I had a moment yesterday when prepping for a chat with Tim Young over on Deconstructing Comics.
We were about to discuss an issue of the original Lee and Ditko’s Amazing Spider-Man run. I owned the issue in a collection - but I could not recall which of the Marvel Masterworks series it featured in. I opened my Comixology library and was redirected to the Kindle storefront. From there I searched ‘Spider-Man’. Turns out I have quite a few books in my collection relating to the webslinger. I tried adding ‘Masterworks’ - that narrowed the field slightly, but the volume numbers did not display. I resorted to opening each one in the publication period and reading the indicia to learn which had issue #32.
It was a much longer process than usual, let’s say.
That vanishing functionality of what was once Comixology, and is now a pure Amazon product, is part of the issues comics readers and creators have raised over the weekend. There is a good piece over on Polygon by Leon Miller that lists the complaints and failings of the transition to Kindle.
Needless to say this is being described as a teething period, improvements will be made, new functionality, blah blah blah.
At any rate, I have not agreed to re-upload my two self-published books to Amazon’s digital comics storefront. The Beating of Wings and Faraway are available still on Ownaindi. That’s as good a home as any for now. In fact I have spent this afternoon searching through this site, replacing deadlinks and deleting posts about my books landing on Comixology. Irritation upon irritation.
I am disappointed. Comixology was a platform that I used both as a portfolio of sorts - something I talked about in an interview last year - and while I never saw much money in return, it did allow me to put some skin in the game as a self-publisher. Something I was reminded of this week when I received a reply from an overseas retailer for my comics, only to then learn the post office is not processing orders to that country. And that’s thanks again to the impact of COVID on international post. So that is income I am missing out on. Digital, at least, was an instantaneous transaction.
The offer to resubmit my comics to Kindle was frankly easy for me to opt out on - I have never enjoyed the experience of reading via Kindle.
I am interested in learning more about the reasoning behind this move, and if anyone wants to talk, you can contact me via this website. In particular I am curious why the guided view option has been dropped - is it a staffing issue? An additional cost that Daddy Warbucks Bezos feels is a bridge too far?
It doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. But it is something I want to explore further, probably for an interview/discussion episode of Deconstructing Comics.
But for now, indie comic creators have an uphill battle. The curated storefronts of Comixology have been lost to the Deluge of Kindle. Kickstarter and Gumroad are playing silly buggers with bitcoin. Retailers have to weigh up their own risks and if a self-publisher is not with Diamond, they are less of a prospect for some stores.
It short - this all sucks. Digital content in the face of a commercial monopoly is increasingly intangible - Fugazi, as Matthew McConaughey put it - and I suspect a lot of my peers in comics are doing the same as myself this week, reassessing what the hell we’re doing as readers and sellers.
Insert Jack Kirby quote here.