Sales assistant

Salary: £25,000 per annum

Location: Edinburgh office (with option for days from home)

Closing Date: Monday 15th June 2026, 12 noon

Interviews: w/c 22nd June 2026

Preferred start date: Beginning of July 2026 (or asap)

Contract: Full-time, open-ended

Holiday: 40 days a year (including bank holidays)

Support sales activity for an academic publisher, creating sales materials, managing customer enquiries and helping connect books and journals with readers worldwide.

Edinburgh University Press is a thriving academic publisher, producing over 330 new books and 60 new journals each year, with an emphasis on the Humanities and Social Sciences.

We are currently seeking a proactive Sales Assistant to join our dynamic sales team at our Edinburgh office on a full-time contract. Reporting to the Senior Key Account Manager – The Americas, you will possess a distinct desire to be part of a busy sales team and a robust eagerness to learn. Key responsibilities include overseeing customer services, creating valuable sales materials, and offering general administrative support to the sales team. Applicants should be highly organised, capable of working effectively under pressure, and adept at prioritising daily tasks.

This role requires excellent communication skills, as it involves coordination with a remotely based manager and frequent online collaboration with team members, who are primarily located outside Edinburgh. The successful candidate will be well-versed in conducting online team meetings, preferably within a sales environment and will represent our sales team professionally within the Edinburgh office. Exceptional interpersonal skills are essential, as is the ability to liaise confidently with other departments, maintaining a supportive and professional demeanour at all times. Join us if you are ready to work within a creative and energetic team, contributing significantly to our continued success.

Key Accountabilities

• Administration, Research and Reporting
• Asset and catalogue creation
• Strong customer service and rep support
• Title Management
• Support adoption activity
• Teamwork and collaboration
• Service excellence and continuous improvement

Person Specification

Knowledge and Skills

Essential

• Demonstrable administrative skills
• Clear, concise and articulate communication skills, both in person and online
• Close attention to detail
• Organised, flexible and digitally literate
• Good working knowledge of Microsoft Office and Excel
• Organised and well-prepared
• Creative, solutions-driven thinker

Desirable

• Familiarity with desktop publishing software (e.g. InDesign/Canva

Experience

Essential

• Ability to work efficiently in a hybrid environment
• Proven ability to work well in a team
• Ability to understand customer needs, solve problems and handle multiple customer enquiries
• Ability to build trusting relationships for collaboration both with internal and external stakeholders
• Proactive and self-motivated
• Ability to juggle multiple commitments, work under pressure and to tight deadlines

At EUP, our culture is based on the principles of creativity, communication and community, reflecting our values of aspiration, responsibility and collaboration. We place an emphasis on the care and respect with which we treat all our stakeholders, including our authors, editors, customers and our colleagues. We believe that working together as a team will give us the best chance of achieving our vision for EUP: connecting people and ideas to inspire critical creative thinking, offer new perspectives and shape the world we live in.

We are committed to supporting the well-being of our staff, offering two wellness days per year and flexible working options. We place an emphasis on learning and development, which includes a personal development budget for each member of staff, and time set aside for four reading days per year.

Equal Opportunities and Reasonable Adjustments

EUP is committed to the values of equity, diversity, inclusion and accessibility and welcomes applications from a diverse range of backgrounds. We are committed to creating an inclusive workplace. If you have a disability, long-term health condition, or specific needs, we will make reasonable adjustments to support you in the recruitment process and in the role. Examples may include:

• Adjusting interview methods (e.g., extra time, remote interviews, accessible venues)
• Modifying equipment or software (e.g., screen readers, ergonomic keyboards)
• Flexible working hours or patterns to accommodate medical appointments or energy levels

If you require any adjustments, please let Caroline Danks, HR Business Partner (caroline.danks@eup.ed.ac.uk) know when applying so we can discuss your needs confidentially.

We also ask that all candidates complete our short equal opportunities monitoring survey*.

* https://app.onlinesurveys.jisc.ac.uk/s/edinburgh/eup-equal-opportunities-monitoring

The survey is optional and completely anonymous.

Next Steps

To apply, please send a full CV and covering letter to Caroline Danks, HR Business Partner, specifying where you found this advert. As part of your covering letter, we would like you to answer the following three questions, each in no more than 150 words:

1. Choose an EUP book of your choice from our website and describe why you think it stands out
2. What is your best lesson learned in the last 5 years?
3. Tell us why EUP’s values are important to you

Please do not use AI to answer these questions.

We welcome and encourage applications from candidates who are under-represented in the creative industries.

Please make sure that you state in your application that you found this role via Creative Access.