Assistant - group sales, non trade

Closing date for applications: 11 September 2025

Salary: £27,000 (+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.

From spotting trends to managing high-profile accounts, play a key role in driving sales for the books and products people love to gift.

Hachette UK is a creative powerhouse and the UK's second largest book publishing group. Our mission is to make it easy for everyone to discover new worlds of ideas, learning, entertainment and opportunity. We're made up of 11 autonomous publishing divisions and over 60 imprints with a rich and diverse history and an incredible range of authors. We're also the market leader in e-books and publish a range of bestsellers in audio format, the fastest growing part of our business. It's an exciting time to join our business because the publishing market continues to grow and thrive. The UK remains the largest exporter of physical books in the world and book adaptations for film and TV are the foundation of the UK's creative industries.


What you'll be doing

This is a brilliant opportunity working in the gift team selling across the entire HUK Group (books, gifts, games and stationery) managing some of our key gift accounts. Working across a range of accounts, you will be tasked with maximising sales across all HUK divisions working closely with the sales directors for non-trade, divisional sales directors and key internal stakeholders ensuring sales meet specific author and brand development strategies for the gift channel. You will also be feeding back gift market trends to editorial for specific projects as well as other market trends to inform IP development for books and products. As part of this you will need to:

• Provide administrative support to the non-trade sales director and wider gift team
• Deal with day-to-day customer support including processing orders and dealing with general queries
• Manage the gift in-box responding to queries in a timely manner
• Attend all relevant internal meetings, including key publisher meetings, specifically the imprint non-trade meetings, leading those where relevant to the gift market
• Attend and lead relevant customer meetings
• Help co-ordinate and attend relevant trade/consumer fair attendance (top drawer)
• Monitor monthly divisional sales for gift non trade, working with the non trade team to ensure all divisional targets are met
• Share findings of gift market activity in relevant messaging (team meeting, staff briefings, staff news, etc.)

Who we are looking for

This is a varied role working with multiple members of the non-trade team and it is a great opportunity to gain experience across a number of channels. What we need:

• Good customer and internal communication is a must for this role. Replying to customers, internal and external, within our service level agreements (SLAs) and with a professional tone is critical
• Completion of administrative tasks required by customers including gathering information/material and completing new product line forms
• Curating title selections to specific briefs for customers and wider team and maintaining the team customer relationship management (CRM) system
• Providing support on accounts which require additional operational handholding, for example using supplier portals (must be adept and quick to learn on multiple systems and understand how they marry up to HUKD systems and processes, seeking efficiencies wherever possible)
• Attending customer meetings when required and working to build long-term customer relationships, leading to upselling and cross-selling, where reasonable and deliverable
• Helping to organise, attend and follow up at trade fairs (Top Drawer and The Stationery Show)
• Overseeing gift trade sales inbox, ensuring efficient communication and excellent account management to customers as well as internal colleagues
• Following all non trade processes and protocols as advised by direct line manager and sales directors
• Supporting the gift trade sales team and wider non-trade team with key accounts and taking responsibility for long-tail orders and a suite of smaller accounts
• Keeping the external hachettegift.co.uk website up to date with new titles on a quarterly basis

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)
• Private medical insurance
• Dental insurance
• 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

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

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 an interview, please let us know.

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