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Submissions Coordinator

This is a new part-time entry-level role initially being offered on a 6-month fixed term contract. It is the perfect opportunity for someone looking for their first experience in the booktrade who is committed to finding and nurturing the writers of the future and making lasting change happen for writers who are currently underrepresented in UK publishing.

TGLA is a social enterprise founded in 2018 by Nikesh Shukla and Julia Kingsford to explicitly represent British writers from backgrounds under-represented in UK publishing. In the two years since we started we have worked with over 70 writers at various stages in their writing from early mentoring to receiving life-changing advances and winning major prizes. We have Arts Council England funding as well as generating our own income from the deals we make on behalf of our clients.

All literary agencies receive hundreds of submissions a month and many are never responded to, the writer simply has to wait and assume they weren’t successful if they hear nothing. At TGLA we are committed to responding with constructive feedback to every eligible writer who submits to us. Previously this has been managed by our agency assistant but we are now recruiting for a new role of Submissions Coordinator whose responsibility it will be to manage this process. You will read submissions, manage the rest of the team’s reading, keep on top of the process, including making sure that writers are responded to in a timely manner and answer more general queries.

Our submissions are the heart of our business and whether we take on a writer or reject them it’s incredibly important that it’s a positive, constructive experience for them - this role is fundamental to that and as such in an incredibly important part of our business.

 

RESPONSIBILITIES

  • Manage the submissions reading process including logging and processing data, reading and assessing submissions, writing reports on submissions, assigning submissions to be read by other members of the team, calling in full manuscripts, managing the workflow
  • Managing the submissions communication process including answering queries, rejecting writers with constructive feedback, managing the information flow to writers we are considering representing and making sure the whole process is managed in a timely manner
  • Assisting with any other tasks relating to how the agency manages the submissions process

 

SKILLS AND QUALITIES

  • An excellent administrator able to keep on top of your workload who isn’t panicked by an over-flowing inbox
  • A clear communicator who thinks through how what you want to communicate is likely to be received and understood by the person receiving it
  • Someone with a good understanding of what makes writing ‘good’, with the ability to explain succinctly how and where improvements could be made
  • Excellent time management and a natural self-starter capable of managing their own workload who doesn’t need to be micro-managed
  • An ability to move between working slowly and diligently and quickly and efficiently as the work requires

 

PRACTICALITIES

Location: in order to ensure this role is as accessible as possible it will be based from home and is fully flexible regarding location. An ability to travel occasionally to Bristol or London (expenses covered) would be advantageous but isn’t mandatory. If home working is impossible for the right candidate we are open to discussing funding a convenient co-working space. 

Hours: 2 days a week. We will require you to virtually attend fixed team meetings but there is some flexibility around when the hours can be worked beyond that.

This is a 6 month fixed term contract that we anticipate starting in August and extending through into February 2021.

Salary: £23,000 per annum pro rata

We are committed to equal opportunities and are particularly interested in receiving applications from anyone who identifies in any of the under-represented groups we will be representing.

 

HOW TO APPLY

To apply email jobs@thegoodliteraryagency.org with ‘Submissions Coordinator’ as the subject line. Please include a covering letter of no more than the equivalent of an A4 side in the body of the email, explaining why you want the job and how your skills and experience are well matched to it and attach your CV as a pdf.

We would also like you to complete a short task of writing a rejection email to a writer who has submitted to the agency, briefly explaining why you thought their work wasn’t suitable for representation and including some constructive feedback. You may be as creative as you wish in imagining the work you are rejecting, what we are trying to ascertain from this is your communication style. Please only take a brief time to write it, absolutely no more than 30 minutes, and include it as an attachment.

Please also fill in this monitoring form.

Application deadline: 9am Wednesday 29 July

Submissions Coordinator

The Good Literary Agency, London | Bristol
Home Working, Part-time
Literary Agency
Literary Agent, Agent Assistant
Salary description: 
£23,000

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