Overview of the role

A key member of the editorial team, this role provides editorial support to the Fiction publishing team and is responsible for desk editing, and project managing final editorial stages, for all titles across the list. This position offers a rare opportunity for an accurate, organised, efficient and creative team-player to step into a challenging Assistant Editor’s role in a power-house team, learning key skills for development as an editor.

 Key tasks and accountabilities:

General Editorial:

•  Supporting the fiction commissioning team across the HCCB and Harper Fire lists

• Checking all cover and interior print PDF files before they go to print, alongside the acquiring editor, editorial assistant and designers

• Writing design briefs with guidance from acquiring editor – covers to be briefed on time and within context of the market on given titles

• Writing jacket and AI copy as required

• Reading and reporting on submissions and competitor titles for the whole team, providing timely, insightful feedback to the commissioning team taking into consideration market context and HarperCollins’ forward publishing strategy. Note that reading time is unlikely to be available during office hours

• Market research as required by the senior editorial team including Bookscan, retailer visits, and competitor research in order to provide supporting materials for strategic planning and acquisitions

• As Metadata Champion for Fiction, ensuring all metadata for all Fiction titles is robust, commercially impactful and up to date, attending weekly metadata drop-in sessions and taking key titles to the central Metadata group in a timely fashion for advice on keywords, Amazon shoutlines, etc. Ensuring that all AIs are complete, accurate and in line with best practises for online visibility and SEO

• Liaising with authors, artists and agents across the list, maintaining standards of excellent author care and strong publisher-agent relations when appropriate alongside the editors

 Desk Editorial

•  Project managing titles from manuscript through to publication under the editors’ guidance, creating schedules for each title at point of acquisition, and helping to ensure that they are delivered on time as per the critical path, to budget and to specification, including working with Design to ensure illustrations are delivered on time and to schedule

• Managing desk editorial responsibilities for the Fiction list: taking the editor’s final line-edited manuscript then allocating to freelance copyeditors and proofreaders in line with schedules and availability; liaising with those freelancers and checking their work, then sharing with authors as necessary on corrections; managing bank of freelancers and on-boarding new copyeditors and proofreaders as required

• Submitting texts to Design and Production with clear instructions, in line with ideal and most cost-effective extents, and feeding back on layout design including extent, font, leading, folios etc

• Occasionally copyediting and proofreading in-house (but the vast majority is freelanced out)

 Experience required

• Strong and current editorial experience in children’s books

Skills required

• Exceptional proofreading skills

• Solid understanding of copy-editing process

• Organised, efficient, self motivated

• Excellent time management and ability to prioritise a busy workload across multiple titles

• Strong author care and interpersonal skills

• Good design eye

• Excellent communication skills across all levels in order to present solutions to senior editorial team, liaise effectively and decisively with design and production in-house and with authors and agents externally

• Awareness/understanding of budgets and schedules

• Team player

•   Solutions-focused

Benefits

• Hybrid working model (3 days in the office)

• 28 days holiday plus bank holidays

• Private healthcare cover and life assurance

• Summer Hours 

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

• Relocation Rent Support Loan 

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

• Unlimited training on our Learning and Development portal

• Virtual GP and eyecare vouchers

• Gym membership discount

• Onsite physiotherapy (London only)

• Charitable donation matching and 2 volunteering days

• We're a certified Carbon Neutral company

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

• Subsidised canteen and retail discounts

If you wish to discuss anything regarding this position and/or your application to this role, please reach out directly to stephanie.jemmett@harpercollins.co.uk with subject heading ‘Vacancy Query’ plus the job title and we will aim to get back to you within 5 working days.

At HarperCollins, we value authenticity and integrity in our recruitment process. To ensure a fair and accurate evaluation of all applications, we ask that all responses to assessment questions reflect your own thoughts, experiences, and capabilities.  This allows us to fairly assess your knowledge, skills, and experience to determine how they align with the role. We value diverse perspectives and genuine contributions, even if answers are not perfect. The use of AI tools or external assistance to generate responses is discouraged unless explicitly permitted for specific tasks.

Please note, if you are interested in the role you would need to submit your application via Applied. We do not accept email applications.