Assistant Editor

Watkins is a leading independent publisher of Mind, Body, Spirit; Health and Wellbeing; Cultural Reference; and Cookery and Nutritional Health, producing high quality illustrated and non-illustrated titles for the trade and foreign co-edition markets. Based in central London, we have an exciting opportunity for an Assistant Editor to join our small, friendly team, providing editorial support to the publisher and editors, as well as managing our reprints.

This is a pivotal role within the company, involving liaison between the sales, production, editorial and design departments. You will need to manage multiple tasks at once and work to very tight deadlines. Experience of trade publishing is necessary, and you will need to demonstrate excellent editorial skills, including, a commitment to quality and accuracy. Experience of working in InDesign on Macs is required and experience of Quark would be useful.

Key Responsibilities:

• Provide full administrative back-up to the Watkins publisher, including managing the contract database and taking minutes at company meetings
• Manage critical path deadlines for the editorial department
• Manage all English-language reprints, including responsibility for the in-house archive and wordcount database
• Provide editorial support to the managing and commissioning editors, including copywriting, flatplanning, inputting corrections, proofreading, final pre-press checking and other miscellaneous editorial tasks on a range of new and reprint titles, sales materials and catalogues
• Market research, including use of Nielsen Bookscan
• Manage submissions, rights reversions and text permission requests
• Copy-edit both in-house material and live titles as required

Key Skills

• The ability to manage and prioritise a varied workload to meet deadlines
• The ability to work within a team but also independently whilst maintaining a keen eye for detail
• An excellent written and verbal communicator
• Highly competent in InDesign, Word and Excel
• 1 – 2 years experience in a similar role

To apply for this full-time role, please send a CV and covering letter to Jo.Lal@watkinspublishing.com

Closing date: Friday 16th  September

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