In the last week, Amazon has changed Comixology's app to Kindle Reader, and made reading comics through a web browser (the way I do it) impossible. The storefront has become a lot less useful, and personal libraries are more difficult to find things in. In almost every way, this switchover has been a debacle. (Here's a story on Polygon about it.)
So... what happens next? Will the Amazon app and interface improve? Will some competitor take Comixology's place? Will people switch to buying digital directly from publishers (I know Rebellion/2000AD has a digital storefront; I'm not sure who else does)? What happens to Comixology Unlimited when everyone hates Comixology?
Interesting times.
Replies
Rob, I haven't really used Comixology in years, so I am definitely out of the loop. I can still access my Comixology app on my phone, is that intended to go away? (I am assuming so)
I use the Kindle App on my PC, and I looked at a one of my comics on there. It seems okay, but I don't know how that compares. What I did notice, is that not all of the comics on my Comixology app, appear in my Kindle library.
I looked at the Polygon article. I don't currently use Comixology because I already have so much reading that I haven't gotten to piled up. The examples look like something that should have been caught and corrected in the testing phase, if there was one.
Amazon isn't perfect, but I'd be surprised if, especially with negative publicity, they aren't already working on correcting the problems you and others have mentioned. I'm also not a Kindle person for the same reason as above. Didn't Kindle have TPBs etc already on their platform? If that worked, they should be able to make this work.
The one thing that jumped out at me early on in the digital era was that when you bought a comic book online, in most cases you didn't actually download it and own a copy -- you had access, but not ownership. And I thought, "Access can be revoked at any time. Companies that are selling me access can go out of business. Why should I buy a digital copy I could lose at any time for the same price as a physical copy I own (and can resell)?"
And sure enough, in all the articles I'm reading, comiXology customers are complaining that they've lost access to some or all of the books they "bought." I imagine access will be restored over time -- comiXology is still in business, and Amazon is a pretty big and generally reliable company -- but surely this has sent a shudder through the digital reading community.
It's funny - while it's true that physical comics can be destroyed in various ways, they still somehow feel more "real" to me than a "virtual" comic would.
Captain Comics said:
I used to use ComiXology only because that was the ordering system my friendly neighborhood comics shop used. But they dropped it a few years ago.
I've downloaded a bunch of freebie titles whenever ComiXology made them available; for example, about when Black Panther was out, Marvel released nearly every appearance of Black Panther in Fantastic Four, Jungle Action, Black Panther and even spinoffs like World of Wakanda. I haven't signed into my account in forever, so I don't know if I can get to them.
I have hundreds of music CDs around my house because I've not bought into the promise of Spotify and its ilk that everything's online so who needs them? I do, because online companies disappear (like MySpace) or get swallowed by bigger rivals (like Facebook buying Instagram) or just change their policies (like that free unlimited photo storage on Google Photos that ain't so free or so unlimited any more).
So it is with ComiXology.
Captain Comics said:
I saw the same thing in regards to movies and TV shows.
I remember reading an article 5-6 years ago, about a guy who had some people visiting. He wanted to watch the movie Air Force One. He couldn't find it on Netflix, or Redbox, or any other thing what was available then. This was a huge hit when it came out, but, since at that time, video stores were pretty much gone by then. I'm probably not articulating it correctly, but the point is: when you own the physical copy you don't have to worry about a movie/TV leaving a service. Sure you can lose your physical copy, but that seems much less likely than it leaving your streaming service or whatever. I find it applicable to all digital media.
I guess I'm not alone in my preference to own an actual thing than to hope it will be there the next time I want it.
In the case of comics, series I really like will eventually be in hardback. I loved Sandman, Watchmen and Martha Washington enough to get the Absolute editions.
If I like a movie that I've seen in a theater, online or on a rental disk, I will make a point of buying it on DVD if I think it has enough appeal for multiple viewings. If I LOVE it, I will go for the BluRay, even though my BluRay player makes a DVD look close to a BluRay.
Trusting that something will be available when decisions are made every day to drop content just doesn't work for me.
I read digital comics almost exclusively, but Comixology is not my main source for them. I use the public library Hoopla service weekly, and I buy lots from Humble Bundle too. But I do have a Comixology collection, and when I tried to open the app on my Kindle Fire just now it forced me to update the app. I was going to give my first impressions, but the app won't open. So that's a crappy start.
I've done the same thing with movies and music -- I subscribe to streaming services, but if there's a movie I want to own forever, I buy it. With music, I generally don't stream at all. I try to buy direct from the artist at live shows.
With comics, I'm usually the same way, just buying digital when it's on sale, and if the price makes sense for something I want to read as a rental. I've bought some first-run books too -- lately I've been buying DC crossovers that way -- because they're not as much fun if you don't read them right when they come out, and I'm not making as many LCS trips as I used to. That said, Comixology is an Amazon company, and I'm not expecting it to go away anytime soon.
But man, is the company making it harder to enjoy the comics -- and it's even harder to buy them!
1) Reading in browser is no longer possible. Which is the way I've been reading Comixology for the last several years. Now I need the Kindle app for my laptop.
2) In order to read a book on the kindle app, you need to download it. Which again, is less convenient. I think the app experience on tablets was like this already, except a) the files are now bigger, for some reason, and b) the image quality is now poorer.
3) Guided View reading is gone. Which makes phones all but useless.
4) Double-page spreads, for some reason, show up really small and can't be enlarged.
5) For a while, I couldn't find my comics on my kindle app -- until I selected a button on amazon that said "make Comixology purchases visible on kindle." So now I can see them -- and have 2,000+ individual comics to sort through, with no organization except alphabetizing. Marvel offered more than 500 free Black Panther comics a couple years back, and each one's listed. So now I have the opposite problem -- I can't find my novels! (I think my phone kindle has started grouping my comic titles together, but my laptop hasn't done that yet. I don't know why.)
6) As far as I can tell, you need to look up individual issues on amazon to buy them on kindle. There's no more browsing like the Comixology store used to offer, skimming through the covers of all the new releases. You need to know the name of the comic, and the issue number. Heaven help you if the comic has a name like Hardware.
There are good apps for DC and Marvel, and Rebellion/2000AD sells its digital comics direct. But there are a lot of other publishers -- a lot of midsize ones like Boom and IDW, smaller ones like AHOY and Aftershock, and even a big one like Image -- that don't have an outlet like that. Hopefully, things will get fixed fast. This changeover has been bad news.
Oh, and one more problem I just noticed. I clicked on a link to "manage content and devices" and it looks like my comics are all listed as shared with my wife. I don't think Kathy uses Kindle much, but the next time she does, she'll be overwhelmed with two thousand books she didn't ask for. So that'll be fun.
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