Good news: Once upon a Pancake is selling like hotcakes. I’m looking for teammates.
The company helps kids fall in love with storytelling. You’ll be joining for the really fun phase: product-market fit established, a loved brand, and new products (digital and analog), channels, markets and partnerships in the pipeline.
You’re a match for the company if you’re into creativity, education, books and games. Please say hello ?, even if the roles below don’t quite fit. A job description is a reductive guesstimate. What makes for great work and a great fit is that which cannot be reduced; you, your imagination, endeavour and sense of possibility.
— POSITION FILLED —
PUBLISHER & PROJECT MANAGER
You are probably in a bookclub and you were probably the one who created the spreadsheet to track the reading list.
You probably noticed there was a flaky switch from present to past tense in that first paragraph and you have strong feelings about that.
You procrastinate by cleaning. You’re a connoisseur of clever storage solutions. Your great knack at work is intuiting how to structure tasks and processes to make life happier for yourself and your colleagues. There’s an art to deciding what to automate or not, formalize or not, and you enjoy becoming a better artist.
Mostly, broadly, you care. You want kids to develop a love like yours of books, language and story. You can’t stomach building products you don’t believe in. You’re searching for meaningful work.
- Making it all tick. You’ll set up and manage publishing processes and schedules. You’ll divvy up work and keep team-members and contractors informed and on-track. You’ll become a savant with all the softwares we use to make, produce, sell and distribute.
- Making new products. You'll work with writers, illustrators, designers, engineers and printers to produce new books and digital works.
- Making new friends. You’ll coordinate marketing and community-building programs.
The bread and butter:
- Co-ordinating freelancers: timelines, briefs, agreements, sourcing new people.
- Reviewing creative work: editing stories, illustrations, video. Largely in collaboration with me and others.
- Production: managing print runs and suppliers.
- Marketing support: handling creative assets, proofreading, outreach.
- Operations: improving internal workflows, helping teammates.
- With support. You’ll get an annual $1000 budget for education and memberships. You’ll work with me directly, and if you need extra mentorship we’ll find someone.
- With autonomy. You’ll have the chance to experiment with Product, Biz Dev, and Growth tasks, and define your future role.
- With authority. You have the opportunity to co-design and scale a multimedia publishing company.
- With optimism, humour, and empathy.
- 3+ years of experience in publishing, product- or project-management roles
- Concrete examples of managing time, money, resources well.
- Demonstrated analytical competence, whether that’s with a P&L, roadmap, analytics software, database, or research study.
- Comfortable speaking the language of customers, developers, graphic designers, and warehouse managers alike.
- Comfortable with remote and asynchronous work.
- Time zone: Berlin (CEST) +/- 2 hours preferred. Elsewhere is fine though, if you’re happy to work an odd schedule.
- Full-time or part-time, min. 20 hours per week.
- Competitive pay based on experience.
- If full-time, salary and benefits are possible — specifics TBD depending on location.
To find out more or apply, please email rick@onceuponapancake.com. Introduce yourself and tell me about a recent project you’re proud of. Please attach your CV as a PDF and include in the email footer all relevant links, e.g. LinkedIn, personal site.
Thank you!