Submissions Coordinator

This is an entry-level role initially being offered on a 6-month fixed term contract. It is the perfect opportunity for someone looking for their first experience in the booktrade who is committed to finding and nurturing the writers of the future and making lasting change happen for writers who are currently under-represented in UK publishing.

Literary agencies can receive hundreds of submissions a month and many are never responded to, the writer simply has to wait and assume they weren’t successful if they hear nothing. At TGLA we are committed to responding with constructive feedback to every eligible writer who submits to us. We’ve seen the number of submissions we receive rise every year since the agency opened in 2018 but over the last year they’ve really exploded and we now receive 250-300 a month. Having just promoted our previous Submissions Coordinator to Agency Assistant we are now looking for a new Submissions Coordinator whose responsibility it will be to manage this process. You will read submissions, manage the rest of the team’s reading, keep on top of the process, including making sure that writers are responded to in a timely manner and answer more general queries.

Our submissions are the heart of our business and whether we take on a writer or reject them it’s incredibly important that it’s a positive, constructive experience for them – this role is fundamental to that and as such in an incredibly important part of our business.

At TGLA we are as committed to the development of our staff as we are to our authors and this role has been explicitly conceived to provide an entry level opportunity to give an overview of how literary agencies work

Responsibilities

• Manage the submissions reading process including logging and processing data, reading and assessing submissions, writing reports on submissions and pitching them to agents, assigning submissions to be read by other members of the team, calling in full manuscripts, managing the workflow
• Managing the submissions communication process including answering queries, rejecting writers with constructive feedback, managing the information flow to writers we are considering representing and making sure the whole process is managed in a timely manner
• Assisting with any other tasks relating to how the agency manages the submissions process

Skills and qualities

• An excellent administrator able to keep on top of your workload who isn’t panicked by an over-flowing inbox
• A clear communicator who thinks through how what you want to communicate is likely to be received and understood by the person receiving it
• Someone with a good understanding of what makes writing ‘good’, with the ability to explain succinctly how and where improvements could be made
• Excellent time management and a natural self-starter capable of managing their own workload who doesn’t need to be micro-managed
• An ability to move between working slowly and diligently and quickly and efficiently as the work requires

Practicalities

Location: this position is based in Bristol and we would expect the candidate to be based within commuting distance, however as we are all currently still working flexibly and believe we will continue to do so for some time we imagine this position will be based at home at least part of the week. If home working is impossible for the right candidate we are open to discussing alternatives.

Hours: This is a full time contract on an initial 6 month fixed term that we anticipate starting in September and extending through into March 2022.

Salary: £23,000 per annum pro rata

We are committed to equal opportunities and are particularly interested in receiving applications from anyone who identifies in any of the under-represented groups we will be representing.

How to apply

To apply please email jobs@thegoodliteraryagency.org with ‘Submissions Coordinator’ as the subject line and include a brief covering letter in the body of the email, explaining why you want the job and how your skills and experience are well matched to it and your CV as a pdf attachment

Please also fill in this monitoring form.

Deadline: 9am Thursday 22 July