Rights Sales Manager

Oxford University Press; Oxford; Hybrid; GBP 40,000 - 55,000; Full time

Job summary

A prestigious educational publisher is seeking a Rights Sales Manager to drive income from co-edition and subsidiary rights. The successful candidate will secure licensing deals, develop territory strategies, and build customer relationships. This role requires strong negotiation skills and fluency in French, along with a willingness to travel internationally for book fairs. Benefits include a sales bonus, flexible working patterns, and generous holiday leave.

Benefits

25 days holiday plus bank holidays

Pension contribution up to 12%

Sales bonus

Flexible working patterns

Qualifications

• Previous experience in a sales environment, specifically in Rights business models.
• Strong negotiation skills to optimize partnerships.
• Willingness to travel internationally for book fairs.
• Ability to understand financial models of licensing.
• Organizational skills to manage multiple tasks and timelines.
• Knowledge of relevant systems for managing rights deals.
• Understanding of Educational markets and trends.

Responsibilities

• Drive and increase income from co-edition and subsidiary rights.
• Secure licensing deals within designated territories.
• Develop and manage territory strategies.
• Build strong customer relationships and collaborate with agents.
• Monitor emerging rights trends and contribute to revenue forecasting.

Skills

Sales expertise

Negotiation skills

Commercial acumen

Market research

Fluency in French

Job description

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The Rights Sales Manager is responsible for driving and increasing income from co-edition and subsidiary rights in line with budget and target expectations. This includes securing licensing deals within designated territories, ensuring each agreement maximizes revenue and profitability while achieving year-on-year growth. The role will also contribute to shaping the overall Rights Strategy, covering areas such as co-edition, print and digital rights.

The role involves securing rights sales across all formats (print, digital, and other), including co-edition and film & royalty deals, to meet annual financial targets. It requires developing and managing territory strategies, building deep market knowledge, and fostering strong customer relationships, including working with agents where appropriate. You are expected to travel internationally for 6–8 weeks each year, including meeting existing and new customers, and attending major book fairs to maximize rights opportunities. You will maintain comprehensive product knowledge to inform sales and commissioning decisions, and ensure accurate processing of rights deals. You will collaborate with other internal departments to ensure smooth operations, which include contributing to revenue forecasting, monitoring emerging rights trends, and delegating administrative tasks to assistants for efficiency.

We operate a hybrid working policy that requires a minimum of 2 days per week in the Oxford office.

About You

To be successful in this role, you will ideally have/be:

• Previous experience within a sales environment and thorough knowledge of Rights business models and processes – for co-edition and licensing
• Strong negotiation skills, including ability to think creatively to optimize third party partnerships across cultures and languages
• Willingness to travel to overseas book fairs and to visit customers at their offices, travelling alone or with team as needed
• Strong commercial acumen, ability to understand all financial models pertaining to licensing and ability to work towards targets ensuring profitability of all deals
• Adaptable, with strong organisational and time management skills to manage busy workloads
• System knowledge – possess or have ability to develop effective knowledge of all relevant systems in order to efficiently manage life cycle of rights deals
• Fluent in French language
• Knowledge of Educational markets and trends, as well as Children’s IPs.
• Market research skills, in order to further knowledge of territories, book markets and customers

We care about work/life balance here at OUP. With this in mind we offer 25 days’ holiday that rises with service, plus bank holidays and Christmas closure (3-days) and a 35-hour working week. We are open to discussing flexibility in respect to working patterns, dependent on role. We also have a great variety of active employee networks and societies.

We help make your money go further by contributing to your pension up to 12%, offering loans and savings schemes through our partnership with Salary Finance, in addition to travel to work schemes and access to a wide range of local discounts.

This role comes with the added benefit of a sales bonus.

Please see our Rewards and Recognition page for more information.

We are committed to supporting diversity in our workforce, and ensuring an inclusive environment where all individuals can thrive. We seek to employ a workforce representative of the markets that we serve and encourage applications from all.

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