Senior Developmental Editor

The book publishing team at Forbes Books has an exciting opportunity for a highly skilled and experienced professional to ensure the highest editorial excellence standard for all published books. The Senior Developmental Editor (DE) serves as the editorial lead, ensuring the highest standard of editorial excellence for all books published. The person in this role performs developmental and/or substantive edits to assigned manuscripts and provides editorial direction as it relates to voice and tone, structure and flow, style and grammatical consistency, etc.

The DE is responsible for adhering to multiple projects’ writing and editorial timelines and book plans while collaborating closely with authors, client teams, ghostwriters, and other publishing-industry professionals.

Success in this role requires a keen eye for detail, strong analytical and critical thinking skills, the ability to provide constructive feedback clearly, and superb communication skills and time management.

• Maintains Advantage’s reputation for excellent service to its high-achieving authors, navigating their high standards with professionalism.
• Serves as editorial lead for multiple book projects simultaneously-at least fifty book projects annually. As the editorial lead, the SDE organizes, plans, and manages the execution of the editorial process with precision and tact.
• Ensures content meets the goals and objectives detailed in the book plan and that the manuscript remains within the contracted scope, including word count, research hours, footnotes, etc.
• Ensures all developmental edits are completed within the project timeline and/or appropriately and proactively communicates any shifts to the timeline to the project team, publishing leaders, and the author as needed.
• Oversees and collaborates with external ghostwriters and other editorial vendors, maintaining clear two-way communication to protect project scope, budget, and schedule.
• Completes Line Edit and final content review for quality assurance, and secures final member sign-offs on Line Edits.
• Provides concise project status updates, anticipating workflow challenges and communicating potential solutions to internal stakeholders on a timely basis.
• Oversees and edits written collateral, including book descriptions, cover/web copy, author bios, etc.
• Reports budget updates to publishing leadership and finance teams.
• Performs production-related tasks as needed or assigned, including styling manuscripts for typesetting, leading titling research and brainstorming sessions, performing plagiarism and AI text checks, flagging items for permissions and releases, curating image files, and proofreading endorsements.
• Participates in project-related meetings, such as team meetings and project launch meetings.

• Editorial expertise :
  Fluency in The Chicago Manual of Style ( CMoS ) and familiarity with observing both CMoS and a house style guide simultaneously. Demonstrable understanding of various levels of editing.
• Nonfiction background :
  Minimum five years’ experience in book publishing, with a preferred category focus in business, finance, marketing, management, motivation, self-help, biography, and/or autobiography.
• Attention to detail : A meticulous attention to all aspects of deliverables in an editing and production workflow and a proven process for keeping tasks and milestones from slipping through the cracks.
• Project management :
  Previous experience in managing multiple projects at different stages simultaneously and ensuring high-quality standards by independently managing priorities and meeting assigned due dates on schedule.
• Author focus: Demonstrates the spirit to serve. Makes authors feel integrated with all aspects of the editorial process…