Book Publishing Assistant

Music is Universal

It’s the passionate and dedicated team at Universal Music who help make us the world’s leading music company. From A&R to finance, legal to digital, sales to marketing, Universal Music is the place to grow and develop your career within a truly commercial and innovative business that leads in everything it does.

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- 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