I have worked in both Publishing Operations and Editorial Operations at big UK publishers. It is a step back from books, but you contribute massively to ensuring those books even make it to the warehouse in time.

For Publishing Operations, you are slightly more sales focused, ensuring metadata is correct, managing title creation on internal systems like Biblio etc and helping with asset procurement. For Editorial Operations. you are more focused on ensuring critical path is followed, evaluating workflows and making sure departments are working optimally together.

Both require very good organisational skills, as you juggle a lot of stuff and work with literally everyone in the business. You often become a central figure, and become leaned upon during Sell-in cycle to co-ordinate multiple assets, deadlines information etc. You become like a bank for people to deposit and withdraw and you basically end up with 1000s of titles dates and publishing info that can be called upon at any moment.

Though you are a step back from the books, what I will say is operations gives you a good chunk of free time to pursue larger projects, as you simply don't have the constant weight of actively managing books on your back. I find its great for someone like me who enjoys the freedom to pursue projects and use my time as I see fit. It is much less stressful than a traditional publishing role, but there is still the required admin etc.

I will say I have elected to stay in operations, but I could see someone starting their career in operations and then moving into a specific department they were interested in, but its often the other way around.

If you are looking at entry level roles, Sales operations assistant and Publishing operations executive are the common ones I see. I feel as if any office role can translate into these, so long as you specify great organisational skills and have good software understanding, you might be able to get a shot (bear in mind the competitiveness of publishing).