, and also I do not schedule meetings on Fridays as that is the day that I review the week, tie up any loose ends and plan the coming week’s work. Between now and my first meeting of the day I will review today’s task list and determine which tasks are the most important. I will then, depending on how long I have, try to tick off as many smaller tasks from the list. It gives a false sense of momentum which I long ago tricked myself into believing in.
10h00 – Usually this slot is reserved for a one-on-one with one of my team. I have two Production Directors, a Sales Operations Manager, a Trade Programme Manager and a Business Analyst in my team. It’s my job to make sure their goals are clear, we’re all heading in the same direction, and essentially to ensure they are happy and moving forwards. I enjoy these meetings, as it’s the time that I get to find out what’s going on, what’s working, and what needs fixing (thus giving me something to do).
11h00 – Mid-morning to lunch is when I like to properly tackle the first task of the day. For me, this could be something like drafting a company-wide notice on a change in shipping policy, requiring close reading of trade regulations and guidelines and phone discussions with freight forwarders (stay with me here) in order to ensure the company is doing things correctly and efficiently. Or, it could be reviewing sales and print volumes across the different formats that we publish in order to shape our negotiations with our print suppliers effectively. In general, I am usually looking for ways to make the business more efficient, to help people get things done more quickly, and to help them find time to do the things that in turn help the business be more effective.
13h00 – This is the time that I go for lunch, and as far as I’m concerned, this is the correct time for lunch. I may leave at 12h45 for lunch, and have been know to begrudgingly go at 12h30 if I must, but 12h00 is simply out of the question. This is a deep-seated, irrational belief so do not attempt to argue with me on this point. I am a bit of a foodie,*** so I always look forward to lunch as it’s an opportunity to visit some old favourites (the pizza in the Three Johns is very good, Vietnamese at Little Viet Kitchen comes with about a fiver’s worth of coriander and mint, falafel from Alturath on Chapel Market always a winner), or try out some new places. Either that or I will be fasting. ****
14h00-16h00 – Depending on the day, this will either be a continuation of what I call ‘actual work’ (i.e. completing tasks from my task list), or, as my beloved US colleagues begin to arrive in the office, this is usually the time given over to calls with them. I work closely with a US counterpart (who is of course not ‘Director of Publishing Operations’ but ‘Vice-President of…’) so we might catch up on transatlantic projects we’re working on, or we’ll just check in and let each other know what’s been going on. My boss is also based in the US so I might catch up with him, or some of the Ops and Inventory teams in the US. At the moment I am leading a big project to replace all of our various databases with a single solution that will enable US and UK teams to work together much more closely, so there is a weekly status update on this as well as training and discovery work to be done as we push this project onwards.
16h00-17h30 – I’ll try to do the final check of the inbox for the day and then try to use the last couple of hours of work to ensure that anything that absolutely must be finished today is done, and then I’ll start looking at tomorrow’s task list to see if there’s anything I can take care of today, and if there’s anything huge on the horizon that I’ve forgotten about and I need to go home and worry about while I lie awake in bed that night. It’s good to plan these things. I’ll also print out anything that I might want to read on the tube home – despite being a bit of a technophile, I’ve found over the last few years that to review documents with any level of thoroughness, they need to be printed out, and I need a red pen in my hand.
17h30 – The working day is done, and I will either jump straight on the tube home to cook dinner, or I’ll head to the superb Craft Beer Co. Pub some 300 yards from the office, where I’ll catch up with colleagues from all the other departments and find out what is really going on.
* Yes, I do write times like this and I think it really annoys and/or confuses my US colleagues – which may have something to do with my persisting in it.
** Sadly this is not a Mark Zuckerberg-esque attempt to reduce decision fatigue and improve productivity. I am just rubbish at buying clothes and have realized while writing this article that I own a lot of very, very similar outfits.
*** Believe me, I do not enjoy using that word. But what else? ‘Food enthusiast’? ‘Gourmand?’ ‘Gastronaut’?
**** Something I started doing about five years ago and have been doing with decreasing regularity since. If it is a fast day, this time table should be updated with a black coffee and a cigarette roughly every 60 minutes.
Emma Barnes taught herself to code after founding her own independent publisher, Snowbooks. She went on to build Bibliocloud, the next-generation publishing system. Now she’s on a mission to promote tech skills within the publishing industry and beyond. Emma is also on the newly-formed BookMachine Editorial Board.
6.50am Wake up, wonder what day it is and remember – great! It’s the one day this week that I can dedicate to programming. I’m the MD of the indie publisher Snowbooks, and I’m CEO of Bibliocloud, responsible for sales, finance, and customer success, so each day is very different. But I reserve at least one day a week for slipping the needle in and luxuriating in single-minded programming. It so happens that it’s a Saturday, but that’s when the emails stop… context switching is my biggest foe.
8am First coffee, and a read through the opening chapters of the new Sandi Metz book about object-oriented programming in Ruby. It’s great when you find a book that directly addresses the real-world problems you’re facing. I click through to a podcast that she’s on to hear more.
11am Tests. Yesterday I discussed a piece of code that needs some attention with my colleague, Andy. The code is a method which returns a collection of external URLs that gets displayed in Bibliocloud. The URLs take you to a book’s Amazon.co.uk page, or Amazon.com page, or Wordery page, or British Library page, and so on — a handy and quick way to check what data is out there in the wild. The method doesn’t have automatic test coverage yet, so I’m going to start by documenting current behaviour. I do this using an integration test which mirrors what a user would do. We use Cucumber which gives us a common language between non-technical team members and programmers. I start by creating a new branch of the code based on our master branch, and create a Cucumber feature which literally reads “When I visit the ‘Autodrome’ page in Bibliocloud, and I click on the Amazon.com link, then I should be taken to the ‘Autodrome’ page on Amazon.com”. I then write some code to translate that into automatic test steps.
1pm The grand refactor. The Sandi Metz book has given me a couple more clues as to how this method could be improved, and I’m trying to hold all the concepts in my head so I can look at the problem squarely. Sandi Metz talks about finding the right level of abstraction, so I’m trying to think about which objects this problem is actually concerned with. Is it the validity of the ISBN that is key? Or the destinations themselves? Or the structure of the URLs? Some are built using the ISBN10, others with the ISBN13. Will there be a future case where the URL is built using an ISSN, or a DOI, or an ASIN, or an ISTC, or an ISNI, or an ORCiD iD? If a book belongs to a series, can we say that the book has an ISSN? If its authors have ORCiD IDs, can we use those to create external links for the book? What about linking to the client’s own website?
Or is this a case of YAGNI (‘you ain’t gonna need it’)? All this matters because I want to put the code in the right place, named properly, so that we can find, and change it easily, later. Maintainability, in a large, active system such as Bibliocloud, is probably the most important thing. I start by working with David to sketch out the problem (see the picture), then create a new Ruby class by adding a text file to my local code repository called external_links.rb.
Like the common language provided by Cucumber, the challenge so far has been approached not with code, but with language, reading, grammar, discussion, and story. I reflect — not for the first time — on how relevant publishers’ skills are for programming.
2pm Lunch and back to the other Sandi Metz book I’m reading: Practical Object-Oriented Design in Ruby. There’s a good bit on page 93 where she talks about duck typing, which I wonder might be relevant. The idea about duck typing is that “if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it’s a duck”. So my ExternalLinks class doesn’t need to actually be handed an actual book object in order to build the URL. It only expects to be able to get an answer when it asks “what’s your ISBN?” (even if it’s “nope, I don’t have one”). I could similarly give ExternalLinks a display spinner, or a CD, or a cassette audiobook: just so long as it can say what its ISBN is. I’m going to use this idea to write ExternalLinks so that it’s not tightly coupled to the Book class itself – though I’m a bit worried that this is another case of YAGNI. I commit this code to my local branch, glad that I’ve named it “spike/external_url_refactor” so that I can discuss this approach with my colleagues before considering it for a merge into our production system.
3pm Iteration. I run the test that was passing earlier and it fails. Huh. I abandon the integration test and start unit testing at a deeper level of the code. I realise that there’s a requirement I hadn’t understood: some of the destinations are dependent on format, as well as ISBN type. Writing the tests illuminate some of the nuances of the domain and I jump between revising the tests and revising the code (avoiding doing both at the same time which is a recipe for misery).
4pm Leave to pick up my son, as I do every day of the week. Programming allows for flexible hours. It’s the sort of job that benefits from a bit of percolation, and fitting it around family makes me happy that I can experience life and motherhood as it happens, rather than only working hard for some imaginary future.
8pm Share today’s programming. Bedtime is done, and I look at the code again, but I think I’ve got as far as my brain will take me today, so I push the code to a branch on Bitbucket, our remote code repository, and raise a pull request with my colleagues. I’ll look forward to discussing this approach with them on Monday and seeing if they notice any glaring or subtle errors, and suggest better ways to structure the code. [Postscript from the future: on Monday, we found no errors as such, but we improved the test suite and I got a lot of clarity about separation of concerns from my code review with Andy.]
10pm Bit more of that Sandi Metz book. It really is very moreish.
Hello! We’re Abi and Katie from emc design and we’d like to tell you about a typical day here at work! Abi has been at emc for over three years and is now a Middleweight designer. Katie has just celebrated her one year anniversary as Junior designer. We celebrated with party rings that day! Together we are part of Duncan’s Digital Design Team.
8.00am – 8.15am – As most of us live in the local town of Bedford, we often share lifts into work to save petrol and the environment! It’s good that we all get along which always makes for a happy working atmosphere! The location of our studio is in the scenic village of Oakley, which makes the rush hour commute ideal as the traffic is always travelling in the opposite direction. We’ve been getting some pretty spectacular views recently.
8.15am – Do the first tea and coffee round and check to see if emails have come through overnight!
8.30am – In the morning we have team huddles and discuss the jobs that are being sent out that day and assign jobs to each member of the team. These can include: creation of sample design, proof stage correction work, cover designing, typestyling, realia design, artwork and image placement for the many different jobs we work on for our various publishing clients.
8.40am – The initial stage of a project begins with creating a sample design and having conversations with a client determining how they’d like their book to look, bouncing back and forth ideas and concepts in order to give them what they want. Once this has been finalised and they are satisfied with the sample design produced, we receive the full manuscript for the new book from the editors. We import this text into InDesign ready for typestyling and page layout following the agreed sample design.
11.22am – team biscuits (this is a drawer of biscuits (Katie has just learnt that drawer is spelt drawer not draw)) – our team is partial to shhhnacks (a secret guilt free snack).
11.28am – Duncan realises that four biscuits was not quite enough and comes back for six more. On special days, such as work anniversaries and actual birthdays, we have cake! You may have heard about some of our bake-off competitions, we take cake pretty seriously!
12.30pm – At each stage of a project, our work is checked thoroughly by our magical proof checking pixies, who ensure that our work is precise, correct and ready to send through to our clients in immaculate condition.
In the emc studio, we have two rooms, Designers in one room and the Creative Services team in the other. As designers we work closely with the Creative Services team who oversee the artwork commissioning, photo research and proof checking stages of all jobs. It’s nice to be able to pop round the corner to deliver a job to be checked or discuss an artwork brief in person.
1.00pm – LUNCH! Some like to sit at their desks to eat, however we much prefer to go and sit in the kitchen and have a natter with anyone who’d like to join us. When the weather is nice, we sometimes go out and venture into the idyllic country scenes of Oakley to get some fresh air and clear our heads for the busy working afternoon ahead. The change of scenery is often good if you are feeling a bit bogged down with the heavy workload.
2.00pm – Lunch break ends and a member of the team is designated to make a round of drinks! (We make rounds of tea & coffee within our teams of 4-6 designers, so as to avoid one person making 26 cups of tea at any one time)
2.15pm – All our jobs go through a number of proof stages after the initial creation of a book, which allow for editorial changes to be made, artwork to be drawn and realia created. A large percentage of our daily tasks revolve around this middle stage of design work filling up our afternoon and ensure the book is as accurate as possible.
Keeping organised is a key part of our job, so throughout the day, our team reminders schedule pop up on our screens so that we remember the most urgent jobs for that particular day and we work hard as a team to get everything done. Team work makes the dream work after all! We also have a series of checklists that we go through for each stage of the job. Each project in the studio has a job bag to make sure everything is super organised and we’ve got everything covered.
5.30pm – We hope you’ve enjoyed seeing a little snippet of a typical day here at emc design. With lots of projects going through the studio at the same time there’s always variety in what we do and the chance to learn something new too. After a busy afternoon of designing and emailing clients it’s time to go home for a well earned break! We sometimes organise ‘work socials’ as a way to bond over good GIN and good food. Our last one was in celebration of Roald Dahl’s 100th Birthday where we got to eat more cake!
Claire Maxwell works at Icon Books as their Publicity Manager. She has previously worked in journalism and bookselling, and she blogs at www.ithinkijustbloggedmyself.com. Claire is also on the newly-formed BookMachine Editorial Board.
I should preface this piece by saying that there is no typical day in the life of a book publicist. As with many roles in publishing, some days you’re out and about meeting authors and journalists and scouting out event venues, and some days you’re trawling through email after carefully-worded email, just trying to keep your head above water. What I will also say, though, is that being a book publicist is the best job in the world. I know I may be biased, but what a privilege it is to work with creative and inspiring people day after day, helping in some small way to share their story with the world.
7.30am – My alarm goes off.
7.39am – My alarm goes off again.
7.48am – My alarm goes off again. I should probably get up.
9.30am – I arrive at the office*, make a cup of tea and start going through emails that I didn’t have a chance to deal with yesterday, or that have come in overnight.
10.30am – Meeting time! Once a month everyone in the company gets together for a few hours to go through the finances, the budget for the year, how the PR effort is going, feedback from sales reps and booksellers, and changes that might need to be made to the upcoming catalogue. Coffee is made, biscuits are bought, and we all gather around the table to start.
11.30am – *mid meeting* It’s my turn to give my colleagues an update on how publicity for the current list I’m working on is going. This is a good opportunity to let editors know if I might need text early, to send to interested journalists, or to highlight any issues that have arisen. Mostly though, it’s good news. Just that weekend we’ve had a great review of one of our front list titles in The Guardian so I’m feeling rather jovial.
12.30pm – Meeting finishes and my lunchbreak commences. There are literally no nice places to get food in the nearby area (a Sainburys and a sad looking Costa that always smells like toilets are just not cutting it), so I trudge to a Waitrose about 15 minutes’ walk away for an okay sandwich. Side note: why are there no good sandwich options for vegetarians?
1.15pm – Emails, emails, emails. Mostly authors who want updates or have just had a terrific feature idea.
2pm – Three boxes of books arrive in the office – it’s our latest release. I print out labels and press releases and (politely) ask the intern if they would help me package them up.
3pm – I have a meeting with a journalist at a swanky little café in Kings Cross, so I hop on the tube (grabbing some time for a little read on the way) and then spend an hour talking about our upcoming releases and gleaning which might be of interest to this particular media outlet.
4pm – I head back to the office.
4.30pm – More emails to respond to. I swear between approximately 2pm and 4pm the most emails in the WORLD are sent.
5pm – I have a Skype call with our publicity manager in the US, who looks after the books we’re publishing out there. We chat all things books and launches. I kind of wish I was in New York…
5.45pm – I print out my work credit card statement, just sent to me by our accounts manager, so I can go through my receipts (mostly tasty lunches) when I’m working from home tomorrow.
5.55pm – I’m out the door and heading home to an evening of The Walking Dead and a big bowl of pasta.
*I don’t actually work in the office every day, I quite often work from home, but for the purposes of this exercise I think a day when I’m in the office and out-and-about would be more interesting than one where I’m squirrelling away at my laptop in my pyjamas.
We are looking for an experienced and creative illustrated book design manager to work at Pavilion, working predominantly on the award-winning Batsford imprint. This is an exciting opportunity to work on and manage a large range of illustrated books on the expanding lists.
Key duties:
Experience / skills required:
To apply, please email with a CV and salary expectations to tpersaud@pavilionbooks.com
Please note that only short-listed candidates will be contacted.
Closing date: 11 November 2016
Hodder & Stoughton, part of Hachette UK, the UK’s leading book publisher, has an exciting vacancy for a Marketing Director maternity cover for up to one year.
Overseeing a team of seven, you will drive campaigns for the full range of Hodder’s publishing, from managing top-level brand authors such as Jodi Picoult, John Grisham, David Mitchell and Deliciously Ella to building word-of-mouth bestsellers and developing dynamic pitches to attract new talent.
A strong leader and inspirational manager, you will ensure the highest standards of creativity and delivery, within budget and to tight deadlines. Working directly on the marketing strategy and campaigns for key brands, you will be a team player and independent decision-maker.
Digital marketing experience and demonstrable creative ability are vital in this role, as is commercial awareness, specifically of the book publishing market. The successful candidate will have proven experience of both people management and budget management, and an ability to motivate themselves and their team to deliver quality work to deadline in an efficient, organised manner. A strong visual sense and marketing instinct, alongside excellent communication skills will ensure that business needs are met with creative vision.
In return we offer a creative and dynamic environment and a competitive salary and benefits package.
Please apply in writing, enclosing a CV and giving details of your salary expectations to: recruitment@hachette.co.uk or to HR department, Hachette UK, Carmelite House, 50 Victoria Embankment , London EC4Y 0DZ
Unfortunately, due to the high volume of applications we receive, we are only able to contact shortlisted candidates.
Hachette UK is an equal opportunities employer and employs people on the basis of their abilities.
Job Title: International Sales Administrator
Job Location: London, UK
YOUR ROLE:
YOUR SKILLS:
You will be an enthusiastic and organised publishing graduate, able to manage multiple projects and customers and provide efficient support for our busy international sales department. Previous experience in International Sales or Production is desired as well as a working knowledge of Biblio and Microsoft Office.
Closing date: 15th August
To apply, please email your CV and covering letter to: lesley.omara@mombooks.com
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