ComiXology Kaput

So the inevitable is happening and ComiXology is being completely subsumed by Amazon and will be replaced by the Kindle Store.

When Amazon took over ComiXology in 2014, those of us who used the ComiXology app saw it become a lot less usable. In-app purchases became a thing of the past and instead you had to go back and forth between the app and your web browser to explore what ComiXology had to offer. But as a creator who used ComiXology Submit to market my work, nothing changed appreciably. All I felt was the ethical sting of being associated with a company like Amazon.

But I’m not sure I’m going to go along with this new change. In order to keep my books being sold, I will need to set up a Kindle Direct account and redo everything. Not only will I have to get in bed completely with Amazon, something I just don’t feel I can do anymore, my past experience with Kindle Direct makes me want to run the other way.

As I mentioned in the comments after my article about my experience with Ingram Spark, getting any kind of response from a huge company like Amazon is challenging. And even when you do get a response, it is useless. My book Holiday Funeral remains stuck in a Catch-22. As I wrote, I decided to publish the graphic novel through Ingram Spark to see what the service offered. At the time, Ingram had a deal with Amazon, and you could get a digital version of your book listed on the Kindle Store. So I went with that. Well, that agreement between Ingram and Amazon has since dissolved. So when I try to contact the Kindle people about my own book and want to know simple things like how many have sold, I’m told that only the publisher can access that information. So I’ll need to contact Ingram. But when I contact Ingram, I’m told that they no longer have a relationship with Amazon and so have no access to any information there and that I’ll have to talk to the Kindle people. And there’s the loop. Mind you, it took months of emailing to uncover the loop. The response on both ends is incredibly sluggish.

Because of this, I really don’t want to put my creations at the mercy of a huge, faceless, incommunicative company that denies me control of my own books.

That said, and with unintentional irony, the third and final issue of the color version of Lounger will be out on ComiXology on September 8th. I have made all my comics DRM-free, which means that once you purchase them, you can download them. So if you have bought any of my books through ComiXology and you want to be able to read them in the future, I recommend downloading them now.