Contracts assistant

Closing date for applications: 22 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.

Kickstart your publishing career by providing essential administrative support and helping to manage the contracts that bring bestselling books to life.

The contracts and business affairs department powers the creative success of Hachette UK’s publishing divisions through technical expertise and sound commercial partnership. We engage with authors, editors, agents, and marketing teams at all stages of a book’s lifecycle, from pre-acquisition through to production, promotion, publication and beyond. The department comprises a team of 20 who handle approximately 3,500 contractual paperwork requests per annum, which include a wide variety of contracts. We are looking for a contracts assistant who will assist the Orion and Hachette Children’s Group contracts team.

At Orion, we believe every story matters. Open, agile, passionate and innovative, our mission is to bring the best publishing to the greatest variety of people. Ambitious to continually raise the bar, we believe good stories can come from anywhere and so encourage and value contributions from everybody here.

Hachette Children's Group is one of the UK's largest children's publishers, our mission is to make it easy for children and young people everywhere to access books and see themselves reflected. We aim to maximise our readers' life chances by inspiring a lifelong love of reading, publishing books for every stage of their journey to adulthood from Enid Blyton to Alice Oseman's Heartstopper. Hachette Children's Group and Orion are divisions of Hachette, one of the largest publishing groups in the UK, with 11 publishing divisions and over 60 imprints. Everyone here is proud to be in the business of opening doors and minds.


What you'll be doing

This is an entry-level role reporting to the manager, contracts & business affairs (Orion). The successful candidate will work closely with their colleagues in the Orion and Hachette Children’s Group contracts team and the wider publishing teams assisting with a number of vital functions:

• Process contract and paperwork requests, updating contracts log and ensuring all queries are allocated within the team
• Ensure/assist the operations executive so that finalised contracts are processed, including arranging for signatures and updating the Biblio publishing database
• Manage reversion requests, providing information and guidance to editors, draft reversion letters and update Biblio and other databases
• Provide departmental administrative support in relation to the contracts process as required, e.g. due to staff absence
• Draft and/or check contractual paperwork, under supervision and guidance of line manager
• Handle permissions requests and ensure they are processed in a timely manner

The above list is not exclusive or exhaustive and the job holder may be required to undertake such other duties as may reasonably be required.


Who we are looking for

We are looking for someone with:

• Meticulous eye for detail
• Excellent organisation and administrative skills including time management
• Computer literacy – good skills in Word, Excel, PowerPoint
• Knowledge of, or aptitude for, relevant applications/systems, e.g. Biblio
• Ability to communicate well and build positive working relationship with contacts at all levels
• Excellent written and verbal communication
• Ability to proof-read accurately
• Ability to work collaboratively and proactively as part of a team
• Ability to learn and work quickly
• Interest in the publishing industry

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 for interview, please let us know.

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