Acting editorial director (12 month FTC)

Closing date: 20th September 2024

Salary: £45,000+ dependent on experience (+bonus +benefits)

Location: The role will be based at our London office, Carmelite House, with a blend of in-office (3 days) and homeworking (2 days) per week.

Ready to lead the charge at brazen? We’re looking for a dynamic leader to manage our groundbreaking list, shape our publishing strategies for 2025-2026, and bring bold new voices to life.

brazen books is the new, bold literary arm of Octopus, Hachette. It has published a raft of critically acclaimed bestsellers and record-breakers since its launch in 2022 including Fern Brady’s Strong Female Character, which recently won the Nero Prize for Non-Fiction 2024. It publishes both fiction and non-fiction as well as a score of translated titles. In 2024-5 we will be publishing Florence Given’s Women Living Deliciously, Hanna Thomas Uose’s Who Wants to Live Forever, Hope Reese’s The Women Are Not Fine and Monika Kim’s The Eyes are The Best Part.

Responsibilities

• Overall management and leadership of brazen’s list; its authors, its team and its wider network
• Leading, planning and executing publishing strategies for 2025-2026 publication
• Full management of all parts of the publishing process: liaising with authors and in-house editorial, design, production, sales and wider comms teams to deliver highly effective and best-in-class publishing
• Ownership of brazen’s P&L for 2025. This part of the role will involve strategy development, budgeting, forecasting, cost control, exploring sales opportunities (home, export and special sales) and meeting growth and profitability targets 
• Partnering closely with Sales, Marketing, Publicity and Design across the publishing process 
• Ensure that the day-to-day operations of brazen are working effectively, including cost management and meeting all milestones on the publishing critical path
• Maintaining strong connections with preexisting authors and literary agents
• Title acquisition. This will include some flexibility to acquire for Autumn 2025 into the wider Octopus business for the right candidate

What we're looking for

• An excellent knowledge of the market and a track record of successful publishing
• Experience creating and managing strategy
• Great leadership and influencing skills
• Clear and empathetic communicator, able to build strong relationships internally and externally
• Best in field structural editing skills
• Best in field author care skills
• Proven experience negotiating complex deals
• Ambitious and entrepreneurial, eager to contribute to the success of Octopus overall

What we offer

Our staff are our greatest asset, and our benefits reflect this:

• 28 annual leave days per year, increases to 29 days after 2 years' service and goes up to 30 days after 5 years' (+ bank holidays)
• Generous pension schemes
• Rent deposit loans
• 2 community days per year
• Summer hours (finishing at 1pm on Fridays during the summer months)
• Retail discounts through Hachette rewards
• Cycle to Work scheme
• Eye care vouchers
• Wide-ranging training library
• Development programmes (including mentoring)
• Up to 70% off book purchases
• A charity bookshelf
• 12 Staff-led employee networks that are voluntary, including Gender Balance, Thrive, Pride, All Together, Wellbeing and religious networks
• Season ticket loans
• And much more!

Our commitment

Hachette employs people on the basis of their abilities. We aim to attract and develop talent from a base as broad as the world of readers we want to reach, with a wide and representative range of age, faith, disability, race, gender, sexuality and socio-economic, regional and cultural backgrounds.

If you are shortlisted and need us to make any adjustments to help you attend for interview, please let us know.

Please state in your application that you found this role through Creative Access.

The Book Trade Charity offers financial support to people looking to enter the book trade but who may struggle to afford the costs of attending interviews and undertaking junior roles. For more information visit www.booktradeentrysupport.org