Bridge Publications, the publishing arm of the Scientology movement, has spun off a new press to handle fiction titles.

The house responsible for the Battlefield Earth series and all literary licenses associated with L. Ron Hubbard has formed Galaxy Press, whose staff of eight employees worked on the fiction line at Bridge. Galaxy will be run by John Goodwin, who once served as v-p, public relations for Bridge.

While Galaxy has no immediate plans to hire additional personnel, spokesperson Elise Toth said that because of the spin-off, "the concentration in marketing, publicity and sales efforts can greatly increase for both Mr. Hubbard's fiction and nonfiction work." Toth noted that Hubbard has more than 20 works of fiction in print, but has written over 250. The new firm, she said, will "publish a lot more" of these titles.