The Senior or Executive Editor will be responsible for helping to shape the fiction list at Henry Holt. This person will acquire and edit 6-9 titles per year, work closely with our publicity and marketing departments to shepherd the titles to publication, and maintain relationships with authors and agents across the industry.

What you'll do:

Build and develop relationships with literary agents and subsidiary rights directors who are selling books.  Read manuscripts and meet with prospective authors to discuss editorial and publishing vision. Present books for potential acquisition to the editorial board, along with information about competitive or comparable titles, projected sales figures based on information about previous/other books by a given author or in a given category, and create a profit/loss statement for the board to evaluate. Directly negotiate major terms for potential acquisitions (including advance, delivery dates, payout, territories, subsidiary rights, and options).  Develop a productive and profitable list of titles, with responsibility for about 5-7 titles per year. Read and evaluate submissions for colleagues. Edit style, structure, content, and line of acquired titles to make books as strong and saleable as they can be. Work closely with authors on the editing process, communicating supportively about problems and potential solutions for every aspect of editing. Where needed, provide guidance for authors about writing new or different books in order to improve their sales. Write copy for launch meetings, catalog presentations, and audio presentations, as well as book flap copy that effectively positions book and author for the sales, marketing, and publicity teams.  Present to the sales department a list of books at launch meetings three times each year. Meet with the art department and the publishers about ideas, directions, and comparable titles to help guide the process of creating a jacket; communicate jacket ideas and directions to author and agent and negotiate issues between author/agent and art/publisher. Solicit advance quotes from other writers, experts, booksellers, and influential people on behalf of books, to help establish quality or enhance sales potential.

Arrange and attend meetings with authors and publicity/marketing teams to discuss plans for individual books.

Supply marketing and publicity teams with author questionnaires and other information useful in promoting and publicizing a given book.

Pay attention to what other publishers do to promote and market similar titles and share ideas that have worked for others with in-house team.

What you'll bring:

5-7 years of experience at a publishing house, with 2-3 years’ experience acquiring and editing fiction titles Deep understanding of every stage of the publishing process, from submission to acquisition (including auction strategy and the finer points of contract negotiation) Extensive knowledge of the market Contacts throughout the industry, including extensive agent contacts

This role will have an annual salary of $100,000 - $150,000. 

Macmillan Publishers is the U.S. trade company that is part of the Holtzbrinck Publishing Group, a large family-owned group of media companies headquartered in Stuttgart, Germany. Holtzbrinck Publishing Group's publishing companies include prominent imprints around the world that publish a broad range of award-winning books for children and adults in all categories and formats. 

U.S. publishers include Celadon Books, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Flatiron Books, Henry Holt & Company, Macmillan Audio, Macmillan Children’s Publishing Group, The St. Martin's Publishing Group, and Tor Publishing Group. In the UK, Australia, India, and South Africa, companies in the Holtzbrinck Publishing Group publish under the Pan Macmillan name. The German publishing company, Holtzbrinck Deutsche Buchverlage, includes among its imprints S. Fischer, Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Rowohlt, and Droemer Knaur. 

We are an Equal Opportunity Employer. We are actively seeking job applicants who reflect a broad representation of differences, including race, ethnicity, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity/expression, physical ability, neurodiversity, age, family status, economic background and status, geographical background and status, and perspective. We believe that the best companies reflect the incredible diversity in viewpoints, backgrounds, and identities of the world in their staffs, and are committed to inclusive hiring across departments and levels. The successful candidate for this position will be an employee of Macmillan Publishing Group, LLC.