Associate Publishing Product Manager

About Packt

Packt is a global, technical learning publisher with a turnover of 18m and over 400 employees based across the globe, primarily in India and the UK. Principally serving B2C customers across the world, its major clients also include Microsoft, IBM, and Oracle.

We are a leading publisher of technical learning content with the ability to publish content on new and emerging tech faster than any other publisher in the world. Our mission is to increase the shared value of deep tech knowledge. We are tech content engineers, and we work with some of the most interesting technical minds and ground-breaking creators on the planet. For more details, see www.packt.com

Role Overview
Product Managers work with developer communities to design, create, and manage a portfolio of books created for new and emerging topic areas. They work with a team of publishing professionals to develop titles that will be first to market, and number one in their technical category area by engaging expert authors and publishing high quality books that lead in their field.

As the owner of a book, the Product Manager is responsible for conducting customer and market analysis, developing propositions with developer communities, pricing titles, writing requirements, and launching products to the market. Moreover, Product Managers are responsible for defining the product vision and strategy for key developer markets.

The Product Manager builds key relationships with professional developers across the globe and builds on those relationships to sign the most important new titles. They play a key leadership role by working with a team of publishing professionals who are dedicated to realizing the title vision into reality.

The Product Manager is the vision holder, creator, and driver of the Explorer strategy, working alongside their Associate Group Product Manager. They build a high literacy of their competitive market, and the latest trends in the topics they focus on. Product managers take full responsibility and measure themselves in terms of the success of the product.

Responsibilities

• Author Lead Generation: Connect with the developer community and generate expert author leads from within the community who are interested in writing books for Packt
• Managing Potential Author Pool: Build and manage a pool of potential authors who are interested in working with Packt. Periodically engage with the pool to keep the relationship intact for future projects
• Conducting market and customer research in their respective topic area.

• Engage with developer communities and recruit authors to create books.
• Mentoring potential authors in the preparation of proposals and plans.
• Negotiation of contract terms, royalties and advance payments.
• Day-to-day contact with other members of the team including content editors, marketing, and production.
• Design and implement key processes around launch and marketing.

• Managing issues concerning authors, content, and schedule.
• Own the development and validation of the core proposition and product information
• Monitor and counteract the activities of rival publishers within a given market
• Provide consultancy for topic-related issues on titles in the pipeline
• Participate in DEVCON, TECHCON and other editorial meetings where required

• Sign off on titles during pre-publication stages.
• Monitor the performance of published titles and use this to inform our commissioning process

Competencies

Analytical thinker with the ability to identify new technologies and opportunities with a consumer-driven focus
Investigate who uses a technology, their main tasks and the challenges they face to establish and explain the target audience and vision for the book
Able to use analysis and combine broader trends and insights to construct a valid commercial case for a product
Excellent written and verbal communication with proficiency in English language is a key tool for this role

KPIs
Average 90-day sales- Base 50 units and target 75 units
Title Quality- Average star rating of 4* as base and 4.5* as target on published products on Amazon
Commissioning- Commit 2 titles as base and 3 titles as target
Author Contracting- Contract 2 Books per month
Publishing- Ensure you have 1 published title per month

Why work at Packt?

We recognize how important our people are and acknowledge and support the things that are important to them. We focus on the full team member experience. We aim to create a positive working environment that supports personal and collective development – where our people can not only grow their skill sets, continuously challenge themselves, and develop their careers, but also work together as a team and with our customers.

We try to achieve this by:

• Ensuring a positive working environment for all team members, supportive of flexible and remote work.
• Supporting individual development through growth opportunities and internal mobility.
• Encouraging social collaboration within teams and communities and knowledge-sharing.
• Fostering a culture that supports a healthy work-life balance.

We seek to achieve this by:

• Providing a broad range of benefits and initiatives.
• Advocating a healthy lifestyle where wellbeing is seen as an essential responsibility.
• Celebrating success stories and encouraging peer-to-peer recognition.
• Fostering a culture of self-development.
• Providing a work environment where the best idea wins, and challenge is encouraged
  

Benefits

You will also have access to a range of flexible benefits that are designed to help you make the most of your time with us.

Bonus scheme

25 days holiday (plus bank holidays)

5 days working

Permanent work from home

Flexible hours: choose how, when and where you work

Gross Salary (Monthly)- 60k-75K