Central Park Media (CPM) has announced the appointment of Ali T. Kokmen as Director of Book Sales.  Mr. Kokmen has an extensive background in publishing including stints as the Sales & Marketing Manager for Harper Collins' Collins Design imprint and Marketing Manager for Watson-Guptill Publications.

CPM, which has been publishing manga in the U.S. for over ten years, drastically reduced its manga publishing in 2005 concentrating solely on the yaoi genre through its Be Beautiful imprint, but recently the company indicated that it was resuming its publication of manga and manhwa titles (see 'CPM to Resume Publishing Non-Yaoi Manga'). In the press release announcing Mr. Kokmen's appointment, CPM indicated that it now plans to publish 40-60 new Japanese manga and Korean manhwa titles a year.  Mr. Kokmen's first task will be to determine how best to distribute these titles in the book trade channel and in the direct market.