Josh Hayes to Head Diamond Book Distribution

Josh Hayes has been promoted to executive v-p of Diamond Book Distributors, the book trade unit of Diamond Comics Distributors; while former DBD director and founder Kuo-Yu Liang will take over DBD’s international operations.

Hayes will take over the day-to-day direction of Diamond Book Distributors, succeeding Kuo-Yu Liang, who has directed Diamond’s trade book distribution since it was launched in 2003. Hayes will report to Diamond v-p, sales and marketing Roger Fletcher.

Hayes has more than 20 years in the book business including working at Waldenbooks and working for years at Diamond Book Distribution in its e-commerce and analytics departments.

Fletcher said that “DBD has grown tremendously over the years,” and added “the time was right to put Josh in place to propel the business into the future.”

DBD is the graphic novel and book trade distribution unit of Diamond Comics Distributors, the dominant distributor of comics periodicals in the comics shop marketplace.

Liang, who founded DBD in 2003 and has run it ever since, has been named v-p international sales & business development, and will continue to work to grow the global market for graphic novels.

“We’ve always been aggressive about finding new international markets for English language comics and graphic novels,”  Fletcher said, “and Kuo has been a big part of that success. He has a fantastic ability to prospect for new revenue and has great connections in place to build our sales internationally."