Director of Publishing

Center for Responsive Schools is a K-12 publisher.

Reporting to the President and CEO, the Director of Publishing is responsible for providing leadership for CRS’s Publishing House and ensuring fidelity to the House and Program Style Guides. This position oversees and ensures editorial excellence, brand and imprint integrity, editorial direction, and adherence to policies for the Publishing House, in service of the mission and to ensure the House is viewed as a highly regarded frontrunner in educational publishing.

The Director of Publishing is responsible for designing, overseeing, and managing an annual book publishing pipeline that has an adequate number of high-quality manuscripts in the production pipeline so as to achieve the House’s annual front list release goals.

CRS’ Publishing House produces and supports the production, editorial, design, and publishing needs of every unit at CRS through a wide array of print and digital content, including, but not limited to, videography, graphic design, illustration, web content, and photography.

Major responsibilities include, but are not limited to:

AUTHOR AND CONTENT ACQUISITION

• Implement a successful author acquisition and content contributor program as a strategy to create and meet the demand and expectation for maintaining a marketable publications pipeline. developing a robust publishing pipeline that produces both timely and perennially relevant books, and overseeing all stages of product development and product life-cycling.
• Conducts regular market research to identify opportunities for new retail products relevant to the brand or imprint.
• Collaborates with brand and imprint Chiefs to identify authors, develop proposals, and/or review and select manuscripts.
• Lead and collaborate with other key leaders to maintain a sufficient pool of expert and responsive reviewers.
• Oversee the peer review of manuscripts, deciding which manuscripts to publish consistent with the House’s established peer review criteria and page budget, and helping authors develop their manuscripts for publication.
• Proactively identify portfolio expansion opportunities; plan and lead the execution of a strategy for expanding the CRS retail product portfolio.

FISCALLY AND LEGALLY SOUND PUBLISHING HOUSE

• Develops and oversees the annual department and project budget for publications.
• Monitor sales and perform regular audits of products to determine the success of the title and to make a decision whether and when to publish a new edition.
• Provides oversight to the reprint process to ensure that any corrections that are needed can be made at the reprint.
• In collaboration with Division heads and the Director of Book Sales and Vendor Relations, set and develop a strategy for meeting target goals for existing and new publications.
• Oversees and works closely with division leaders, sales, and finance for determining initial print runs, reprint quantities, and inventory controls.

EDITORIAL EXCELLENCE

• Ensures the Publishing House staff understand and can meet the performance expectations for their roles and responsibilities.
• Provide leadership that ensures that products reflect CRS’s core message and values for quality, practicality, clarity, and integrity in an obvious, compelling, and relevant manner.
• Ensure that CRS’ established imprint and brand identity is consistent with House, Program, and Marketing Style Guides.
• Makes editorial decisions with reasonable speed and communicates them in a clear and constructive manner.
• Establish clear guidelines for authors regarding acceptable practices for sharing experimental materials and information, particularly those required to replicate the research, before and after publication.
• Establishing a procedure for reconsidering editorial decisions
• Sets high standards and clearly communicates all other editorial policies and standards
• Hires, develops, and retains talented editorial and writing staff who are motivated, engaged, competent, and highly accountable in a timeline-driven environment.

PUBLISHING PIPELINE AND PROJECT MANAGEMENT

• Responsible for the publishing pipeline from concept to completion, which includes title proposal (in collaboration with other relevant staff),
• Leads the development of production timelines, negotiating contracts and rights with authors, overseeing fact-checking and copyrights, planning and attending to production costs, and ensuring on-time and on-budget delivery.
• Design and implement a holistic, long-term approach to the publication pipeline
• Provide oversight and direction for curating publishable content and collaborate with Division leaders on strategic and tactical uses of the curated content.
• Collaborate with Marketing and Sales on a strategy for meeting monthly and annual sales target goals for front and backlist titles.
• Treats all authors with fairness, courtesy, objectivity, honesty, and transparency.
• Providing guidelines to authors (content and product) for preparing and submitting manuscripts.

EDITORIAL PROJECT MANAGEMENT

• Ensures all products go through a well-designed and managed project management process and receive the attention needed to deliver high-quality products that are intelligent, beautifully designed, ready for practical use, and present CRS as a highly regarded publisher.
• Leads the development of and monitors the execution of Project Management Planning for all product development from proposal to completion.
• Defines, administers, and directs the work of CRS editorial, design, and production staff
• Oversee videography, photography, and content translation into other languages, including the selection and oversight of freelancers and ensuring the quality and ongoing development of the video and photo libraries or translated content.
• Provides oversight for project management and balances editorial staff workload to ensure projects are completed on time and on budget.

COLLABORATES ON AND SUPPORTS PRODUCTION OF SALES AND MARKETING COLLATERAL

• Collaborates with other division leaders, marketing, and sales to develop strategies to set and meet seasonal product sales and marketing content and product needs.
• Ensures Project Editors can collaborate with the sales and marketing to launch an effective front list strategy for the ongoing sale of new products aligned to the targeted projections.

SUPPORTS CRS’ COMMUNICATION AND SOCIAL MEDIA

• Support all work units in achieving their editorial, print, videography, photography, graphic design, illustration, and production goals.
• Works closely with other departments to produce content, resources, and digital materials needed for workshops, courses, training, curriculum, or unit needs.
• Works closely with the CEO on internal and external communication materials.
• Works closely with division leaders to maintain and update the CRS website and social media pages.

Other Responsibilities

• Ability to travel may be required, but not frequently.
• May be required to represent CRS at conferences and other public arenas in a positive and professional manner.
• Serves on CRS’s leadership team, playing a key role in setting and executing on organizational strategy.
• Regular and reliable attendance
• Disposition is consistently professional, cooperative, and collegial as evidenced by workplace maturity, composure, perspective, transparency, reliability, integrity, and trustworthiness.
• Other duties as assigned by supervisor.

Supervisory Responsibilities

• All Publishing House staff

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree (Master’s preferred) in English, communications, journalism, publications, or related field
• 6+ years of progressively responsible and related work that clearly prepares the candidate to lead a small independent publishing house.
• 2+ years in an editorial supervisory position.
• The ability to operate on both a tactical and a strategic level, overseeing a highly effective editorial and publishing team while also collaborating with division leaders to produce new books.
• Exceptional project management expertise, particularly the ability to oversee multiple, complex projects simultaneously in a deadline-driven environment.
• Deep publications expertise, including budgeting, printing, editorial, and production management, and related technologies.
• Experience in using the Chicago Manual of Style and experience implementing the House Style Guide, preferred.
• Experienced in or can quickly learn the fundamentals of Adobe InDesign, Photoshop, InCopy, and other Creative Suite products.
• Strong editing and writing skills. Has knowledge and experience with and can support staff in a range of editing, including proofreading, copyediting, line editing, and developmental editing.
• Experienced with book development, production, and project management.
• Can communicate with respect and authority for a range of purposes, including but not limited to promoting a healthy organizational culture, providing direct feedback, and sharing decisions
• Prior experience working with vendors and contractors for writing, illustration, photography, and other related supplies and services.
• Proficiency with Microsoft Office, social media, and Google productivity software
• Familiar with or able to quickly learn Monday, Salesforce, HubSpot, and other CRM software
• Highly accountable for performance; goal oriented and flexible
• Caring for and commitment to the vision, mission, and welfare of CRS