Editorial assistant (12 month FTC)

Closing date: 4th February 2025

Salary: £27,000 per annum (+bonus +benefits)

Contract: 12-month FTC

Location: This role is based at our London office, with a blend of in-office (3 days) and homeworking (2 days) per week.

Are you kickstarting a career in children's non-fiction? Join this leading children's publisher!

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. Our award-winning non-fiction publishing across the Wren & Rook, Hodder, Welbeck and Laurence King imprints includes Books of the Year You Are Awesome by Matthew Syed and A Better Day by Alex George, and million-copy-seller Pierre the Maze Detective by IC4 Design.

Hachette Children's Group is a division of Hachette, one of the largest publishing groups in the UK, with 12 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

• You will be providing administrative and editorial support to the children's non-fiction teams:
  • Assisting with all aspects of administration, co-ordination, acquisition and production to support the team working smoothly and efficiently.
• This will include regular tasks such as:
  • Being the first point of contact for the team, organising and gathering information for meetings, taking minutes, keeping metadata up to date, running and circulating reports, sending out contractual copies, keeping team spreadsheets and presentations updated, processing contracts, checking ebooks, overseeing reprint corrections and collating sales material.
• You will also be supporting editorial colleagues with things like:
  • Fact-checking and picture research, reviewing and reporting on submissions and assisting with the creation of author pitches, with the opportunity to develop new non-fiction ideas and editorial skills. 

Who we are looking for

• We are looking for someone with strong organisational skills and a meticulous eye for detail.
• The ideal candidate will need to communicate well and build positive working relationships with contacts at all levels as they will be working with a broad variety of people both internally and externally.
• This role covers a wide variety of work for books across a range of ages and imprints, with different processes to follow for each, so we are looking for someone who is adaptable, with good time management skills and the ability to prioritise.
• It is important that they are able to take initiative, problem-solve and work independently, as well as working well in a team.
• It would be a benefit if you are interested in pursuing a career in children's non-fiction.

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, voluntary employee networks, 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.

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

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