Episode 83: Comixology. Amazon. WTF?
When the Comixology website went dark on Thursday and we all had to switch to Amazon for our digital comics, I recorded my first thoughts.
There is, of course, a LOT more to say and I plan on doing future podcast(s) about this topic.
This is one of the rarest of occasions where the entire comics internet has come together to agree on one subject: This is objectively awful. It’s not even a matter of opinion at this point. We can make excuses for it, we can wait for it to get better, but there’s no two ways around it:
Comixology is a lesser app and website after this switchover. Period.
For now, here are my initial thoughts on the change.
You can flash back to September for this article when this plan was originally announced:
The First Sign That Something Is About To Go Awry
Comixology was excited. Every other digital comics reader on the internet was crossing their fingers and worried.
They were right to worry.
Their Terminology Is Wrong
Amazon refers to single issues of a comic series as “books.” That really bothers me. It shows that they haven’t made the commitment to handle comics as a medium of their own.
Or, if you’re really cynical, it shows that Amazon is just waiting out the periodical and only wants to deal with “books” — thicker things with spines and ISBNs. That also explains how everything runs through the Kindle Book Store once you get one level deeper than the Comixology “store.”
I don’t have a picture for that, but yeah — when you click through on a comic issue to get more information, you are sent to that issue’s page on the Kindle Store, and all the comics-related navigation is replaced with the Kindle Book Store’s navigation material. That’s annoying.
They Miss the Point of Serialized Comics
Good luck finding issue numbers on the new releases. So many of the titles are so bloated with parentheticals that Amazon can’t fit the issue number on the screen, no matter how big you make your screen.
In the above example, only “Iron Fist” manages to squeeze an issue number in there. It’s more important to point out what books are “comiXology Originals” than it is to let the reader know what issue it is.
By the way, the official spelling of the company is lowercase-C and uppercase-X: comiXology Nobody does that, though. It’s like calling San Diego Comic-Con “Comic-Con International: San Diego.” Yeah, that’s cute and corporate and official and all, but nobody ever refers to it that way.
Every Company Loves a Good Subscription Service, So Amazon Now Gives You Three
If you want to read a Comixology Original title without paying directly for it, just subscribe to Amazon Prime. Or Comixology Unlimited. Or Kindle Unlimited. Take your pick.
I have to think that they’ll be merging the two so-called “Unlimited” subscription plans at some point down the road.
Funny enough, on a single title, they only show the Kindle option:
Amazon wants you to subscribe to Kindle Unlimited to read their Comixology Originals
The Shopping Cart Is Gone — Even If You’ve Already Bought the Book
There is no cart anymore. It’s only one-click purchasing. This is annoying. When there’s a big sale, I’ll often throw everything into my cart and then whittle down that list to what fits in my budget. I guess now I need to use a Wish List or pencil and paper.
Since I finally had to merge my comiXology account into my Amazon account, I also lost the ability to pay for digital comics through PayPal. Everything goes through your Amazon account now.
One-click is still available even if you’ve already bought the book. Don’t worry, though — if you click that button, they’ll let you know you already bought it and ask you if you want to buy it again.
The Video Version
Here is the video version of this podcast. I cut a couple parts out, but it’s mostly the same thing:
For titles originally published through Submit, they had to be republished through KDP and they therefore won’t stop you from buying those twice.
It’s a mess. The reading experience is worse, particularly on desktop and with double page spreads. It feels like a rushed change made with no appreciation of what makes comics unique.
Ah, yeah, I forgot about that — and the fact that the Guided View will have to be reimplemented along the way. They have the software for that to use, but it’s still a lot of work.
I just love this american word that begins with cluster and ends with uck, perfectly describes the situation here. So basically Amazon revoked your library card. Any idea why they would do it that way ? Surely ,not a lack of funds nor resources so why ? Must be a reason. I’m just happy to be able to go back to my physical volumes, archives, essentials, showcases, omnibuses, you name it when I see a fiasco like this. Then again Amazon is known for stomping then absorbing the competition just to get them out of the way, not caring if they have a suitable replacement. They have done it many times before so it’s not like we are surprised.
I will be covering this in a follow-up podcast this week at some point, but it looks like Amazon/Comixology got tired of maintaining two different code bases, so they made the switch now so they could devote all their energy to the new one. In other words, they’re changing out the engine on their airplane while it’s in flight, and right now the plane is taking a nosedive towards the ground.
I’m trying to remain optimistic that this will get fixed along the way, though it’s also obvious from what they’ve said that some of the changes are permanent and will always suck.
(And stuff like having independent publishers needing to re-upload all their books is another piece of insanity that can’t be “fixed.” UGH)
The question right now is, how long will this transition take? How long before they bring back enough features to make the app usable, let alone the store? Amazon’s website is clunky, at best, and it’s not designed to handle periodicals like this…
In Canada, and I think in all other countries outside the US, there is no Comixology page within Amazon. Now that the Comixology website is gone, non-US customers have to fend for ourselves in the sea of the Amazon store. No recommendations, no weekly comics, no links to other books in a series, no sales, no way to search by publisher. It’s a disaster. Search for a comic title and you’re just as likely to be recommended plumbing tools or makeup. The only way to search for comics at all is within the Kindle store, filtered by comics and graphic novels. Amazon is now constantly trying to sell me comics I already own too. Kindle doesn’t know which comics I have in Comixology and vice versa so most of my collection on Amazon has a one-click buy button next to it that invariably costs more than I originally paid for the book. The Comixology app has taken a huge step backwards, as you’ve detailed, but one of the things that is bugging me the most is that when you finish a book in a series, there is no button to continue on to the next book. You get a link to a sample of the next book even if you have it in your library.
Oh, and I just noticed that without access to the Comixology page within Amazon for those of outside the US, there is no way to access our comics on desktop. I normally read them on a tablet within the app so not the biggest deal for me but I can imagine a lot of people who only read through a browser being furious that they can’t read the comics they paid for anymore.
You can read your comics now through the Kindle website reader at read.amazon.com, but — it’s atrocious. It’s two-page reader only, no Guided View, slow. And, yes, it’s ultimate sin is that it’s still the Kindle reader app.
Things are moving so fast with this stuff now that I can’t keep up with what’s been added as we’ve gone along and what was always there and what hasn’t shown up yet. Ugh.
Thanks for this Augie! While I almost always read comics on my Ipad Pro (as recommended by Pipeline Comics!), I do like to peruse my library from the desktop as means of avoiding work and deciding what to read next. I appreciate your call for everyone to stay calm, be patient and embrace change as we weather this rough changeover. The new, stripped down, Comixology app is okay in my opinion. It’s a little clunky in keeping track of new purchases and books I’m in process of reading but I’m getting used to that. The real bummer that I expect will never get better for international customers is access to any of the old Comixology features. In the same way we were never going to get Comixology Unlimited due to the complications of international rights, I can’t see the Comixology page within Amazon being available outside the US. In Canada, the app is only a reader (the discover page is non-functional) and while we can go to Comixology on Amazon.com we can’t purchase any books from Amazon.com. The work around for now is when I find a book, I copy the title, paste it into Amazon.ca and hope for the best. Half the time it’s not available, not on sale or, if I already own it Amazon, tries to sell the kindle version. So I’m relying on you and Grovel more than ever now to recommend books since stumbling across anything new and exciting in Comixology is virtually impossible.