Publishing Assistant

Everyone is welcome to apply for our roles, and we are determined to ensure that no applicant or employee receives less favourable treatment because of gender, race, disability, sexual orientation, religion, belief, age, marital status, background, pregnancy, or caring responsibilities. We also recognise the importance of diversity of thought within our teams and are fully committed to embracing the talents of people with autism, dyslexia, ADHD, and other forms of neurocognitive variation.

We will always seek to make appropriate adjustments to recruitment, workplaces, and work processes to be fully inclusive to people with different needs and working styles. If you need us to make any reasonable adjustments for you from application onwards, including alternatives to the online form or to disclose a neurocognitive condition, please email UniversalMusicCareers@umusic.com.

The A Side: A Day in The Life

This is a rare opportunity to join the world’s largest music company as it grows its innovative book publishing business, 4wordhouse, combining the power of music and books to help UMG artists deepen their connection with fans across the globe.

This is a role for somone who has a strong combination of publishing skills and entrepreneurial energy and is fired up by the challenge of helping to scale an artist-centric book publishing business within the music industry. A typical day will involve anything from preparing a pitch deck for artist management, setting up a book marketing and PR campaign in collaboration with a label, working on cover copy, checking proofs, liaising with our publishing partners on production schedules, title metadata, stock splits, sales updates, and providing data-based insight into artist book opportunities.

This is a chance to build a unique vantage point of experience at the intersection of two creative industries.

You will need to have a talent for learning quickly in a fast-paced environment, have both a creative and a commercial outlook, be able to easily switch gears between artist, genre, format and project, and develop the skill of looking round corners. And, of course, you will need to love music.

The B Side: Skills & Experience

Be a subject matter expert

You do not work in a silo and will be able to demonstrate skill and experience working on multiple parts of the publishing process

You will have exceptional operational publishing skills

You will have great design taste, and the ability to build beautiful decks and campaign proposals and input into book creative

Although this won’t be your day job you will be a creative copywriter and a meticulous editor

Be data and digital driven

Embrace and assimilate data in your work

Help devise effective and innovative marketing campaigns in conjunction with the relevant label digital marketing teams, integrating all elements of digital activity into each campaign.

Be collaborative

Build and maintain strong relationships with labels, publishing partners and artist management

Work with the Associate Publisher on long-term planning

Ensure consistent and smooth communication to all departments and stakeholders regarding book campaign developments

Person specification

Necessary

Comfortable with working in an early stage start-up or high growth business. Proven capability to work autonomously, demonstrating the ability to make decisions in a fast-paced environment.

Motivated to consistently ship work of the highest quality.

Excellent relationship-building and relationship-management skills and the ability to deal with difficult situations with tact and diplomacy.

Strong communication skills, written and oral. Outstanding presentational ability.

You are calm and collected. Both organised and an organiser

Be detail driven and granular: comfortable with metadata management, creating AI sheets and marketing assets and hitting submission deadlines

A curiosity, openness and willingness to learn

Be a natural ambassador for 4wordhouse across the business

Desirable

Ideally from a trade non-fiction background, with proven experience working on a broad range of books

Just So You Know…

The company presents this job description as a guide to the major areas and duties for which the jobholder is accountable. However, the business operates in an environment that demands change and the jobholder’s specific responsibilities and activities will vary and develop. Therefore, the job description should be seen as indicative and not as a permanent, definitive, and exhaustive statement.

Job Category: eCommerce