Amazon to acquire Comixology | Hacker News Reader

Amazon to acquire Comixology

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101 pointsImJasonH54 comments

I've used Comixology and Marvel Unlimited before. Marvel Unlimited is a travesty on Android tablets, which is really unfortunate, because a subscription service like that is probably the only way I will consistently read comics.

Comixology's app is certainly better, but it's tough to shell out the money for something I could be done reading 5-10 minutes later. It'd be nice if they could get together a subscription service like Netflix, but for the smaller publishing houses like Image, since DC and Marvel will obviously go their own way.

>> "it's tough to shell out the money for something I could be done reading 5-10 minutes later."

Haven't comic book readers done this for decades? I'm not big into comics but I was under the impression they are the sort of thing people read again (i.e. people don't just read once and delete).

I'm peculiar because I didn't really grow up reading comics, but was introduced to them near the end of high school. I was already a voracious reader as I had grown up constantly ensconced in books (my parents' house has a library), and I started with collections of old Marvel series, so like, the first 20-40 issues of Fantastic Four, or The Avengers, or whatever in single volume. I'd read 5 years of a series in a single night. I just enjoyed reading them. Even in the big superhero books today I find that I have to force myself to look at the art most of the time because I can almost get all my visual stimulation from text. This is less of the case in smaller, more interesting titles, but I still find myself speeding through, and I almost never re-read them.

Yes, but before you had a collectible comic. The digital copies really don't have any secondary market value.

That said, I love reading comics and I use Comixology heavily. I just usually wait until I can get about 50 issues of a title in one of their 99 cent sales and splurge for a good month's worth of reading.

I was reading comics during the 90s collectable craze. It was all speculation and ultimately hurt the comic industry. So I think devaluing the physical comic is a good thing.

I agree with getting huge chunks of a series though. But that doesn't always work since Marvel and DC are still big on story arcs that cross over several titles. Following a single title often leads to incomplete stories.

As a former comic reader, owning a physical comic is like owning a book. It's satisfying but convenience will win for most of the market.

The graphic novels are like books to me. But getting the monthly titles was more about going to the comic book store with friends and hanging out (and speculating about their value).

The comic book store I used to go too closed down a few years ago. I'm sad to see it go, but the industry is going to have to change to survive.

Yeah, you do have to be crossover-aware before you pick up 50 issues of a title. I passed on an X-Men sale they ran a while back because I remember having to drop that title every summer when I was a kid.

They were doing the sale every week, and it's always something different. I've picked up huge continuous runs of Deadpool, Daredevil, and the Walking Dead.

For current-ish Marvel comics, rather than/ in addition to waiting for Comixology sales, you can use the comiccodes subreddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/comiccodes/

The way it works is that currently almost all physical Marvel issues and some hardcover collections come with a code that can be redeemed for the digital copy. People who have a physical copy often don't need the digital copy too, so /r/comiccodes/ is a marketplace where people sell those codes. The going price tends to be $1/ issue and most people take Paypal, although some prefer Comixology gifts or Amazon e-giftcards or whatever.

I'm an independent comics creator who does graphic novels that take a while to read, not single issues. I'm also someone who spent all day Thursday trying to get my GN into a .mobi, without much success: https://vine.co/v/M5M3lLEwz6E

I am really happy about this. Because perhaps it will mean I will soon be able to just upload a .pdf of my comic to Amazon and not worry about anything beyond how much to charge for it.

That's a super excellent point! I wasn't really thinking about small individuals, as I'm not really very deep into comics. I just happen to love reading fiction and tend to devour whatever I stumble into.

Best of luck to you, this sounds like it could be a real boon.

Publishing on Amazon is currently quite horrible, so I am sorry to say that if you use history as a guide, then you are in bad luck. For example, current publishers get less money if they use bigger data. The result is blurry pictures on hi-res screens. Awful policy.

I've not had a problem with the comics we've gotten from Amazon. If anything, the reader on the Kindle Fire HDX takes a little getting used to because you need to click to zoom to read a good bit of it. I've tried reading them on my laptop but can't get into it; I can't read books on a horizontal screen. Things will be much better with electronic paper, so it will be like a comic book again. Sure, I could buy an actual comic book, but what fun is that?

A big part of what makes Comixology great is how well their Guided Mode works. That requires more than just a .pdf of the full pages.

The Marvel Unlimited webapp is even worse.

> Marvel Unlimited is a travesty on Android tablets

I've made some big improvements to it. Due to my frustration with the Android app, I used it as a learning opportunity to find out how to take an Android app, decompile it, modify it and recompile.

I've fixed the fact that on my tablet (Nexus 10), the pages weren't shown full screen, which made the app useless. I've fixed the issue where it sometimes falls into "two page" reading mode when switching screen orientations. I've added the ability to tap the screen edges to move back/ forward a page like in Comixology and ever reasonable CBR reader app. I've fixed some other miscellaneous bugs.

After these changes, I'm a happy user of the MU service and have been using it regularly. I just finished Deadpool Killustrated and the first six issues of Kelly Sue DeConnick's Captain Marvel.

I'd like to get my modifications to others, but I'm not sure how. I can't post the source or the apk for my modified version of the app (I call it "the All-New Marvel Unlimited") because it is a modified version of Marvel's app that I don't have the right to distribute. I've been thinking about trying to put together a project on github that would just contain diffs to turn MU into ANMU and a script to pull the apk for MU from your tablet, uninstall it from your tablet, decompile it, apply the diffs and re-install it. This would require enabling USB debugging on the tablet and having the Android SDK on your computer plus some other Android tools, which is going to make it too difficult for non-technical comic fans, even if I put a lot of work into trying to make the installer "easy" to run everywhere (including Windows). Is there a better way to handle this or any existing work I can build upon?

You're doing great work it sounds like. I also have Nexus 10 (you're the first person I've ever heard or read mentioning owning one other than myself), so you understand my pain in trying to use that piece of junk.

Unfortunately, while I am someone who would love, love, love to have your version of the app, I might be one of the worst people on HN to ask about how to handle/distribute it, as I'm an environmental scientist/energy economist. Python and Matlab are as far as my day-to-day programming go, although I have wanted to work on an Android app for a while.

Yeah, the question about distribution wasn't necessarily aimed at you in particular, as much as I am hoping that someone seeing this will know something about this and have some advice.

If you'd like to try my version of the app, please drop me an email at bobbyi@gmail.com . I'll send you whatever I can put together if/ when I bundle it into something redistributable. The same goes for anyone else reading this!

Did you try contacting the original authors?

For my SW projects I would be thrilled to know about stuff that anooyed someone so much that he went into all the trouble of decompiling/fixing/recompiling. They have a chance to make their product better right here...

I haven't. If I have time, I would like to write a blog post explaining what bugs I have found and changes I have made. If I do, I hope I can get the relevant people to see it.

It's surprising that Marvel and DC didn't purchase Comixology to prevent this from happening. We've seen what Amazon did to book publishers, I don't see any reason to believe they won't do the same to comic book publishers.

On the other hand, perhaps lower pricing/subscription services is just what the comic book industry needs to get more people reading comics.

That's pretty much my guess, Marvel & DC might be hoping there is growth potential.

But surely they would want to be the ones in control of this?

Not saying they wouldn't love to be the ones in control, but it could be just one more reason they elect not to get in a bidding war with Amazon, and hope for the best.

The price of this might be the destruction of comic book stores. It's often hard for companies to bypass retailers, because the retailers will get mad at them, and the retailers are the majority of their (direct) customers.

This way, Amazon does Marvel/DCs dirty work, but Marvel/DC still gets paid.

I think it will be a lot harder to cannibalize Marvel and DC's profit centers because of the value of the actual IP itself, as opposed to book publishers who don't have the kind of "brand" recognition and sway that a Batman or Spiderman has.

The people who are probably shitting right now are the local comic shops and Diamond Distributors.

Comixology, whether due to temperament or just due to size and leverage, was playing fairly nice with the existing comics ecosystem. Now, they're owned by a middleman that makes Diamond look positively cute by comparison, and one with a fairly explicit goal of crushing all local shops of all types.

I came here to say just this. I wonder how long the cute distinction Comixology makes by splitting the digital and comic-shop sides of their website will last. There's also no reason Amazon doesn't just put Diamond out of business by putting one team on making a Previews-like ordering system.

As long as their content doesn't become Kindle Fire exclusive, I don't mind this change.

I agree. It's getting weird how many Kindle Fire exclusives applications are out there with no Android equivalents. UK newspapers come to mind.

The biggest aspect to consider here is that Amazon already sells digital comics that are usable on Kindles and in Kindle apps. I don't imagine that feature going away, in the place of Amazon promoting the use a separate Comixology app.

Which makes me inclined to believe that Comixology will be phased out, and its features incorporated into the Kindle comics features.

Why not the other direction? I think Comixology has a bigger backing, so they could merge their stuff to Comixology. This might be similar to how they run IMDB or Zappos.

I downloaded the Comixology app just to try. And I don't think the Comixology way of thinking for their app works for non american comics. Japanese comics can't be viewed bubble by bubble, that would be just a horrible experience, and there doesn't seem to be two-pages side by side display handling, or right to left page order option either. The Kindle handles this kind of things gracefully.

BTW they really should have something free in their store or directly in the app, even an illustrated guide of how to use the app, just to give an idea of the experience. No one asks their users to buy 5~10$ content just to see if the app is comfortable to use.

https://www.comixology.com/free-comics

The app does support two page reading and right to left books, but it has a limited selection of those kinds of books.

This may be a weird reason to not be happy with this, but I pay for my subscriptions and purchases on Comixology with PayPal, and I'm pretty certain that will go away pretty soon now.

I'd love to think that this will stay the same, but I see lots of changes happening from this, most not so great.

I wouldn't be too worried about that. I remember when they acquired Audible they didn't change the payment system for a LONG time. I know because Audible wouldn't accept my debit card even after the acquisition yet Amazon would.

Zappos has been owned by Amazon for years now, and they still accept Paypal.

Thanks for the reminder. You're right.

Well, if anything then, this could signal that 'owning my digital content that's really owned/held by Comixology' means it'll be around longer.

It is amazing that this company succeeded. One would have expected that the comic book store owners would have effectively resisted but DC wanted something in place for the iPad launch and it just started the ball rolling down hill.

Haven't been to a comic book store since the Android app came out.

I think you are misunderstanding that most Comic Book Store Owners are also fans, and are always eager to get the most ways to access content out there. Also, Comixology (currently at least) has their Comics Retailer platform (ie https://isotope.comicretailer.com/ for my shop in SF, Isotope) that allows these shops to make some (admittedly less) money per issue with no inventory, no pre-ordering and no liability for unsold comics.

If they add the Comixology library to Prime subscribers, I would pay double!

I would go for adding "1 issue of your choice per week" as part of prime (a bit like the kindle lending library) - this would work great for occasional readers, and I could see this generating significant sales for people who binge-read

I wonder if this opens up the possibility of a Comixology API similar to IMDB.

My side project Longboxed.com could really benefit from a better datafeed.

Longboxed seems pretty neat! Where are you currently pulling that data from?

I'm using a laptop. Is there a significant difference in the reading experience between their "immersive and cinematic" one and just looking at, e.g., Questionable Content on Firefox?

(I ask because I was going to try reading one of their free comics and they want me to "register" with email and date of birth and password and oh give it a rest for pete's sake...)

Amazon seems to be really good at acquisitions, sort of like 1990s Cisco, although in an entirely different way (Cisco integrated well; Amazon leaves them alone, but provides services).

I'm much happier to see Amazon buy a company for product, as I then have even more confidence it will continue to operate, than virtually any other acquirer.

In a past life I worked for a company that was acquired by Amazon. It was like what HBO talks about, how cable companies deal with infrastructure & advertising & distribution, letting HBO focus on making TV- As we were taken into the fold, exactly that sort of thing began to happen for us, as the mother ship shouldered infrastructure burdens & so forth.

Maybe this was a defensive move by Amazon as eBay was partnering with Comixology: http://techcrunch.com/2013/12/05/ebay-pushes-into-curating-a...

On a similar note, I'd love it if there was some kind of media server for documents, pdfs, cbz, cbr files etc. that has an android/ios app and web app (like plex) to stream to.

Anybody, know of anything like this?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OPDS

FBReader's Android version lets you add a local ODPS server manually or scan you local network for one. Calibre a fantastic ebook collection manager/reader/converter/sync lets you run a server.

I've been using FBReader since PalmOS. I don't use a cbz reader for anything, so I don't know if there is a ODPS client that can read .cbz files (but ODPS is really straightforward, so if there is an OSS cbz reader it would be easy to add).

I think Moon+ Reader(closed source ads/pro version ebook/comic book reader) supports ODPS and cbr/cbz files.

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