Commissioning Editor - Cape Town and Pretoria at HSRC

Minimum Requirements

• Relevant tertiary qualification will be a post graduate degree or diploma, ideally in the Humanities or the Social Sciences or related disciplines;
• Relevant experience in the publishing industry, preferably in academic book publishing;
• Thorough knowledge of Microsoft Office, Excel, email and the internet;
• Ability to prioritize tasks and work effectively to demanding deadlines;
• Willingness to undertake local travel;
• Work with budgets, databases and planning tools;
• Demonstrate highly developed people, teamwork and negotiation skills;
• Highly organized administrative skills.

Duties & Responsibilities

• Commission and manage new scholarly book projects for all three imprints;
• Establishment of the five-year publishing plan in line with the business strategic plan;
• Assist in the planning and conceptualisation of publishing projects;
• Manage peer review processes;
• Manage commissioning and manuscript review processes;
• Manage the pre-production phase of projects including budgets, contracts and schedules;
• Identify new authors where applicable and work sensitively and efficiently with all author;
• Fulfil where needed the role of editorial board secretary;
• Manage new book handover processes from commissioning to editorial;
• Manage the administration for all author contracts, partnership and license agreement;
• Brief marketing and editorial colleagues on relevant book information;
• Manage backlist.