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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• Responsible for the publishing pipeline from concept to completion, which includes title proposal (in collaboration with other…