Job Description:
W. W. Norton & Company is seeking an organized, diplomatic, and
methodical Junior Ebook Producer to join our college and high school
Ebook Production team in the Digital Publishing group, reporting to
the Manager of Ebook Production. The Ebook Production team is
responsible for the making of Norton’s college, high school, and
custom educational ebooks. The Junior Ebook Producer is an entry-level
role that coordinates the scheduling, production, corrections, and
archiving of a growing list of interactive, interdisciplinary ebooks
in Norton’s acclaimed textbook list, which includes The Norton
Anthologies, The Enjoyment of Music, Give Me
Liberty, Interactive Psychology, Molecular Biology
of the Cell, the Norton Critical Editions, among many other
iconic books.
Norton is a highly collaborative company, and this job involves daily
teamwork among Ebook Production colleagues, print edition production
managers, metadata, distribution, art direction, editorial,
manuscript, and ecommerce colleagues as you usher content from its
stages as raw manuscript or typeset print book files through project
planning, design, digital development, quality assurance, and eventual
publication as a digital textbook.
The best candidates will demonstrate strong technical acumen and
project management skills, will be seeking to grow into a career in
digital publishing or digital products, and will inspire confidence
through transparent and honest communication, particularly in fully
remote work settings. As they mature in their role and gain
experience, Ebook Producers generally grow to manage projects of high
profile and complexity, which require strong technical knowledge, and
will often advise on the editorial, design, and development direction
of Norton’s educational content and digital products.
Essential Job Responsibilities Include:
- Track ebook production schedules in collaboration with Media
Editors, Project Editors, and the Manager of Ebook Production,
ensuring adherence to sensitive dates.
- Host project launch meetings with Media Editors, Designers, and
Project Editors to plan the development of new ebook editions for
the titles assigned to you.
- Communicate with print edition Production and Editorial colleagues
to ensure the timely delivery of materials to Ebook Production.
- Prepare files for ebook development by converting them to Norton’s
digital formats, including the cleanup of HTML, optimization of
images and other media, metadata setup, and proper semantic tagging
of the content for accessibility.
- Set up projects for ebook development in version control
repositories. Norton uses git (on the GitLab platform) to manage
ebook content development.
- Write and deliver instructions and files to/from outsourcing
vendors, answering vendor questions as they arise, for sample
chapters and full ebook projects.
- Move ebook files through the production workflow, coordinating
with Design, Project Editors, and Media Editors throughout multiple
rounds of quality assurance and corrections.
- Coordinate with the Website & Ecommerce team to ensure the
accurate and timely publication of ebook files to Norton’s
student-facing platforms.
- Coordinate with the Metadata & Distribution team to ensure the
timely distribution of ebook files to retailers like VitalSource,
RedShelf, Amazon (Kindle), and others.
- Assist the Ebook Production team in packaging and delivering final
production files to the Norton Archives.
- Manage, and occasionally implement, post-publication corrections
to existing ebook files, and help keep published, retailer, and
archival versions up to date.
- Produce digital preview versions of our textbooks to be used in
pre-publication sales and marketing efforts.
Please note - this job description is not designed to cover all
activities required of the employee.
