Managing Director, Macmillan Children’s Books (MCB)

Your team:
Macmillan Children’s Books is one of the UK’s leading children’s publishers, creating and publishing bestselling brands, children’s books and poetry for all ages for over 150 years. The original publisher of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, the MCB list today features many international bestselling and award-winning authors and illustrators, including Julia Donaldson, Axel Scheffler, Emily Gravett, Andy Griffiths, Rod Campbell, John Patrick Green, Frances Hardinge, Dara McAnulty, David Olusoga, Frank Cottrell-Boyce, Lenny Henry, Chris Riddell, Liz Pinchon, Camilla Reid, Tomi Adeyemi and Marcus Rashford. A few of MCB’s most notable brands include The Gruffalo, Dear Zoo, Tales from Acorn Wood, The Moomins, Milly-Molly-Mandy and Sylvanian Families.

We publish as Macmillan Children’s Books, which is split into two divisions: a Pre-school, Brands and Classics division where pre-school specialist Campbell Books and non-fiction-led Kingfisher imprints sit; then a Fiction, Non-Fiction and Picture Books division, home to the newly launched YA list, First Ink. Alongside these sits the award-winning illustrated Two Hoots imprint. Within MCB, there is also a specialist Rights and Co-editions department and an Art and Design department that works exclusively on our illustrated publishing.

Literacy is a key pillar of our work as a children’s publisher and we work with many charities in the UK and around the world that support children and families to have better access to books. In 2021, MCB and Marcus Rashford MBE launched The Marcus Rashford Book Club, which has gone on to donate 500,000 books to date.

The Macmillan Prize for Illustration is an annual award run by MCB for UK-based non-professional illustrators. Established in 1985, it has helped many illustrators to take the first steps in their professional lives as illustrators of children’s books.

In recent years, the MCB list has won every major UK children’s book prize from the overall Costa Book Award with The Lie Tree by Frances Hardinge to last year’s YOTO Carnegie Prize for Illustration awarded to our Kingfisher title Saving Sorya, and most recently the Waterstones Children’s Book Prize with Pari Thomson’s Greenwild.

Your role:
As the MCB Managing Director, you will provide visionary leadership for our children’s business. You will combine creativity and commercial acumen with an ambition to build a future generation of readers whilst nurturing the very best of today’s writing and illustration talent. You will have an international mindset, strong relationships in other territories and a good sense of global market trends. Along with an experienced and talented management team, you will oversee all aspects of a book’s journey from concept to publication and beyond, embed a culture of entrepreneurship and cooperation across the wider team and own the financial performance of the division. This unique opportunity offers the chance to influence the culture surrounding children’s literature from birth to young adulthood and foster a love of reading in young minds. You will also have a seat on the Pan Macmillan Leadership Team and contribute to the overall strategic direction of the wider business.

Your key responsibilities:

• Providing leadership to MCB and collaboratively developing shared objectives with the leadership team
• Overseeing the overall publishing strategy and investment priorities for MCB to ensure above-market growth and a healthy P&L
• Lead and manage the MCB leadership team, fostering an inclusive and happy environment that maximises commercial thinking and results in high performance
• Working with multiple group teams such as sales, production, communications and finance to efficiently deliver on clear financial targets
• Foster collaborative relationships with Group Companies in Australia, India, SA, US and Germany
• Overseeing and approving the acquisition of all new titles
• Ensuring the publishing programme adheres to the critical path in collaboration with colleagues
• Identifying and exploiting business development opportunities and trends in the children’s books market
• Building deep relationships with relevant stakeholders, both domestic and international, for book publication and global author acquisition
• Act as a spokesperson and figurehead for the importance of children’s literacy, supporting key industry initiatives such as World Book Day.

Essential experience and knowledge you’ll need to succeed:

• Background in children’s publishing
• Strong management and leadership skills in a publishing environment
• Proven success in delivering profitable growth
• Experience in strategic planning and execution
• A strong commitment to the mission to get children reading whatever their start in life
• Excellent networking abilities and global industry awareness
• A keen eye for market trends and the ability to exploit business development opportunities, including those arising from digital operations.

What you’ll get in return:

In return you will have the opportunity to work with the very best authors, illustrators and copyrights in the world in a supportive and collaborative working environment as well as a competitive salary and benefits package.