THE BUSINESS CASE
Your subscribers can cover the whole stack before you open on Wednesday
Whether that’s true for your shop depends on numbers only you have. So put them in below — and read the part where we tell you who shouldn’t buy this.
You order from PRH or Lunar
You run a pull list
You’re on Shopify, or willing to be
Sagas & Journeys runs its catalog, pre-orders and subscriptions on exactly the stack priced below — not a mockup, a working shop.
EVERYTHING YOU'LL PAY FOR
The whole stack, including the parts we don’t charge for
Masterfile — Retailer Ops
Catalog, distributor ordering, shipment receiving, series subscriptions, digital editions.
$249 / month
Masterfile — Catalog
Catalog and product sync only. No ordering, no subscriptions, no digital editions.
$59 / month
Masterfile — usage
Per subscription issue billed. Nothing bills, nothing charged.
$0.15
Your Shopify plan
Basic billed annually, $39 month-to-month. Grow $79, Advanced $299. Paid to Shopify, not to us.
from $29 / month
Theme
Works with any Online Store 2.0 theme. You don’t need to buy one.
$0
Custom development
Four drag-and-drop blocks in the Shopify theme editor. No developer, no build.
$0
Shopify POS Lite
In-person selling is included on every Shopify plan. POS Pro is $89/month per location for the full register.
$0
Shopify prices are US list, captured 2 August 2026, and are Shopify’s to change. Card processing is separate and also paid to Shopify — 2.9% + 30¢ online on Basic, less on higher plans. Masterfile has no setup fee, no seat fee, no annual contract and no free trial: you pay from day one.
Your shop, your figures
We don't know what your shop looks like, so we won't pretend to. Put your own numbers in and the arithmetic happens in front of you.
Masterfile doesn't remove all of that time. We build your distributor order from real customer demand — you still submit it yourself, and you still choose what to carry. Judge the hours against that, not against zero.
Book a demo with these numbersWHAT YOU GET BACK
Demand you know about before the cutoff
The money argument for subscriptions isn’t really the recurring revenue. It’s that the demand exists before final order cutoff — so you order what’s already sold instead of guessing and eating the difference.
Committed before you open
Subscribers are charged for each new issue as it comes out. That revenue is on the books before the shop opens on Wednesday.
No per-issue work from you.
Order against real numbers
Every subscription is known demand against a specific issue, before FOC. Your draft distributor order is built from it automatically.
You still submit the order yourself.
One page, every cover
All variants of an issue collapse into a single Shopify product with a Cover option. Collectors find the one they want; you stop maintaining twelve near-identical listings.
Renewals ship the primary cover.
HONESTLY COMPARED
What else you could do instead
What it handles
What you still do
Cost shape
Masterfile
Catalog, PRH + Lunar ordering, FOC lifecycle, one page per issue, series subscriptions, digital editions.
Submit the order yourself. Choose what to carry.
Published: $59 or $249/mo, plus $0.15 per subscription issue billed.
Shopify + Manage Comics
Pull lists and customer management layered onto Shopify.
Catalog normalization, variant consolidation, FOC lifecycle.
Quote-based.
Shopify on its own
A genuinely good storefront and checkout.
Everything comics-specific — catalog, covers, FOC dates, pull lists — by hand.
Platform fee only, plus your time.
ComicHub
POS and pull lists built for comic shops.
Living largely inside their storefront rather than your own Shopify.
Quote-based.
WooCommerce or Wix
A storefront you host and maintain yourself.
All of the above, plus hosting, updates and security.
Cheap to start; plugins and maintenance accumulate.
An agency build
Exactly what you specify, built to order.
Paying for every change, forever.
Typically $5–25k to build, plus a retainer.
We don’t publish competitors’ prices. Several of these are quote-only, and any number we printed would be out of date before you read it. Ask them directly — and ask what happens to your data if you leave.
BECAUSE IT'S REAL SHOPIFY DATA
Masterfile doesn’t build a POS. It doesn’t need to.
Your comics are ordinary Shopify products carrying COMET metafields. That means Shopify’s own tools work on them with no extra integration — and none of what follows costs you anything with us.
At the counter and at cons
Shopify POS Lite is included on every Shopify plan; POS Pro is $89/month per location. Either way it rings against the same inventory your webstore uses, so a con sale and a web sale decrement the same copy.
Tap to Pay does not work offline. At a venue with poor signal you need a physical reader with offline payments enabled in advance.
On social
Shopify’s Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and Google channels read your product catalog directly. The COMET fields travel with each product — series, creators, age rating, on-sale date.
Shopify distributes it. We just make sure the data underneath is right.
If you already run another POS
Shopify no longer accepts new integrations for POS systems outside Shopify — it’s written into their App Store requirements. Square, Clover, Toast and Heartland have no first-party Shopify inventory app.
Connecting an existing estate means paid third-party middleware on top of both platforms. Worth pricing before you commit.
WHAT SETUP ACTUALLY TAKES
Six steps, no developer
01
Pick a plan
Catalog or Retailer Ops, billed through Shopify with everything else on your Shopify invoice.
02
Add four theme blocks
Comic Details, Pre-Order Notice, Past FOC Notice and Subscription Picker, dragged into your product template.
03
Turn on customer accounts
Shopify’s new customer accounts, then add the My Subscriptions, My Collection and Digital Editions blocks.
04
Pin the admin blocks
COMET Product and Variant Fields, so comic data is readable and editable inside Shopify admin.
05
Set your sync rules
Which publishers and formats flow into your store — and which don’t.
06
Set your distributor costs
Your discount tiers, so the cost estimates on every order are real numbers.
One prerequisite worth checking first: your theme must support app blocks. Most Online Store 2.0 themes do — older vintage themes don’t, and the blocks simply won’t appear.
DIVISION OF LABOUR
Who actually does which work
We do this
— Ingest and normalize the PRH and Lunar catalogs.
— Collapse every cover of an issue into one product, matched by barcode.
— Keep Shopify in sync — products, variants, metafields, lifecycle.
— Run subscription billing for each new issue.
— Fix bad upstream data once, for every store, when you flag it.
You do this
— Choose what your shop carries.
— Submit your own distributor order — a CSV upload for Lunar, a paste for PRH.
— Receive shipments and confirm what actually arrived.
— Set pricing and decide what goes on the shelf.
— Keep your Shopify theme and storefront yours.
THE OBVIOUS QUESTIONS
The things that actually decide this
Cost is rarely what stops a shop switching. These are.
Will my customers actually subscribe?
Most of them already do — a pull list is a subscription that happens to live in a binder. This moves it onto your storefront so it bills itself and the customer can manage it. You’re not asking anyone to change their habit, only where it’s recorded.
What happens to my existing pull list?
It becomes subscriptions on your store, which means a conversation with each regular. That’s the real work of switching, and it’s the part we plan with you rather than pretend away.
How long until it’s actually working?
Setup is an afternoon: pick a plan, add four theme blocks, turn on customer accounts, set sync rules and your distributor costs. The catalog lands from there. The first order day is where it becomes real, and we sit that one with you.
What if my theme is old?
Your theme needs to support app blocks. Most Online Store 2.0 themes do; older vintage themes don’t, and the blocks simply won’t appear. Worth checking before the call — it takes thirty seconds in your theme editor.
What if it doesn’t work out?
No contract and no lock-in. Cancel from your Shopify admin and the products stay in your store — they were always Shopify products, not ours.
Before you commit
Straight answers before you commit
The things people ask us on the second call. Here they are on the first.
We support PRH and Lunar
Those are the two distributor catalogs we ingest, normalize and dedupe into clean issues and covers for you. If your ordering runs through Diamond, raise it on the call so we can talk about timing.
You approve and submit your own orders
Masterfile builds the draft from real customer demand and prices it against your own discount tiers. You review it and send it — a CSV upload for Lunar, a paste for PRH. Nothing reaches a distributor without you seeing it first.
You pay from day one
No trial and no free tier. We’d rather quote you a real price than start a countdown clock and hope you forget.
Subscribers pay full cover price
There’s no subscriber discount today, and renewals ship the primary cover. If discounting standing orders is central to how you compete, tell us on the call.
NO LOCK-IN
How you leave, if you leave
Your products stay yours
They’re Shopify products in your Shopify account. Nothing in our code removes them when you go — we don’t even subscribe to Shopify’s uninstall webhook. Titles, descriptions, variants, SKUs, barcodes, prices, images and tags stay exactly where they are.
One thing we won’t promise
The comic-specific fields are app-managed metafields. What Shopify does with those after an uninstall is Shopify’s behaviour, not ours, and they don’t document it — so we won’t tell you either way. Ask any app vendor who claims otherwise how they know.
What we delete is ours
When Shopify sends the redact signal after an uninstall, we drop your data from our own database. That’s us deleting our records — it doesn’t touch anything in your store.
THE PART NOBODY PUTS ON A WEBSITE
What it costs to leave what you’re on now
Export before you cancel
Whatever you run today, get your customer and pull-list data out while you still have access to it. Do this first, not last.
Expect to run both for a cycle
Most shops overlap a single FOC cycle so nothing slips. Budget for a month of paying two vendors at once.
Order day will feel wrong at first
The workflow genuinely is different. Budget real hours for your first cycle — not zero, and not one.
Your pull list becomes subscriptions
Regulars subscribe on your storefront rather than sitting on a list behind the counter. That’s a migration and a conversation with every one of them.
Bring your numbers. We’ll tell you if you should wait.
A 30-minute call where we run your actual pull-list count and hours against this. If the maths says stay where you are another six months, that’s what we’ll say.
What happens after you book
01
A 30-minute call
We run your pull-list count, hours and wage against the same maths on this page.
02
A straight answer
If the numbers say wait, we tell you what to come back at. No follow-up sequence.
03
Install and ingest
If it fits, you install from the Shopify App Store and we ingest your catalog.
04
Your first order day
We’re with you for the first FOC cycle, when it either works or it doesn’t.