Posted in: Comics | Tagged: Adam Freeman, Atom! Freeman, comicspro, lunar, Penguin Random House, Prana, Retailer Day, sdcc
Prana’s Atom Freeman Criticises ComicsPRO Retailer Day At SDCC
Prana Direct Marketing’s Atom Freeman posts criticism of ComicsPRO Retailer Day ahead of San Diego Comic-Con… and ComicsPRO responds
It’s San Diego Comic-Con; there is always drama. But this year it’s started early, before someone’s even managed to get stabbed in the A.I. And in this case, it’sAtom Freeman of Prana Direct Market Solutions, publishers of Comics! The Magazine and sub-distributors of a number of other comic publishers. This Friday is Retailer Day at San Diego Comic-Con, with the retailer activist group ComicsPRO gathering distributors Universal, Lunar and Penguin Random House to give presentations with their publishers throughout the day to assembled comic book retailers, including Prana. But Adam Freeman decided to kick things off early, posting to social media;
“If I’m doing the math right “Retailer Day” at San Diego Comic Con is something like 50+ vendors doing 5 minutes each with retailers being given a “box lunch”. Publishers and other vendors are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on this week and the best their trade organization can do is a carousel of people 5 minutes at a time and a dry turkey sandwich? The #1 publisher who is bringing people into comics shops in droves gets 8 minutes. 8 minutes. No offense to the people who think they just need retailer facetime to grow their small brands, but this is irresponsible. We have sponsored, out of our pockets, that breakfast for the past two years and this year, we got nothing from the organization but a copy and paste email. One of our distributors was able to carve out 5 minutes to split between two projects that are making money for comics retailers each month. Friends at Lunar? Consider this our notice that we will keep REKCAH and COMICS! The Magazine under 2 minutes. DC should have at least 10 minutes with retailers after the year they’ve given all of us.”
I did love both the Prana and Rekcah presentations in previous ComicsPRO events, I have to say. I understand that ComicsPRO began assigning speaking times and schedules for this year, but following feedback, it ceded complete control of the publisher time to the distributors to determine the contents of their blocks. I checked in withJoe Murray, President of the Board of ComicsPRO, and he shared his thoughts;
“We love hearing publisher feedback and are continuing to adapt this experience. This year San Diego asked us to handle organizing the room block and we reached out to our distribution partners to let them know. They requested the ability to select and schedule their publishers in the amount of time they determined per publisher. Their schedules were given to us to add to the day’s programming, and while we know it is long we wanted to give the distributors the time they requested. This felt like the best bridge from having one distributor run the day to three. Next year, this could look entirely different so please send us any thoughts you have after the event so we can keep growing it. The industry has rapidly changed over the last few years and our approach to these events evolves as circumstances change. We work closely with publishers and retailers at all our organized events including ComicsPRO organized retailer days at NYCC (last 4 years), MCM (last two), Rose City Comiccon (two years). We’re always open to constructive dialogue.”
Other retailers, distributors and publishers wanted to chip in:
- Chris Powell, formerly of Diamond, now director of operations at the Coliseum Of Comics chain: “Sounds fun! I hope they’re prepared, time-wise. The danger of adding too many presenters isn’t just the shorter time each gets, but the time eaten up with changeover from one presenter to another. (Unless they’re prerecorded, which could just be done online)”
- Atom Freeman replied, “I will say that I have faith in Lunar. When they insisted on having the deck beforehand at another show, I was dubious. But not having to hook up made it pretty seamless.”
- Chris Powell: “I don’t know if you were exaggerating about the number of presenters, but it’s the people wrangling that gets less predictable at scale. The tech side can be prepared for.”
- Atom Freeman: “I wish I were exaggerating. The full list is not public (because that would require real organization) so I had to extrapolate from the lists I can see. I know for certain that it is well north of 40.”
- David Doub: “I would say a part of the problem is making SDCC a Swiss army knife for the comic industry. Yes it’s a great opportunity to have a lot of the people at the same place but there is only so much time and money. Retailers Publishers and creators need to pick and choose what they really need to do at SDCC and what is more important to do outside of SDCC when everyone isn’t datadumping everything. SDCC is its own worse enemy in a way.”
- Atom Freeman: “100%. Which is why you need to be respectful of the retailers and their vendors’ time when they do show up.”
- Ed Catto: “Whoof! Now there’s some drama to this all!”
- Carr D’Angelo: “I always advise: bring your own mayo!”
- John Shableski: “They could do to steal ideas from the American Bookseller Association’s Winter Institute or the former Book Expo America. Truly curated programming geared to business development. For the Winter Institute, publishers were given 10 min pitch segments during breakfast and lunch. As a publisher, we were forced to determine what our A-list or Tentpole books/authors were. We went with the A list and then handed out tip/sell sheets on the other titles in the catalog. Two of my favorite pitches? Introducing the Walking Dead GN series with Return of the Dappermen at the Winter Institute in DC and then Manga Classics at the Winter Institute in Albuquerque, NM. I had to follow Kobe Bryant, so I said “All I got for you is killer manga adaptations of works by dead authors…the classics are amazing when you bring them to life in manga!” It was awesome! SDCC could do wonders to add two days of retailer conference to the show. “
- Dan Wallace: “As a retailer, I won’t be going unless I have a few minutes to pop in here and there. It overlaps with panels, and I can get more actionable information from those and from meeting with publishers and creators directly. It is what it is, and I realise they’re working with what they have available, so I bear them no ill will, but the dedicated professional day at NYCC is far more beneficial compared to what I would gain here versus what I would lose out on by spending the day at these presentations. The day as it stands is both a huge time suck and simultaneously too rushed to be useful.”
Expect this to be quite a talking point at the show, the Hyatt bars, the Lunar Meet Up, and the event itself… now all we need is Dennis Barger arriving to drop boxes of damaged goods at the front of the stage like in the old days.
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