I’ve been away from the site for a bit, so first a little background on why I got tapped to talk about the state of digital comics as the Amazon fallout is reigning down: As a semi-reformed academic (I’m speaking at USC about entertainment marketing and fandom next month), I used to teach eBusiness at Columbia College Chicago and wrote three books on The Economics of Digital Comics that have been taught at the college level.
Because transparency is not a word that’s been uttered about Amazon’s plans for digital comics. It’s time to take a deep breath and look at what we do and don’t know. These long-sought-after tools may not completely appease ComiXology fans disappointed by the DRM change, but they may at least soften the blow.With Amazon kicking the Comixology staff to the curb in a staggered layoff, there are a lot of wild rumors flying around. The storefront change will also bring an update to the app, with better navigation tools including flexible filtering and sorting as well as the ability to read while downloading.ĬomiXology’s services will also be better integrated with the Kindle app, which has already added ComiXology’s panel-by-panel viewing experience.
The change to ComiXology isn’t all doom and gloom. With that in mind, if you’ve been holding out on buying certain issues in the series you love, you might want to take the plunge sooner rather than later if they currently support DRM-free downloads you can buy it to secure the PDF download before it's too late. So you'll be able to save any comics you buy before the switch as PDFs that you can store independently of ComiXology’s own app. When asked about changes to its services ComiXology told a user on Twitter “Your previous ComiXology purchases will still allow for DRM-free backups if the publisher allowed for them at the time of purchase.”
Thankfully your library of already purchased comics will remain DRM-free.
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