Introduction to the role

The Harlequin Mills & Boon Global Series Acquisition team is part of a much larger team that reports to the Harlequin head office in Toronto, but is based in The News Building in London.

The team acquires series editorial for four Mills & Boon series, Modern, Romance (which goes into True Love in the UK), Medical and Historical, totalling 24 books a month. This is an award-winning, dynamic and high-performing team publishing in two markets, UK and North America, but also liaising with international offices about their publishing needs. We work with authors from all over the world to elicit the highest possible quality romance fiction for our programmes.

This role is an administrative lynch-pin, working with our whole team of 18 in the UK as well as our other acquisition offices in Toronto and New York. We are looking for a hard-working, proactive and flexible administrator who is happy to turn their hand to a wide variety of tasks to ensure the smooth running of the department.

Job purpose

Reporting to the Executive Editor, this position is responsible for providing administrative support for the Harlequin Mills & Boon series imprint and the editorial team in London.

Duties and accountabilities

• Provide administrative and clerical support by being the frontline contact for the author base, and for general queries and information, including troubleshooting.

• Tracking waiver requests; filling in template letters and emailing authors as well as tracking the responses and liaising with stakeholders

• Using internal systems to log author manuscripts, update author information and other database management. Scheduling books, completing prelims, creating templates, editing copy. Creating and sending ISBN request forms for Modern/Presents, Romance, Medical and Historical Romance.

• Prepares monthly leadership report; maintains effective logs as needed.

• Provides support for the editorial team, including such tasks as: monthly Art Fact Sheet alerts for authors; assisting with deflags and AAs, as needed; responding to author queries, helping prepare presentation materials.

• Track expenses for the team members through the internal approval system.

• Manages and assigns unsolicited manuscripts through our Submittable system, reading slush and giving timely responses.

• Booking meetings; making travel arrangements as required.

• Organising all aspects of author events including invitation preparation, catering, decoration and staffing arrangements

Skills and Experience

• Administrative experience

• Strong communication, planning and organizational skills as well as attention to detail

• Capacity to build trust/teamwork/collaboration and customer orientation

• Problem-solving, decision-making and prioritization skills

• Proficiency with Microsoft Office and other apps and systems

Benefits

• Hybrid working model (2+ days in the office)

• 35 hour work week

• 26 days holiday plus bank holidays (option to buy and sell holiday days)

• Enhanced pay for maternity, paternity, adoption and shared parental leave

• Private healthcare cover and life assurance

• Free access to HeadSpace, employee assistance programme (24 hour helpline), mental health first aiders, and a wellbeing portal

• Season ticket loans (from day 1 for entry level) and cycle to work scheme

• Employee networks: HC All In (open forum), Elevate (for ethnic minority colleagues), HarperParents, Menopause at Work and Pride at HC

• Unlimited training on our Learning and Development portal, management courses (up to MA level) and mentoring programmes

• Virtual GP and eyecare vouchers

• Gym membership discount

• Onsite physiotherapy (London only)

• Charitable donation matching and volunteering day

• We're a certified Carbon Neutral company

• Free e-books and audiobooks, newspaper subscriptions and discounts on books

• Subsidised canteen and retail discounts

• Onsite prayer room

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 internships or entry level positions. For more information visit https://www.btbs.org/