There’s a real dearth of actionable data in the direct market — or the side of the comic industry comprised of comic shops — these days. Whether you’re talking about sell-in (sales from publishers/distributors to comic shops) or sell-through (sales from comic shops to its customers), the post-pandemic, multi-distributor era has resulted in there being very little available information about what’s working and what isn’t. While most involved have found a way to make it work, it’s hard not to wonder whether having real data would have an impact on the direct market.

Adam Freeman, or Atom as he’s often called, from Prana: Direct Market Solutions has seemingly wondered that. But he also seems to have his sights set on something bigger — and perhaps something more interesting altogether.

As part of his New York Comic Con presentation for Prana, his consulting company that works with comic publishers, retailers, and more, Freeman unveiled a new project he’s been working on with the teams over at Manage Comics — a company that offers comic shops subscription management software 1 — and Comic Shop Assistant, a point-of-sale/subscription management system. Using the data provided by the 200+ stores those systems work with and the 32,000+ unique customers they represent, 2 Prana’s creating one of my favorite random things: new statistics.

These stats will provide guidance to participating retailers and publishers about what’s generating heat in the market, offering them information that isn’t about what happened already but what’s happening now so they can act on it before orders close on the next big comics. That’s led by the Fan Confidence Rating, or FCR, a statistic that tracks subscriptions and preorders from customers in those 200+ stores to help measure excitement about upcoming products. There’s more coming, all of which is intriguing as heck. And as someone who is endlessly curious about how things work in the direct market, I had to know more about what Freeman is up to.

So, that’s what we have today, as I talked with Freeman on Zoom about the current lack of sales data in the direct market, what he’s doing at Prana with Manage Comics and Comic Shop Assistant, the Fan Confidence Rating, what it could do for the direct market, what the data represents, and a whole lot more. It’s a fun chat about new tools that could make a real difference in the direct market, especially if the dataset continues to grow.

You can read that conversation in full below. It’s been edited for length and clarity. It’s also open to non-subscribers, so if you enjoy the conversation, consider subscribing to SKTCHD for more like it and to support the work I do on the site.

There’s been a lot of discussion about the lack of sales data and the impact of that, whether it’s sell-in or sell-through. What do you think the impact of the lack of sales data has been for the direct market so far?

Atom Freeman: I don’t believe we ever had sales data. The stuff that was put together by Comichron and ICv2 was based on a ranking that Diamond (Comic Distributors) would put out. Occasionally those numbers would come directly from publishers, and they would use those as kind of a Rosetta Stone and that Rosetta Stone would then algorithmically set the amounts for everything else. So, if you’re a publisher and you’re looking at that, it is always wrong unless you are giving that number to (Comichron’s) John (Jackson) Miller or (ICv2’s) Milton (Griepp).

It was never really a useful number, publishing wise. I would say for retail, it never really was a useful number because stores order what they’re going to order. I believe the biggest impact that we’ve had on our industry from not having even that was the understanding of growth or lack of growth, and that can affect…do people start stores that it can affect? Do people invest? One of the completely underappreciated sectors of our industry are the investors who keep publishers going and continually invest in the direct market and publishing books.

That was probably the biggest impact. I know that it did have some impact, which is part of why when I realized that we had the opportunity to do this that I felt we really should.

It’s worth stating that the Comichron numbers and the ones that Diamond was providing…those were orders by shops rather than sales to customers in stores. So, it was a guide to what people were ordering, which is useful and interesting. But it’s also hard to know how a book is selling from that. You’d have to do some mental magic from issue to issue to get a sense for how things were dropping off. So, the idea of getting sell-through numbers where you’re actually able to track sales to customers, that’s always been the thing that people are like, “We really need this because then we can know what’s really working.”

Freeman: Absolutely. And that was the promise of…I was working with ComicHub when we set up the deal with ICv2 to send them those sell-through numbers, which is what he’s now reporting on. But he’s really only reporting a ranking. The reason he’s only reporting a ranking is that it’s a very small amount of numbers and it’s a diminishing data set for I’m sure a number of reasons. ComicHub hasn’t really grown much in the last year or so, unlike Manage Comics and Comic Shop Assistant, which are both growing exponentially in some cases.

How do you think what you’re cooking up with Manage Comics and Comic Shop Assistant and others is going to help…I don’t want to say resolve this, but aid our understanding of what’s actually happening in the direct market?

Freeman: First you have to answer the question of, why do we need the number, right? As a publisher, do you want to know, is this book selling? Are my efforts that I’m putting into promoting this title working? Should I change them? Should I change the audience? Should I change the budget? Should I change the messaging? Those are things that as a publisher, you need to know and why this data is really important.

As a retailer, it’s important to note what the market itself is looking at for, right? What is being under ordered? There are certain larger stores that really just want to know, “What should I stock because everybody else is going to be looking for it because all the other stores are missing it?” Or if you were even a smaller store, where do I have opportunities to grow that I haven’t?

A lot of that is regional. I just heard from a retailer who said, “I worked in a store in one state and I just could not keep G.I. Joe in stock. I work in another state and I can’t give it away.” That still happens, but if you know how things are selling, you can actually make adjustments in your ordering and what you promote in store.

Those are the two biggest stakeholders looking at data, but there are other stakeholders as well. We’re all trying to make businesses that make sense and any data that is solid is useful. The hand wavy stuff that we’ve gotten is less useful.

There’s also people like me who love playing fantasy comics. So don’t forget us.

Freeman: Listen, David, you and I, I’m trying to put together a coalition of people who can actually build a fantasy comics league (David laughs) where you say, I’m going to take this writer and this artist and I’m going to put in this marketing guy and I’m going to put in this social media person, take all this together, this is my league, and then because we have data, be able to spit that out just like you would fantasy football. It should work.

We just need the data and then you can do it.

Freeman: I’m working on it, baby. (laughs)

The thing you talked about most in your presentation was the Fan Confidence Rating. I just want to say I love made up statistics…it’s not made up. It is a real statistic now. But as a person who has invented a bunch of statistics using order data previously, it’s a delight. But Fan Confidence Rating is basically a combination of subscriptions and pre-orders, right?

Freeman: Correct. So, we have access to a lot of data through Manage Comics and Comic Shop Assistant, and several other retailers — including some of the biggest in the business — have come to us and said, “We want to give you our data so we can put that all together.” We’re now talking to several different publishers who are willing to give us that data so that we can start making those extrapolations and give you that big number that you want from the Comichron horse race. Someday we’re going to get there.

But when we started looking at this data, it’s really complicated. There are several moments where you get numbers in the sales cycle of a book. You get it when the fan sets up a subscription, you get it when the fan orders extra copies of different covers because people like covers. I’m sorry, they’re not going away. You get it when the store places an order, you get to decide how much more they’re going to order over and above what has already been committed to. You get to see what sold. That is the holy grail. What did actually sell through?

So, we’re looking at this data and we’re trying to think, how do we make this actionable? Am I a publisher? Am I a retailer? Am I David Harper who just wants to play fantasy publishing? So the first, we have a number of these made up metrics. I’m not saying they’re made up. (laughs) Based in data.

They’re new statistics.

Freeman: They’re new statistics. The first one that we’re introducing is the Fan Confidence Rating. The Fan Confidence Rating is about what did they see and what did they order ahead of time? So, the subscriptions. They have a pull box. They said, I want every Ultimate Spider-Man when it comes in. Then there’s the pre-orders. Maybe a store doesn’t have subscriptions, maybe they only take pre-orders, or maybe they have subscriptions, and you can order additional copies of those extra covers you want.

We take those two together and that’s where we begin the FCR, the Fan Confidence Rating. Then in order to make it make sense…I keep saying average and people want to say, “Well then therefore it must be this many below,” and you’re right. But the truth of the matter is, we’re using logarithms to do it. You say logarithms and people’s eyes glaze over. So, we are trying to be responsible with the proprietary data that each of these stores is providing. We’ve intentionally not seen store to store numbers. I don’t really want to spread that around.

I think that way there’s a whole lot of danger at the end of that path. So how do we take this? We run it through a logarithm and we’re able to look at two things. One, is that graph that I threw up at (NYCC’s) retailer day, which is just a line graph of the overall, how many copies of single-issue comics are people ordering in their stores? Is it going up? Is it going down? It’s going up. That’s wonderful. It has been going up for two years right there. Sometimes it’s way up. Ultimate Spider-Man comes out. Sometimes it goes way down month after Ultimate Spider-Man goes out, and sometimes I don’t know why. I’d love to have infinite time to figure that out, but I haven’t really yet. So that’s the first metric.

Then we’re going to take the Fan Confidence Rating and start applying it to publishers. So, a publisher has an average Fan Confidence Rating of X. Well, okay, so now the orders came in for October. What is that X plus or X minus look like for you? Are you succeeding? Are you losing? We can also do a Fan Confidence Rating of individual titles, right? Ultimate Spider-Man is doing Y. Therefore we can say that Ultimate Black Panther is doing Z, right? When we start to be able to use a term like Fan Confidence Rating, we can take these very complex numbers and show you something that is actionable. If you’re a publisher or you’re a retailer, that’s the goal. Will we get there? We’ll see. (laughs)

Fundamentally Fan Confidence Rating…it’s not about sales. It’s about leading indicators. It’s about what is guiding the decision making for these people. Let’s say I am David Harper who owns Stilt-Man Comics in Anchorage, Alaska and I use Manage Comics, so I have access to the full data. Would I have access to Fan Confidence Rating for the books that are on final order cutoff (FOC) 3 next week today?

Freeman: That’s the goal. We’re not there yet. But the goal is to get you to a place where you’re seeing actionable data when you have to make a decision.

I was recently talking with a number of shops and several of them were talking about how they had towering orders on the Absolute books, particularly Absolute Batman. And then I talked to another one that said they had almost no pre-orders, but they were ordering big anyways and were kind of nervous about it. I told them about how the other shops had big pre-orders, and it’s easier to order big when the hype is there elsewhere, even if it isn’t necessarily matriculating to your audience yet.

Is that what you hope the Fan Confidence Rating will offer retailers and publishers? Is that leading indicator a guide to order with confidence and the guide to know that what you’re doing is maybe having an impact before you get those final numbers?

Freeman: 100%. And I will say that as both as a publisher, as somebody who has supported the direct market in every position I’ve ever been in, and as a direct market retailer myself, one of the things that worries me about the direct market is this move of stores to only ordering subscriptions. Not even subscriptions plus one. They’re only ordering subscriptions on 90% of their titles because they’re afraid of cashflow. So, I would say anytime that I can give you an indicator that you can take a risk on this book, you should be able to, I hope to give you the opportunity to do that knowing that you’re going to see interest in it.

Do you think there’s any value for creators in this?

Freeman: Oh, absolutely. The biggest piece is we’re entering an age where most creators are at least partially publishers, right? No creator that has much value isn’t doing some sort of creator-owned title. Even if they’re also doing work for-hire titles to, in order to gain audience, they’re still doing their own creator-owned stuff, which means they have to be looking as intently at how publishing numbers work as their publisher is.

I think of a book like Kieron Gillen and Caspar Wijngaard’s The Power Fantasy, a book that had a lot of anticipation for it. I think that had a lot of public support but didn’t get the orders that it might’ve expected to the point it’s now in its fourth print. It might be going to its fifth print. And I do wonder if somebody like Kieron had the Fan Confidence Rating in his back pocket and was able to go to shops and say, “This is what other shops are seeing”…would that make a difference?

Freeman: We’re just talking right now about what is possible and what you’re saying is absolutely possible. Kieron could send out an email to all his retailer lists saying, “We’re seeing an FCR rating of X, but we’re all seeing”…I haven’t introduced this one to you. You’re going to like this one. It’s Retailer Confidence Rating, so the number of copies they’re ordering over and above what they got special orders on. “We’re seeing a Retailer Confidence Rating of Y. This says to us, there’s a huge opportunity for those of you who go big.” That could be the kind of email you can send out.

Right? That’s especially powerful because I’ve talked to shops, and I’m sure you have too, that order big expecting the shops around them to not order big so they can become the hub store for Transformers or for Ultimate Spider-Man or Absolute Batman. It’s like, “I’m going to order 500 of this because I know the shops around us are going to under order and then everybody’s going to come to me.”

Freeman: 100%. I did this myself. I read the tea leaves correctly, and this is going to date me, but I ordered cases of The Death of Captain America and then sold what was left to other stores outside of my market. That’s part of the game. You want to gain an audience by having the thing that nobody else has.

This all makes a ton of sense. Basically, you’re looking to give retailers and everyone else a tool that will allow them to order with more confidence, so they’re not so risk averse that they’re only ordering pulls plus one or even just pulls.

Was there anything that surprised you from the data so far, either positively or negatively?

Freeman: I will say when I saw that growth curve over the past two years, I was surprised. I actually had to go take a walk. I was so excited. It felt right. But there were so many loud voices saying, “No, things are bad” that I didn’t want to believe. And it’s those loud voices that I’m happy to say…well, maybe it’s time for you to be a little less loud and learn a little about why other people are doing so well.

I did this article where I had six predictions for the year, and one of them was basically that the year is going to be a lot better for the direct market than people realize, but some people are still not going to feel like that. And that’s true. It’s kind of been that way.

What was the response from shops after you presented it?

Freeman: I would say there are two big responses I’m getting. One is this, “Thank you for this. This is absolutely what I’m seeing.” Or they look at that publisher ranking that we did and they’ll say, “Well, these people a little higher for me, but otherwise this is just right.” Or they’ll challenge the data itself. I can usually tell that they are not seeing that growth because they want to know more about the mechanics of how this was collected and how we arrived at that number.

That sounds pretty typical. Thankful or skeptical. Those are kind of the flavors we get. Sometimes you’ll be tracking and sharing actual orders from shops and sales to customers too, right. You’d already talked about the FOC side, but will there be the sell-through side?

Freeman: Yeah, at some point we’ll get there. It’s not the focus, though. The focus is really business to business. I have a B2B company. My goal is to B2B sales. Now, I will say that we promote our company. This was been a huge promotion for our company. I’ve been working for publishers my whole career in comics, and it’s tough to get people who are interested in data or even interested in whatever you’re promoting to want to talk to you.

As a result of this, you might be my first, but you’re definitely not the last  scheduled interview I have about this. I think that the interest is obviously there, and it promotes my company. Now, will at some point we be able to provide the horse race for the David Harpers who want to play the fantasy publisher. Absolutely. It’s just not the focus. I wouldn’t expect it this year because I think we’re going to need to…there’s a few pieces that we have to build in order to be confident that we’re not giving you the same…I don’t want to say lowest common denominator, but I want to give you a more accurate view of what sales actually are.

If the goal is to give you an estimated sales number, I want to be as confident about it as I am the graph that we already put out.

This might be an unpopular take compared to the other people that you talk to, but this is just the way that my brain works. I think the FCR, the Fan Confidence Rating, is ultimately more important than being able to track sell-through. That’s because the former allows you to impact what comes next as opposed to the latter, which is just showing what’s already happened. Tracking that isn’t going to materially affect what comes next, and affecting what comes next is what’s most important.

Freeman: Yeah, and I will say that we got real lucky. I was able to put this out during a period of growth. I think if I was putting this out even two years ago when we were crashing off those highs from Covid, it might’ve just fed the drop. But when people see excitement, they get excited. So I am hopeful that this actually pushes even more excitement. I think that would be wonderful. This is actually a good time to say that because of our deal, we have access to sales data for graphic novels and even toys, right? Anything that comic shops sell. Trading cards. And at some point I could see us exploring that kind of reporting. But for now, the thing that makes the direct market special is the single-issue comic. It’s not the graphic novel. As much as I love trade paperbacks, those things are done well at other outlets. Only the direct market commerce shops are the place where you buy single issues, and that’s really what I’m trying to make sure that we’re supporting first and foremost.

Manage Comics is a big part of this. That makes sense. Comic Shop Assistant is a big part of this. That makes sense. You mentioned publishers when you’re talking about Fan Confidence Rating and tracking subscriptions and pre-orders, unless you’re talking about direct to consumer, I’m not really sure how publishers would affect the data. How does that work?

Freeman: Well, this is a theory, and again, I may never get there. But I know that people want to know how many copies of Absolute Batman there are without DC coming out and giving you a number. They want some sort of corroboration. They want some sort of third party. I know that that is the case, and I know that that’s going to be a big piece of keeping people interested in this data. I don’t really know exactly how it will be used, but I can see us being able to get there. The problem is not every publisher is going to share that data, and nor should they. Some of them have already said that they are willing to, so long as we essentially keep anonymous who we’re getting the data from. So, my theory is once we have the ranking much in the same way that we had the ranking from Diamond, and once we know generally what percentage proportionally we are, we should be able to plug in the participating publishers into this matrix and come to an extrapolation of those that we don’t have.

And I will say our goal is to share a lot of this data. We’re going to be sharing some of this data through our newsletter. You can sign up. But the lion’s share of this data is going to be given to those who shared their data with us. So, if you’re a Manage Comic shop or you are a Comic Shop Assistant store or you’re one of the publishers who’s contributing, we will be able to provide you with this actionable data that comes out of it. So that’s the goal.

You mentioned ComicHub and the information that’s tracked through ICv2 and even BookScan, and my big issue with that is that represents 125 stores. That by itself is not a problem, but it always bugs me because a lot of people who leverage that data act as if it represents every shop when it really doesn’t. Especially not the big ones. It’s easy to be concerned about the same thing when you have 200+ stores that represent 32,000 customers, which are nice numbers, but still a small part of the overall market. Bad actors could use the data in inappropriate ways if they happen to subscribe to your newsletter.

How do you view the data you’ll be providing? Is it a guide or is it gospel?

Freeman: So, we are going to have sort of a CAPTCHA that’s going to say, are you a bad actor? (David laughs) And if you have to say yes, then you’re not able to use it. (laughs)

No, this is not gospel. These are all estimates. Especially when you’re dealing with numbers this big, unless you’re a publisher who has seen the actual orders to the copy, anything is an estimate. Anything is going to be just a guideline. There are no hard and fast numbers, and I would say part of the problem with many of those guys, I see them in the message boards that get all flustered about what the availability of this book is versus that book. They just take that as gospel because it goes down to one digit. It isn’t gospel. It never has been, and it will never be. There is no way short of some sort of government regulation on printing for you to see what the actual print run is. There’s no way that can be done.

You’re building the Fan Confidence Rating. You have other completely new, not made up statistics cooking. (Freeman laughs) You’re working with more partners. Where would you like to see this go? Is this just one of the tools in your Prana toolbox or is this something you could see becoming bigger?

Freeman: Number one, I built this to scratch my own itch, right? The reason I got involved with ComicHub was that (Stu Colson, the founder of ComicHub) showed me a tool where you could see the difference between the pre-orders and what the store orders were. I think it was on, I don’t remember now…it was one of the Fantastic Four launches, and he said, “This is going for a crash.” I’m like, “What?! You can show me this?! As a publisher, I want this data.”

I think you showed me that when I visited you at Anyone Comics in Brooklyn.

Freeman: That was a favorite slide for behind the scenes. For a long time, I wanted that data so badly because as a publisher, I want to see how things are acting. So, yes, this is primarily for me. Prana works with now…I think we’re up to six different publishers. We do tons of consulting. We want to be able to answer questions as concretely as possible. If you do this, X happens. If you do this, Y happens. We want to be able to give you those kinds of answers on things like incentives and POP 4 and emails and influencer marketing and all those things. We want to be able to point out what those changes are. Someday I hope to get there. That’s my primary concern.

What I would love to see is us be able to serve the whole industry. If this data could make comic shops stronger and publishers more confident in bringing quality books to market and more confident in creating dynamic marketing programs that both support the shops and grow themselves and their investors and their stakeholders, I mean…that will be a win at the end of the day.

But I’ll be honest, I did this because it wasn’t there and I need it to do my work.

Thanks for reading this conversation with Prana’s Atom Freeman. If you enjoyed this chat, consider subscribing to SKTCHD for more like it and to support the work I do on the site.