Joe Scalora has moved over to the Random House Publishing Group’s marketing department as associate manager, working on the Del Rey and Spectra lists, as well as the Star Wars and graphic novel publishing programs. He was a publicist for the group.
Former managing director of the UK’s The Friday Project Clare Christian has started a web-based service offering “friendly independent advice on self-publishing.”
Edwards Brothers has hired Andrew Pate for the new position of director of digital and program sales, part of their expansion into short-run offset, digital and print-on-demand book and journal manufacturing.
Alibris Holdings has renamed itself Monsoon Commerce Solutions (following their acquisition of Monsoon in February) and has realigned its divisions to match up with their distinct customer groups: retailers, sellers, and buyers. Their Marketplace Services powers over two dozen partners (including Borders, Indigo, Chegg, and Waterstone’s), allowing them to sell any or all or the 120 million new and used books, movies, videogames, and music items their sellers offer. Though best-known for their used book sales, some partners are seeing new books comprise up to half of their sales.
Alibris Retail is their core direct consumer marketplace, and the Selling Solutions division helps small sellers sell simultaneously across multiple marketplaces and provides product pricing, market intelligence and other tools to help large customers manage and grow their online businesses.
The company says overall growth for 2010 is in the range of 20 percent, with significant increases in their services businesses, and they expect to drive of $450 million in sales this year.