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Contracts Manager

The Contracts Manager will have divisional responsibility for negotiating and drafting contracts for the acquisition and licensing of rights in cooperation with the Editorial and Rights teams. To provide advice and support to the Contracts team in delivering a focused and quality service to the publishing divisions

Key responsibilities

  • Draft and negotiate contracts with authors, agents, publishers and other third parties for the acquisition of publishing rights;

  • Analyse U.S. and foreign rights contracts, compare to previous templates with publishers, negotiate contracts in close consultation with colleagues in the department in addition to relevant Editorial and Business teams;

  • Advise and assist publishing teams of any implications with offers and to anticipate contract/legal concerns and offer strategies to resolve them by providing authoritative advice;

  • Offer advice to the Rights department on contractual matters and negotiate and draft specific clauses where appropriate;

  • To contribute to the development of a precedents and contracts database system for the department;

  • Assist the Contracts Director and Director of Legal Affairs by providing timely management information and to assist and support them when required;

  • To manage one or more assistants

Essential Skills and Experience

  • Experienced with major acquisition and licensing agreements through working in media contracts or business affairs, ideally within publishing.

  • Able to draft a wide range of agreements, for example, confidentiality and non-disclosure agreements, personal guarantee for an author’s services when contracting with a company, first serial rights agreements, author agreements with associated publicity obligations

  • Experienced in building good working relationships both inside and outside a team and able to communicate information clearly to all levels of the business

  • Good knowledge of copyright and contract law issues

  • The ability to keep abreast of professional, legal, commercial, technological and working practice changes

  • Understanding of the nature of different types of rights, in particular evolving new media rights and digital distribution issues

  • Familiarity or recent work experience within the publishing industry

  • Previous management experience would be advantageous but not essential

Role closes - 6:00pm, 26th Aug 2020 BST (Europe/London)

Contracts Manager

HarperCollins, London
Full-time, Permanent
Publisher
Licensing, Contracts

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